September 11 will mark the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US. First of all, we must honor the memory of those killed in the airplanes, World Trade Center, and Pentagon. Yet, we must make at least the first attempt of a rational rather than emotional assessment of the tragedy. Obviously, the most daring political scientists will speculate, as they did a year ago, on the thesis of two religions (Christianity and Islam) and the conflict of two (Western and Eastern) civilizations, quoting Rudyard Kipling for an umpteenth time, “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” But the childish question of how East and West still managed to meet requires that we analyze the dynamic, not the static, of their relations — i.e., to switch from what there was and what there is to what there will be. Both West and East are sure to move from their present place, the only question being when and toward what they will take their first steps.
WHAT THERE WAS
“I consider myself a friend of the United States of America.” I put these words at the beginning of a book on the New World, for which I had been collecting material for a long time. My overseas visit and personal impressions prompted me to take up the pen, while last year’s September 11 events set the tone of what I would like to write.
The new era began with Christianity, the First Great Experiment of modern civilization. The second was the birth of Islam on the foundations of Judaism, Christianity and the folklore of Arabian Bedouins. This was followed by 1000 calm years, although the West was tormented by the religious and lay Inquisition and the East by the expansion of Muslim caliphs. The Third Experiment germinated in the bowels of the Enlightenment and Voltairianism and ended up as the French Revolution and rabid Jacobinism. Napoleon, while ostensibly burying this revolution, in fact extended its achievements to the rest of Europe — but not farther than Russia and Senate Square in December of 1825 (the Decembrist revolt — Ed.). The smoldering and putrid Jacobinism, pregnant with the People’s Will, was simultaneously enriched with Marx’s political economy and Lenin’s managerial genius. The cruiser Aurora’s innocent salvo signaled the end of the Decembrist uprising and the beginning of a new, Russian, communist-socialist Fourth Experiment, a quaint mixture of Christian dreams of equality and Jesuit rejection of equality. The Fifth Great Experiment of humanity, formally set into motion by Columbus, was in fact kick-started by George Washington. It may be still continuing or have already finished thanks to Al-Qaeda pilots. Who lives longest (if he manages to) will see the most.
WHAT THERE WILL BE
Globalization is by and large inevitable, but the question is what kind of globalization — one based on human rights, democracy, and civil society or one the cornerstone of which is, despite the Muslim world’s diversity, the zero value of human life. What we see is a conflict between civilization and savagery, not a confrontation between two religions or two civilizations. Of course, my opponents will remind me about the unscrupulousness and double standards of US diplomacy, the corporate egoism of US capital, and the scandalous bankruptcies that have recently been shaking the foundations of US big business. Thanks, I remember that. But I will let myself remind them about, for example, the Crusaders’ atrocities, one of the factors that brought about the Reformation and ensuing Christian bloodshed. The US is going through a crisis of Western-style sociopolitical orthodoxy. On the one hand, the collapse of the USSR made America the only world superpower which entertains dreams of a unbridled political and economic expansion. On the other hand, the Islamic attack showed that financial and economic might alone could guarantee safety to citizens of the world’s leading country. Following Hegel, this contradiction could end up with a new quality perhaps fraught with a new reformation of the Western world. Thus far, the US is trying to avert this by traditionally sending its soldiers to where nobody really wants them, while Europe doggedly assists its overseas partner. A new reformation and transition to the Sixth Great Experiment might last ad infinitum. In my opinion, this could be countered by the rebirth of American isolationism, although multinational corporations, on the one hand, and bin Laden, on the other, will actively hinder the process.
IDEALISM AND PRAGMATISM
Should we expect something new to come to the civilization we (want to) belong to precisely from across the ocean? I think so. Who but the US can claim world leadership? Europe? But it is no hurry: scolding the Americans for their awkward political maneuvers, it firmly grips at the US military umbrella and, in general, is sitting pretty. China? Dynamically developing, but it has too may mouths to feed. Japan? Too small a territory. Russia? It has everything and, at the same time, nothing. God save us from Moscow’s world leadership, a mixture of gunpowder and incense that has been characterizing political Eurasianism for the past 500 years. Every Russian ruler begins, sooner or later, to feel he is a bin Laden.
A US friend, I will still say frankly: this is not about emotions but about the interest a pragmatist and rationalist evinces in that state. Having read all that I need on the critique of pragmatism and rationalism, I am still standing my ground: the world will be saved, if at all, by reason, not by beauty, whatever that is..
Let me quote with great satisfaction the following lines from The Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary (Moscow, 1983, p. 522), which censures pragmatism:
“The function of thought... is overcoming doubt which prevents an action to choose the means required to achieve a goal or solve a problem. The ideas, notions, and theories are only... plans of action. Their meaning... is fully reduced to their probable practical consequences. Accordingly, the truth is definable as the usefulness or workability of an idea.” Long live pragmatism! If the question is not about the exclusive right to philosophically understand the world (for no doctrine has this kind of right), it is pragmatism that America lacked in its relationship with the rest of the world — it was superseded by idealism (about human rights and democracy) and primitive mercantilism (about own dividends in the “world bank of democracy”). Therefore, the global idea in its current American version has proved not quite viable, while the Pierce principle, a cult for pragmatists, requires that this idea immediately be updated. The more so if you keep in mind that it is in the US that pragmatism as a philosophical trend was born and matured.
THE ACCEPTABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE
The Europe/US relationship has already been discussed. For some time, the European pattern of relations with the overseas friend-enemy will be followed in one way or another by Japan, Russia, China, and India. South America (appeased, directly or indirectly, through world financial organizations) is moving in the wake of US policies. Which in fact caused the US establishment to feel complacent and not critical about the means, if not the ends, of globalization. What is left is an ever- growing enormous, in terms of territory, population, and oil reserves, Muslim world. The end of the Fifth Experiment, as well as the catastrophic or the creative scenario of the Sixth Experiment, primarily depend on whether the US and the followers of Mohammed will conduct a dialog. Is this possible? Yes, nothing in Islam is against it. The sal’at (prayer), saum (fast), hajj (pilgrimage), and zak’at (tax in favor of the poor) are the fundamental requirements of early Mohammedanism that remained intact in its later versions. The giaour (unfaithful) is, in general, a little-respected creature, but still a Muslim will bargain with him for a certain global setup in as businesslike manner as he will do for a camel. The problem is that none of the existing Muslim countries enjoys today as much prestige in the whole East as America does in the whole West. Who is there to make a deal with? Although it is impossible to make a deal with all at once or one at a time, this does not mean any agreement is impossible. “The East is a subtle thing,” Red Army Man Sukhov (character of the cult Soviet film The White Desert Sun — Ed.) would say. Conflict research proceeds from the fundamental presumption that the two sides should first of all make a deal on what both of them accept. The wider is “the range of acceptance,” the greater will be the number of Muslim leaders willing to sit down to a round table. This requires unilateral concessions from the West, which is confirmed by the Middle East situation and Israeli-Palestinian relations. Arafat’s demand for the repatriation of all Palestinians would call into question the very existence of the state of Israel and is thus unacceptable. However, it will be impossible to avoid demolition of the Israeli settlements on the Palestinian territory and recognition of the special status of Jerusalem (e.g., under UN auspices and guarantees). All that cannot be avoided should be acceptable for a pragmatist — otherwise the Arabs will sacrifice 100 lives of theirs for the life of every Jew and emerge victorious.
THE GLOBAL CONTRACT
Today’s achievements of globalization would be impossible if they had not been initiated by and implemented under the supervision of one center. But these circumstances also create difficulties on the way to global improvement. The consecutive chain a-b-c-d is suitable for solving short-term problems. But the long-term strategy of a complex system is always without exception based on a closed circuit, in which all the components are interdependent on the feedback principle. This kind of a circuit has no leader but employs the laws of self-regulation. An example of this is the economic and political collapse of a consecutive state in which “The Party is our guide” and democracy flourished on the basis of a closed circuit civil society. The ringed self-regulation sets pace in the stable European Union, while NATO gravitates — actually if not formally — toward monocentrism brought about by US military superior strength: this association will not escape either reorganization or unification.
In the case of a system incorporating independent states, collective self-regulation can only be created on the basis of mutual agreements, a consensus. What is applicable here is the term, contract, which means the same as agreement but — at least in this country — is commercially flavored. For this is in fact the question of money, of US (and other affluent countries’) investment, and the growth of such investment in every fringe country is proportionate to the development of democratic institutions in the latter. Money for democracy rather than economic sanctions for its absence is the strategy of this global contract. It should be preceded with an economic assessment, acceptable to all parties to the contract, of each of the consecutive steps on the way to civil society. Advanced social technologies should be sold in the same way as other technologies are.
“AN IDIOT’S MOTHER IS ALWAYS PREGNANT”
There are certain to be economists and political scientists who will brush off this suggestion as humorous. But in fact he who does not feel funny laughs best: such utilization of capital will eventually bring the globalizers huge profits. There will be countries whose leaders will not drop their principles for love nor money, but this is a matter of time and sound judgment, for every Muslim (and Third World in general) country should follow the line of progress at a speed it considers suitable. Globalization will have its hawks, who will be determined to reduce it to antiterrorist operations alone. The West (to be more exact, the US) can begin and even win a war against Saddam Hussein, but a total conflict with the Arab world has no future. Many countries that will constitute part of the global pool will misuse (or just steal) a certain share of investments, but there can be no business without risks. This is the way globalization, the Sixth Great Experiment, should be treated — as business that brings profits very late.
“An idiot’s mother is always pregnant,” say the Italians. But this does not mean having children should be prohibited.
