The Grand Chatrang Game

By Kuanysh-Beck Sazanov

This book presents a completely new look at the fundamentals of global geopolitical architecture and the sources of international conflicts. This research extends the scope of geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe through a comparative historical analysis of major religious, cultural, and civilizational aspects of development of different regions of the world, which are responsible for development of a system of political legacies peculiar to each of them. The book attempts to find the deep-rooted sources of the long-lasting international conflicts, where each of them has the potential to grow into full-fledged global war. In addition, it proposes a multipolar structure of the new global geopolitical order, which is more coherent with the true nature of different and very versatile societies of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496997180

Kuanysh-Beck Sazanov

Kuanysh-Beck Sazanov has a very broad international background in terms of both academic and professional development. He holds an MA degree in international relations and politics from the SAIS, the Johns Hopkins University. He also holds a PhD in finance from the Kazakh Management University. He worked for both private and government organizations in Europe, the United States, and Kazakhstan, having held high managerial positions, including general director of the Economic Research Institute, the major Kazakh government think tank, along with the position of advisor to the board of directors of the International Monetary Fund. He has just started a new path in writing and publishing. He published several books and monographs in poetry and finance.

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2014 Kuanysh-Beck Sazanov. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/05/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9719-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9720-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9718-0 (e)

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Contents

Abbreviations

Preface: The End of the Global Chess Game

I The World of Politics

1 Civilizations versus Political Worlds

2 Geopolicy as a Policy of Political Orders, not of Nation-States

3 The Theory of Four Safeguards for Global Geopolitical Stability

4 The Concept of Geopolitical Legacies and the Main Ordos of the Globe

II The Four Political Pillars of the Universe

5 Christendom

6 Dar-al-Islam

7 The Orient

8 The Eurasian Ordo

9 Russia

10 China

11 The Global Chatrang Board

III The New World Order

12 The Central Asian Gambit

13 The Global Zugzwang

14 Overcoming a Geopolitical Stalemate

15 The Global Chatrang Game

Conclusion: The New World Order

Bibliography

Illustrations

To my beloved farther, who always inspires me to believe in supremacy and bravery of the mind in the pursuit of truth

Abbreviations

US – United States

USA – United States of America

EU – European Union

USSR – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

CIS – Commonwealth of Independent States

GDP – Gross Domestic Product

NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization

OPEC – Organization of Petroleum Export Countries

PWWII – Post-World War II

WWII – World War II

AC – after Christ

BC- before Christ

SCO – Shanghai Cooperation Organization

ODKB – Collective Security Treaty Organization

AD – Anno Domine

SES – Single Economic Space

CA – Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan)

CE – Central Eurasia (CA with the Caucasus)

GCE – Greater Central Eurasia (CE with Sinkiang)

EEU – Eurasian Economic Union (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus)

CU – Customs Union (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus)

RCB – Russian Central Bank

ETR – Eastern Turkestan Republic

PRC – People’s Republic of China

USD – United States dollar

G2 – Great 2 (the USA and China)

AFP – American Foreign Policy

FP – Foreign Policy

ASEAN – Association of Southeast Asian Nations

ASEAN +3 – ASEAN plus Three Cooperation (ASEAN plus China, Japan and Korea)

AfPak – American Foreign Policy’s Strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan

IMU – Islamic Movement of Afghanistan

ABMD – Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense

ABMDT – Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty

Preface: The End of the Global Chess Game

Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard (Wikipedia).

The world’s geopolitical stability is at stake as it has never been before. The global order that was set up in the aftermath of World War II by the victorious powers ended with the collapse of one of its creators, the Soviet Union. International institutions and global security systems of the Post-World War II (PWII) period are still in place but cannot respond any more effectively to modern security challenges. The system of colonial empires set by the leading colonial European powers had led to increased global tensions, and that system collapsed because of World War I and II.

However, the European political structure of the nation-states that succeeded those empires had become dominant throughout the globe and was secured by the new world order. Collapse of the Soviet Union near the end of the twentieth century marked the beginning of the end of the Post-World War II global order, when it became obvious that no power, even a great one like the United States, can single-handedly run the globe and sustain the type of global order which became outdated and does not respond anymore to the actual state of affairs on the geopolitical map.

The current challenges facing global security systems stem from the Post-World War II order itself. The newly created states were mainly drawn along the boundaries of colonial holdings of major European powers as well as along the internal borderlines within these colonial holdings. These boundaries reflected provincial division of different colonial holdings, which was in turn dictated by internal power control needs of their colonies rather than by the overall civilizational or political legacy boundaries. Moreover, most of the interior provinces of the European colonial holdings were divided to create animosity among those provinces and prevent their unification against the colonial rule. For example, Great Britain divided Zululand, which it conquered in the middle of the nineteenth century, into fourteen chiefdoms; it also fostered petty infighting to ensure that the British rule would never be challenged by a strong and unified Zulu state. That being said, most of the modern states of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia were created on the basis of the colonial structures of the major European powers; they reflected neither civilizational nor legacy boundaries but were established to aggrandize internal confrontation of those administrative structures. In the modern state of political affairs, this confrontation and animosity has led to the geopolitical instability in those regions, along with rising threats to global security.

The need for the natural global order has greatly increased nowadays with the rising discontent among nations and the loss of a global balance of power following the Cold War. The natural global order is a cornerstone of global security. The natural global order presumes semi-autonomic existence of at least four natural worlds, which reflect current natural layout of the cultural and civilizational space. Each of these worlds presumes the existence of the natural leader in it, or the regional power, which serves as a natural center of gravity for the world, by that becoming a natural regional geopolitical leader. That geopolitical leader, for better or for worse, will emerge in major regions of the globe, in any kind of geopolitical structure, even with the dominance of one or two global superpowers.

However, if those superpowers struggle against the existence of the regional ones and intrude on them, trying to surround them with belligerent local natural enemies, the area where this policy prevails will become a geopolitical trouble spot. Global harmony can only begin when the natural global order is in place.

Increasing regionalization should not be viewed as a threat to global peace, nor should it be fought against by any global superpower.

Moreover, regionalization and the emergence of regional superpowers do not preclude the existence of global superpowers. On the contrary, opposing to the natural regionalization trends would contribute to belligerency of the rest of the globe toward that superpower and increase the number of geopolitical conflicts. On the contrary, accepting regionalization will make up for the status of a global leader of the rest of the globe. In addition, the modern world demands another kind of leader, rather than a conventional one, which was shown by the United States after the breakup of the Soviet Union. America’s unfortunate global leadership in the aftermath of the Cold War has shown that the globe does not like to have a single policeman who imposes its own values by force (no matter how good those values are). The globe is still different, and those differences cannot be overcome by force. The globe demands different kind of leaders, such as ideological and spiritual ones. That was proved during the Cold War, when the more progressive values of the free world attracted people in the Soviet-dominated world. This lack of the freedom contributed greatly to the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Thus, the United States should give away the global policeman’s role and concentrate on ideological and spiritual roles, including technological and economic ones. The supervision over each of the natural world orders should be given away to the natural leaders of these worlds. They can watch and naturally agree among themselves what to do in their respective worlds together with the countries belonging to these worlds. Keeping the role of global policeman and denying the rights of each of the natural world’s leaders to execute their own roles would increase animosity against America from the rest of the globe and contribute to the alliances of regional leaders against the only global power, the United States. That would contribute to global tensions and eventually lead to the total demise of the global dominative power. In order to avoid that, US leaders should recognize the principles of the natural global order and change their foreign policy stance toward it. That understanding cannot come unless given from historical perspectives of the global geopolitical development.

This book tries to give that explanation, studying the geopolitical developments of the different worlds from historical perspectives as well as explaining why regionalization is the current savior for global peace and stability. The book also studies historical differences and peculiarities of each particular world and describes where the natural boundaries among them are.

However, the core study of the book is the study of Central Eurasia, the so-called geopolitical heartland, or the navel of the globe. As we noted before, the globe will be free of major geopolitical conflicts once the natural worlds’ integrities are observed and boundaries among them are sustained. In our view, the natural worlds are self-sustainable and thus non-aggressive geopolitically. The global geopolitical stability order comes when the worlds’ structures are observed and the natural global order is in place. None of the regional superpowers is capable of overcoming another one, if the natural world order is sustained. Different conflicts, which could arise among the worlds in their buffer zones, could lead to a temporary geopolitical disruption but could never lead to a global conflict or global hegemony. Even in the face of the conflicts between the natural worlds, through time, the natural order will reappear and global stability would naturally be reinstated, as the natural global order does not preclude existence of inherent problems among the natural worlds.

Moreover, the level of impact of such conflicts would never reach a truly global one. However, the global harmony and the power balance could be disrupted through acquiring extra power, which could be gained from the disintegration of the heartland among the regional powers or from its total conquest by one of them. The core of this book explains why the heartland is so important for global stability (it could also be dangerous to global peace; it is not just a buffer world). The book studies the current three worlds and the fourth, a hidden world, which is ready to emerge if it is given a place in the global game.

Not too long ago, during the Cold War era, the globe was divided into the three parts: the Democratic Western world, the Communist world, and the so-called Third World, the developing countries, which was the battleground between the first two worlds. This division into three worlds with two main players in it began in the aftermath of World War II and existed for almost fifty years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the virtual disintegration of the Communist bloc, the rules set up for the states where the main principles of the international relations was the inviolability of the state boundaries which were mainly set up by the victorious allies, which soon became the main rivals: the USSR and the West in Europe, and the East and Southeast Asia in the forties and the fifties.

The following decade was marked by a parade of independences of the European colonies in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and which formed the so-called Third World. The majority of those newly independent countries were created along the lines of the colonial administrative borders drawn by the European countries. This final setup of the international boundaries reflected the Post-Cold War II global order, which counterbalanced both the Communist bloc and the Western world.

The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the beginning of the collapse of the Post-World War II global order. The principle of the inviolability of international borders between the states, which was the cornerstone of the present Global Order, along with the supremacy of a state’s sovereignty in its internal affairs, suddenly became the rudiments of the real politic as well as the most violated principles in the current state of international relations. Moreover, the main violators of the present day global order were its creators, especially the United States and Russia. The Post-World War II global order has come to a de facto end, having yet not been politically acknowledged as such. International legal acknowledgment of this fact should mean not only the demise of international organizations (or a dramatic reorganization of these institutions), but also the clear understanding and acknowledgment of the new principles of international relations, which represent the beginning of the new global order.

The main threat for the present global order with its main principle of state sovereignty stems from the very nature of a state. This has become more obvious once the two-polar global order, which reflected the interests of the main players and enhanced their powers, collapsed near the end of the twentieth century. Not being restrained anymore by the need for self-containment and counter-balancing, the major player started to violate those principles. Its allies, such as the Western countries, on one hand, and the smaller regional leaders, such as Russia, on the other, who have been trying to gain from the sudden geopolitical dismay at the expense of the ineffective global order, immediately followed this path.

In the state of international relations, with no definite rules and no effective control, the behavior of a state and its actions become more determined by the degree of how those actions are being accepted by other states, especially by the objects of such actions. Almost immediately, the United States violated the principles of the last global order after the collapse of the USSR when they reconfigured international borders among the former Yugoslavian republics, especially in Bosnia, and backed the declaration of independence of Kosovo from Serbia in the 1990s. Its further direct interventions to Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the de facto partition of those countries into separate state creations, which only lack broad international acknowledgment. Russia had first cautiously tested its general return to imperialistic nature in the Bosnian conflict when it supported the Serbs in 1997–78 Balkan crisis. On the contrary, Russia’s further military actions in Chechnya were of a survival nature rather than of a test of its own imperial might. The latest signs of Russia’s growing self-confidence were seen in Georgia in 2008. The Georgian claim over South Ossetian autonomy, which remained a part of the Georgian state, according to the Post-Cold War II global order principles, had effectively failed. That was not merely a risky test of international political tolerance, which proved that Russia could get away with breaking international law using its power in a place that could not be protected by the international community. It was also a geopolitical retaliation to the similar actions by the United States, as well as a confirmation of the collapse of the current global order. Thus, we can only guess now on where Russia’s imperial ambitions will be tested in the future, but we can be sure that this testing will occur very soon. So far, out of a few newly established countries, only Kosovo has enjoyed broad international acknowledgment de jure, while the South Ossetia state’s acknowledgment has failed, even among close Russian allies, who fear the precedent to their own political destinies.

However, the collapse of the USSR did not mark the beginning of US global dominance and establishment of a global order with only one superpower. First, Russia’s retaliation in the Caucasus to the American violation of Russian interests in the Balkans clearly showed that the United States still had limits in its power, which nonetheless had grown significantly. Second, the disappearance of its rival on the geopolitical scene did not mean the beginning of American supremacy. In fact, this disappearance led to the emergence of many regional powers, which replaced the USSR’s stance in different parts of the globe, having thus reflected their own sphere of interests clashing with the interests of the only superpower. Moreover, the pressure America had been exerting on them made those regional powers unite among each other against it. The new blocs were formed remarkably quickly, in historical context, to effectively stall America’s supremacy over the globe.

Virtually nothing has changed since the end of the Cold War. There are still different worlds existing in almost the same parts of the globe as during the Cold War. Democracy did not sweep across the worlds that lacked it initially. There are other types of authoritarian rule and political systems in post-Communist countries, though communism died there. Different types of authoritarian rule easily replaced it, and the long-awaited hope for democracy has evaporated in the course of merely ten years after the collapse of communism. It is obvious now that in the majority of the countries of the former USSR, democratic forces never had a single chance to evolve on their own without external support. As a result, communism was easily replaced by new forms of feudal-bourgeois political systems, sometimes coupled with the inherited type of supreme power inherent to monarchies. However, these systems remained authoritarian and immanently suppressive to their own population. The system of the state predominance over economic, social, cultural, religious, and even simple habitual affairs of their people has become natural to those societies. Totalitarianism has continued its path across the former Communist bloc, having proved that there is something inherently deep when compared to the Communist ideology in those countries.

Having thoroughly studied the reason for this remarkable continuation of the regimes, even in the absence of the Communistic ideology, we have discovered something much deeper than just a mere ideological or political system foundation for these similarities. It is becoming clear that the very essence of those societies’ statehoods is laid not in communism, which was not the cause rather the outcome of it, but in the type of what we call the natural political legacy common to these countries and which was developed in this particular part of the globe through the centuries. The essence of this legacy determines the nature of their statehoods and lies in the combination of geo-historic, cultural, religious, and social-political developments in those countries/societies through the centuries.

Similar types of political legacies unite different countries/societies into one world, which is characterized by identical religious, cultural, and geopolitical features. The same is also true of other countries that group with each other based on, because of a common natural political legacy into particular worlds distinct from each other. That is why, in our view, the main challenge lies in discovering the essence of the current state of global politics.

This book reveals sources from which the types of different statehoods and their legacies derive and describes the nature of geopolitical conflicts as well as international theory and policy actions within the framework of geopolitical affairs. We believe that without this understanding, the global political scene will continue to follow a path detrimental to our common future, which could lead to a mass conflict surge among nations, similar to (or worse than) the global wars in the first half of the twentieth century. This study offers the concept of global development and a new theory of international global affairs. While generally touching upon the geopolitical developments of the different civilizations and countries, this book mostly concentrates on the particular part the world that presents the main source of international conflict; it is distinguished from other parts of the globe by the unique structure of its political legacy, which determines the type of political statehood in this world.

A political legacy could not be bad or good in nature. In addition to, it should not be treated simply as having an evil or benign nature inherent to its development. We do not accept the concept of bad or good worlds. Moreover, we do not share the rhetoric of the Cold War era, which labeled some parts of the globe as Empires of Evil. We consider these types of theories as politically adverse and potentially damaging to the state of international relations. Furthermore, we think that the societies of potentially aggressive worlds are in turn confined in their relative political systems; they cannot escape it by conventional methods, even though having aspired to escape from this confinement. We believe that these societies and their leaders find themselves in a vicious cycle of geopolitical development, from which it is very difficult to escape.

International law itself, along with international institutions, proved to be weak and malfunctioning in the face of the greater democratic powers, who disregarded these laws once their political needs contradicted international guidelines, thus having been compromised even at the greater scale. Though the undemocratic world has shrunk a bit, its power is being regained, and its overall advance seems to be more and bolder. Different authoritarian rules and systems get closer every day and form unions and alliances to support each other and stand together against the democratic world and its values. Despite gained political independences, the newly born states of the former USSR lead themselves into the even harder embrace of Russia and China to protect their own political systems, along with their common legacy, against the possible rise of democracies in their countries. There is again a world split into different parts, which seem as far away from each other as they were when the Iron Curtain was in place. Russia and China have coupled to mentor the former Communist countries as well as those former Third World countries antagonistic to the West, such as Iran and Pakistan. Having been shaken strongly in the aftermath of the Cold War, the former Communist world has been resurrected from the ashes, with a different name but virtually similar to its former structure and being.

The US policy of containment of the former Communist bloc, though resulting in an almost complete defeat of the Communist bloc, has not been pursued further under the belief that it had been completed and there was no threat from the imperial East’s rebirth. Russia had been given no more thorough consideration, while the freedom of Central Asia and the Caucasus was perceived as something that would cease to exist in the foreseen future. Moreover, the regimes of these countries were inclined to an authoritarian type of rule; this was overlooked, and hence the degree of their obedience to the similar regime in their former dominion was underestimated.

Those countries were initially seen as inherently inclined to the democratic principles they would foster, as long as there was no imperial domination. Even now, once the international community sees how these newly independent countries have been persistently moving back to the hard embrace of their former colonial masters, there is no understanding of why it is happening. While being puzzled by the political behavior of those countries aggressively moving toward a higher degree of authoritarianism, even at the expense of their political independence, Western foreign policy makers still believe that with the change of the current authoritarian rulers of the countries, the shift to democracy will inevitably start in those countries; the very principles of their political legacies were not understood.

The Third World was first lured into democratic values, and their resulting superiority in the aftermath of the Cold War was pushed away by the West’s ambiguous foreign policies. The new authoritarian rule has been re-established in the same area where the former Communist countries existed (with a slight deviation), and a new confrontation seems to be accelerating its pace to counter the West and the East all over again. It seems that nothing has changed in the global composition, especially in Eurasia, and whatever efforts were made to democratize the countries of the former Communist bloc, they seem to have failed profoundly, as those regimes remain inherently opposite to democratic values. It is obvious now that it was no accident that communism as a type of authoritarian ideology had been natural to this region; it had been new only in the name, not in the essence itself.

This book explains why the world political orders are so different and how they came to existence. We wanted to show that history repeats itself in political development and describe the features that define the types of political statehoods and values, which should govern one or another part of the globe. We also wanted to show that different world orders need to exist to support global harmony, and that when this harmony is violated, the world order comes closer to self-destruction. This book aims at finding the inherent reasons for global conflicts and shows how to avoid them (or at least minimize their outcomes).

The main mission of this book is to determine the future geopolitical construction of the globe and the possible ways international relations could develop constructively on the path leading to the establishment of a new global geopolitical structure that reflects the ongoing changes to it. We are also searching for an American foreign policy able to keep up with the rapidly changing globe.

The recent geopolitical crisis in Ukraine in February of 2014 once again proved the end of the post-Cold War period, along with the collapse of the post-World War II international system. The situation worsens with the fact that neither Russia nor the United States, notwithstanding the rest of the Western countries, are ready for another Cold War (for many reasons). However, it is also clear that America is no longer the only superpower in the world; it should acknowledge it as soon as possible to avoid a major geopolitical turndown.

This book explains why global geopolitical development has come to this turn and how it will be possible to establish a new system of international relations, or a new global order, necessary to direct the whole globe to both stable and harmonious geopolitical development.

PART I

The World of Politics

CHAPTER 1

Civilizations versus Political Worlds

All individual peculiarities and differences are forgotten when individuals join in a team to achieve one political goal; that is how cultural and other differences are disregarded in groups of countries being united under the same legacy, a nature of political statehood to achieve its ultimate geopolitical goal: its survival. For that, the political statehood should dominate all sides of society, which needs approval from all its levels. That approval is different in nature for different statehood systems. The compromise between a statehood’s domineering nature and the social approval is called the legacy of the political system.

Religion becomes an ideology only when it is accepted as the state religion. Otherwise, it is replaced by a secular ideology, which subjugates either one or a number of religions, becoming a common ideology of the political system for a society or a state. The common ideology of political systems shared by a number of states leads to the establishment of a distinct assembling of different cultures, confessions, civilizations, and nation-states into what we nominally call a political world.

What is a political world? How does it differ from a civilization? And why is it important for us to understand its meaning when reading this book? Below, I would like to offer you my own definition of a political world, which captures the real sense of the word and clarifies its place among other terms such as civilization, culture, and society. This book declares a new definition of the substance of geopolitical social relationships.

It is important to understand what makes a political world different from a civilization. In a civilization, a complex system of principles unites different cultures; there are common features in each of the cultures, which, in turn, share the same values, traditions, and cultural identity on a macro-level. It is a kind of a supra-culture, which is capable of uniting several different cultures and establishing common features that link those cultures into one order. Civilizations can both exist and develop autonomously from each other. There were cases in the history of humankind when civilizations developed almost completely single-handedly, having swallowed up many cultures closely related to each other. However, when a particular civilization confronts other civilizations near its borders and continues to function among them, still as a separate and distinct one, then this civilizational order becomes a distinct world. Civilizations tend to expand at the expense of other cultures and civilizations, but they become extensive in their nature and aggressive in their growth when they acquire a single political system for each of themselves, by that becoming the political worlds.

A civilization is characterized by the same cultural ties and, more than simply a culture, but rather one cultural space, which is defined by the same historical background, or has the same historical legacy. On the contrary, a political world is a common space for not only one cultural or civilizational identity but for many of them. A political world embraces different aspects of life, such as culture, religion, economics, and philosophy, which are bound by the same political legacy determining the type of their statehoods. However, differences between the types of political legacies are defined by the order of how relationships between religion and state are determined through history.

Civilizations are not players of international geopolitical games. It is not correct to think, as so far has been thought by many policy-makers and thinkers, that both nation-states and civilizations, being the subjects of geopolitical relations, are the real players in the world of geopolitical relations. The real players, instead, are what we call the political worlds, which are the real driving forces of global geopolitical affairs.

Of course, civilizations do affect political worlds, but they do not interact geopolitically. Civilizations, by definition, do not have incremental geopolitical contradictions, differences, and belligerency. These are political worlds, which, in their agenda, have something that makes them the competitors and enemies on the geopolitical scene. Hence, it is incorrect to think that civilizational differences command geopolitical development. It is also incorrect to study civilizations as the subjects of geopolitical science. Hence, in order to understand the essence of geopolitical games, it is necessary to learn the real subjects of geopolitical relationships as well as what characteristics make them the true players of the global geopolitical game.

It is quite true that the current state of international relations, which accounts only for nation-states as the main actors on the stage of international affairs, requires a thorough examination of the classic approach to it. The pro-Western politics of the new era was undeniably determined by the concept of the nation-states. However, it had started as quite an innovative turnout of global historical development, which began in the fifteenth century with the era of new geographical discoveries and which was preceded by totally different periods in the area of international relations. The new geographical discoveries let the petty nation-states of Europe spin off their powers through new and enormous amount of resources of the New World and gave single nation-states the ability to attain economic prosperity, which they easily converted into geopolitical influence. Those states became so strong that they were able to substitute civilizations on the global geopolitical map and command its course from those times on. Moreover, it was no longer a world of civilizations. Nation-states belonging to one civilization and political world started to fight other nation-states on the battlegrounds of other civilizations and political worlds, with only one purpose: the money and wealth stemming from the exploitation of the resources of those civilizations.

New economic and political developments developed when the West lost total control over these resources and the single nation states started to fade away; the era of political unions, based on the common geopolitical interests, is ready to emerge again. The most recent political actions, when the United States created Western coalitions against seemingly single states of Islamic civilization, were reminiscent of the medieval Crusades, where one civilization clashed against another. The United States, with support from the whole of the Christian civilization, showed that these attacks were not directed against a single state, but rather the broader advance of one political world against another.

There were reasons for the failure of the post-Cold War global geopolitical order. First, the international institutions designed to support the Western geopolitical order started to fail, showing clearly that the world was dramatically changing. Second, the West had clearly joined its countries’ political efforts, launching unified attacks against other political worlds, indicating that they had more solidarity and a sense of unity among each other than within the rest of the world. At the same time, it became obvious that a single state, however mighty it could be, cannot act anymore on the international arena without huge difficulties and a likely failure. Third, the new development showed that despite political differences among the Western-designed nation-states of Islam, there is a growing unification movement (which has been called Islamic terrorism). In effect, it is a civilizational movement, which has been growing in response to both the Christian civilizational movement and to the Western-designed system alien to the Islamic civilization. Fourth, the new development has clearly shown that if the course of international relations continues in the same direction, then we could soon be witnessing a real clash of civilizations, with detrimental consequences.

When civilizations acquire unifying ideas and start to form (according to its nature) a political statehood system, along with organizational forms under which groups become politically established, then a political world is being established on more than just