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By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
Western elites believe that universal values are
trumping the forces of reaction. They wax eloquent about the triumph of human
rights, women's liberation, social media, financial markets, international and
regional organizations and all the other forces that are breaking down
boundaries separating humanity.
Tragically, they
are really observing a self-referential world of global cosmopolitans like
themselves. In country after country, the Westerners identify like-minded,
educated elites and mistake them for the population at large. They prefer not
to see the regressive and exclusivist forces—such as nationalism and sectarianism—that
are mightily reshaping the future.
Take Cairo's Tahrir Square in early 2011. Western
journalists celebrated the gathering of relatively upper-income Arab liberals
with whom they felt much in common, only to see these activists quickly retreat
as post-autocratic Egypt became for many months a struggle among the military,
the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist Salafists—with the Coptic Christians
fearing for their communal survival.
Though secular
liberals have resurfaced to challenge Egypt's Islamist president, Mohammed
Morsi, do not be deceived. The military and the Muslim Brotherhood both have
organized infrastructures. The liberals have only spontaneous emotion and ad
hoc organizations. An Islamist-Nasserite regime-of-sorts is likely to emerge,
as the military uses the current vulnerability of the Muslim Brotherhood to
drive a harder bargain.
Egypt and the Middle East now offer a panorama of
sectarianism and religious and ethnic divides. Freedom, at least in its initial
stages, unleashes not only individual identity but, more crucially, the freedom
to identify with a blood-based solidarity group. Beyond that group, feelings of
love and humanity do not apply. That is a signal lesson of the Arab Spring.
An analogous process is at work in Asia. Nationalism
there is young and vibrant—as it was in the West in the 19th and 20th
centuries.
Asia is in the midst of a feverish arms race,
featuring advanced diesel-electric submarines, the latest fighter jets and
ballistic missiles. China, having consolidated its land borders following
nearly two centuries of disorder, is projecting air and sea power into what it
regards as the blue national soil of the South China and East China seas.
Japan and other countries are reacting in kind.
Slipping out of its quasi-pacifistic shell, Japan is rediscovering nationalism
as a default option. The Japanese navy boasts roughly four times as many major
warships as the British Royal Navy. As for Vietnam and the Philippines, nobody
who visits those countries and talks with their officials, as I have, about
their territorial claims would imagine for a moment that we live in a
post-national age.
The disputes in
Asia are not about ideology or any uplifting moral philosophy; they are about
who gets to control space on the map. The same drama is being played out in
Syria where Alawites, Sunnis and Kurds are in a territorial contest over power
and control as much as over ideas. Syria's writhing sectarianism—in which Bashar
Assad is merely the leading warlord among many—is a far cruder, chaotic and
primitive version of the primate game of king of the hill.
Nationalism is alive and thriving in India and Russia
as well. India's navy and air force are in the process of becoming among the
world's largest. Throughout most of history, India and China had little to do
with each other, separated as they were by the Himalayas. But the collapse of
distance by way of technology has created a new strategic geography for two big
nations. Now Indian space satellites monitor Chinese military installations,
even as Chinese fighter jets in Tibet have the possibility of including India
within their arc of operations. This rivalry has further refined and
invigorated nationalism in both countries.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin's nationalism is a large
factor in his high popularity. President Putin's nationalism is geographical
determinism: He wants to recreate buffer states in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus
and Central Asia, like in the old Soviet Union. So he does everything he can to
undermine the countries in these regions.
Western elites
hope that if somehow there were truly free elections in Russia, then this
foreign policy might change. The evidence is to the contrary. Race-hatred
against Muslims is high among Russians, and just as there are large rallies by
civil-society types, there are also marches and protests by skinheads and
neo-Nazis, who are less well-covered by the Western media. Local elections in
October returned a strong showing for Mr. Putin's party. Like it or not, he is
representative of the society he governs.
Nor can Europe be
left out of this larger Eurasian trend. A weakening European Union, coupled
with onerous social and economic conditions for years to come, invites a
resurgence of nationalism and extremism, as we have already seen in countries
as diverse as Hungary, Finland, Ukraine and Greece. That is exactly the fear of
the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee, which gave this year's award to the
European Union in order to make a statement against this trend.
Fascists are not about to regain power anywhere on the
Continent, but the age of deepening European integration is likely behind us.
Get ready to see more nasty and thoroughly frightening political groupings like
Greece's Golden Dawn emerge across the Continent.
We truly are in a
battle between two epic forces: Those of integration based on civil society and
human rights, and those of exclusion based on race, blood and radicalized
faith. It is the mistake of Western elites to grant primacy to the first force,
for it is the second that causes the crises with which policy makers must
deal—often by interacting with technology in a toxic fashion, as when a video
transported virtually at the speed of light ignites a spate of anti-Americanism
(if not specifically in Benghazi).
The second force can and must be overcome, but one
must first admit how formidable it is. It is formidable because nations and
other solidarity groups tend to be concerned with needs and interests more than
with values. Just as the requirement to eat comes before contemplation of the
soul, interests come before values.
Yet because values
like minority rights are under attack the world over, the United States must
put them right alongside its own exclusivist national interests, such as
preserving a favorable balance of power. Without universal values in our
foreign policy, we have no identity as a nation—and that is the only way we can
lead with moral legitimacy in an increasingly disorderly world. Yet we should
not be overturning existing orders overnight. For it is precisely weak
democracies and collapsing autocracies that provide the chaotic breathing room
with which nationalist and sectarian extremists can thrive.
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