Summary
The increasing role of civilizational influences on international politics is illustrated by the conflict generated by the differences in the political structures of Confucian countries and Western countries. The clash of civilizations is expected to dominate global politics as a China-led group of Confucian countries begins to challenge Western political power. Although economic relations between China and the US have improved considerably, political friction has intensfied due to American pressure on China to pursue improvements in its human rights record.
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Extract
Power and civilization.
UNTIL VERY RECENTLY, the concepts of "civilization" and "culture" have played a minor role in thinking about international politics. Realism, which has been the dominant theory of international politics for the last fifty years, allows no significant role for civilizational influences--not in its older version which posits a universal and unchanging human nature, nor in its neo-realist form in which the structure of the international system is what is considered decisive.
The principal reason why civilizations and the differences between them have not been considered important in the study of international politics is, surely, that until very recently power politics was a Western game. All the leading actors belonged to one civilization, so that the question of the effect of civilizational differences did not arise. The states and societies of other civilizations figured in the script not as participants but as objects. As such they were usually dealt with under the heading of "colonial policy", and were subject to different kinds of th...See the full content of this document
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