{"id":46265,"date":"2019-05-21T08:50:18","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T13:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46265"},"modified":"2019-05-21T08:50:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T13:50:23","slug":"clash-of-civilizations-or-crisis-of-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46265","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Clash of civilizations\u2019 or crisis of civilization?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thesaker.is\/clash-of-civilizations-or-crisis-of-civilization\/\">\u2018Clash of civilizations\u2019 or crisis of civilization?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Talk about a graphic display of soft power: Beijing this week hosted the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.people.cn\/102775\/415320\/index.html\">Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Organized under the direct supervision of President Xi Jinping it took place amid an \u201cAsian Culture Carnival.\u201d&nbsp; Sure, there were dubious, kitschy and syrupy overtones, but what really mattered was what Xi himself&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wSBJiwa_V8Y\">had to say<\/a>&nbsp;to China and all of Asia.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his keynote speech, the Chinese leader essentially stressed that one civilization forcing itself upon another is \u201cfoolish\u201d and \u201cdisastrous.\u201d In&nbsp;Xi\u2019s concept of a dialogue of civilizations, he&nbsp;referred to the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as programs that \u201chave expanded the channels for communication exchanges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Xi\u2019s composure and rationality present a stark, contrasting message to US President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">West vs East and South<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Compare and contrast Xi\u2019s comments with what happened at a security forum in Washington just over two weeks earlier.&nbsp;Then, a bureaucrat by the name of Kiron Skinner, the State Department\u2019s policy planning director, characterized US-China rivalry as a \u201cclash of civilizations,\u201d and&nbsp;\u201ca fight with a really different civilization and ideology the US hasn\u2019t had before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it got worse. This civilization was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2019\/05\/no-there-is-no-us-china-clash-of-civilizations\/\">\u201cnot Caucasian\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 a not so subtle 21st&nbsp;century resurrection of the \u201cYellow Peril.\u201d (Let us recall: The \u201cnot Caucasian\u201d Japan of World War II was the original \u201cYellow Peril.\u201d)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Divide and rule, spiced with racism, accounts for the toxic mix that has been embedded in the hegemonic US\u00a0 narrative for decades now. The mix harks back to Samuel Huntington\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order<\/em>, published in 1996.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Clash of civilizations\u2019 or crisis of civilization? Talk about a graphic display of soft power: Beijing this week hosted the&nbsp;Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations.&nbsp; Organized under the direct supervision of President Xi Jinping it took place amid an \u201cAsian Culture Carnival.\u201d&nbsp; Sure, there were dubious, kitschy and syrupy overtones, but what really mattered was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2045,130,2255,12124,4076,827,11108],"class_list":["post-46265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-clash-of-civilizations","tag-crisis-of-civilization","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-united-states","tag-west-vs-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46266,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46265\/revisions\/46266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}