Rhodes Forum - World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations"

Fabio Petito, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex

On the 4th November 1998, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution proposed by the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Khatami that designated 2001 as the Year of the ‘Dialogue among Civilizations’. In the same year, on 11 September, the shadow of a future clash of civilizations came hammering down with incredible velocity leaving in its wake an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and war. At the dawn of the third millennium, this coincidence increasingly appears as like a sign of the times, a symbolic indication of the historical epoch we are entering.

Oxana Gaman-Golutvina - Professor of Political Science, MGIMO-University
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia,
Vice-President, Russian Association of Political Science (RAPS),
Chairman, RAPS Scientific Council

Theoretical Framework

In our opinion, the initial point for comprehending the elite-forming processes in the Commonwealth of Independent States is understanding that the theoretical interpretation of these processes should not be limited by the perception that the present CIS elites have grown from the Soviet political establishment (nomenclatura). The USSR did not emerge in its time in an empty place but became a successor to the preceding forms of the Russian statehood. In fact, the USSR became a territorial, political and socio-economic modification of the state which originated in the 15th -16th centuries in the Moscow tsardom format.

Fred Dallmayr - University of Notre Dame (USA)

The purpose of the present panel is to discuss alternative models of global politics, with particular attention to the so-called “dialogue of civilizations.”  The question I want to raise is:  what is meant by dialogue as an alternative model of global politics?  In which way does dialogue add a new dimension to global politics?  The answer I want to offer is that dialogue opens the prospect of (what I would call) a “lateral” cosmopolitanism and that this prospect is predicated on interdependence and on the cultivation of lateral ethical responsibilities—oriented toward the vision of a global “good life”.  My discussion will concentrate on tree main issues.  First, how does the dialogue model differ from other familiar models of global politics?  Secondly, how in particular does the model differ from the conception of a “world state” or world government?  And lastly, what are the concrete political connotations of the model?  Specifically, does it have “conservative” or else “progressive” implications?

Ni Lexiong - Prof. of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law
Adjunct Prof. of Zhejiang University

I Contradictions and conflicts of war and peace

The capitalist market economy makes people’s thinking more and more commercial and rational, and that’s why national behavior and individual behavior are dominated by commercial rationality. The essence of commercial rationality is conducting an accurate calculation between costs and benefits in any business affair. At present, war has essentially been placed outside of the realm of religion and ideology, and become a part of our economic transactions under the control of commercial rationality. For example, the two World Wars and modern wars have been basically dominated by commercial reason. During the era of conventional weapons, there were so many uncertain variables that one or both sides in a war frequently made incorrect calculations of costs and benefits. These miscalculations caused more frequent outbreaks of war than would have been the case otherwise. Since mankind entered the era of nuclear weapons, it’s become much simpler and clearer to make the calculations of costs and benefits of war.  A nuclear war, unlike a conventional war, has costs such nuclear winter, the destruction of millions, even tens of millions of people, and the potential destruction of hundreds of cities. Since World War II, there has been no war between the nuclear powers.  This seems to suggest that the commercial reasoning of the nuclear age would rather select peace instead of war. Immanuel Kant considered the commercial spirit to be the natural enemy of war, but he did not expect that it would take until the nuclear age for this to be true.

Louise Jiang-Birch - Vice Chair, China Research Institute of Ottawa (Canada)

There is no doubt that the above noted global dynamics have had a significant effect on China.  While the transformation has generally been welcomed and appreciated, there remains considerable resistance and resentment towards some aspects of these changes. Certainly not all that globalization and regionalization brought to China has been positive for this ancient kingdom.

In some ways the Chinese societal fabric has been taken apart by their influences and the core of the Chinese soul which I refer to as its cultural DNA has been cracked. Both fabric and soul have been the foundation of the country's survival throughout its long history.

Will China eventually survive the regionalization and globalization transformation? In my view it will be determined in large part by its cultural DNA.  In other words at the end of the day it will be the Chinese people themselves, not outside influences or forces, that will determine and shape China's future path.

Kees van der Pijl, University of Sussex

The concept of a ‘dialogue’ supposes not just the aspiration to greater mutual understanding and (re-)conciliation. It also refers, by implication, to the antagonistic and contradictory forces operative in the world that require understanding and reconciliation in the first place. This contribution is about these antagonistic forces, notably, the social forces operative in the Western drive towards some sort of globalized world order, and the regional constellations which today appear to be resisting this drive. Each of these regional constellations is centred on what I call a contender state—a state which historically has pursued development and defended its autonomy by state initiative (with a controlled society and a more or less planned economy).

Prof. Dr. Peter W. Schulze, Georg August University of Goettingen

1.    The problem

The prospects of cooperative security seemed favorable for a few years after the Cold War ended in Europe. In spite of this a rather strange disparity or asymmetry between normative-political and social-economic goals of transformation evolved in Europe during the nineties. Certainly, the end of the Cold War was the precondition for quiet a successful transformation of most countries of the former Soviet orbit to achieve some degree of political sovereignty and socio-economic stability. In some cases even democratic pluralism grew societal roots and nearly everywhere progress to a market economy is well under way. However, while such transformational aims were achieved and rewarded, the idea of a European peace order vanished from the agenda. Indeed, the Cold War ended without an introduction of a new security regime in Europe. What's more, Russia was pushed to the side lines.

Richard Sakwa, University of Kent at Canterbury

The fall of the communist systems between 1989 and 1991 represented anti-revolutions, repudiating not just the systems themselves but also the political practices associated with them.  These anti-revolutions were more than simply counter-revolutions but sought to transcend the logic on which the communist orders had been constructed. The collapse of the communist systems signalled the exhaustion of the ideology of Enlightenment revolution, the view that radical social change could be achieved by the application of reason and the political will of enlightened elites. Of no less importance, the anti-revolutions repudiated the logic of Marxian emancipatory revolutionism, the idea that society could be transformed in its entirety by an act of revolutionary will. Marxian revolutionary socialism had deepened the primarily political Enlightenment revolutionism to encompass all aspects of social life. The end of the communist revolution put an end to a whole cycle of temporality and inaugurated a new type of historical time. It is the nature of this new temporality, and the politics associated with it, that this paper explores.

Jack Goldstone, George Mason University

Much attention has been focused on the current global financial crisis as a possible turning point in world history.  Yet this crisis, however severe, is just another in a long series of ‘bubbles’ created by speculation and imbalances.  In its economic consequences, it may be no worse than the Latin American crisis of the 1980s, or the East Asian crisis of the 1990s, or the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.

In each of these cases, a surplus of funds chasing greater returns led to excessive investment in instruments whose risks were not appreciated – indeed whose risks were willfully ignored and concealed by loose regulation, mathematical models, and faith in ever-rising prices.