Modelling the World
We see the news go by and catch the impressions that the gatekeepers want us to. Some years later we may read a history of some of the events and be surprised at what really happened – a bus-eye view to a birds-eye view. We begin to make sense of contexts, who was being honest, what's the big picture, what were the real motivations behind events.
If you are Foreign Office minster you need something more – you need a working theory of what happens if your government does certain things. Economics has its models, so also International Relations. We looked at some micro level behaviours in civil wars, now we look at some macro level ones. At college I took part in a live weekend simulation of International Relations, where we mimicked different African countries studying their national and inter-national behaviour beforehand and sending notes to each other, in character, to win supremacy in trade or conflict. Foreign ministries and militaries 'war game' in this way to work out responses based on models of behaviours.
But why should we be interested? The Bible of course is full of history and politics. In
David already knew who was truly the Sovereign as he declared it before Goliath 'You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.'
Post Cold war
After WW2 the Cold War settled into a split between the West and the Soviet Block. This was mostly north of the equator, countries to the south were sympathetic to one side or the other depending on their interests or were 'non-aligned'. At the end of the Cold War, the West had prevailed, the East was adopting economic and governance reforms and everyone in the West assumed that the rest of the world would continue this virtuous path to democracy and freedom, 'the end of history'. Not so.
The rest of the world's leaders were actually waking up to the idea of the freedom of nations (if not of their peoples!) and working out where they stood in the new game – who were friends, who to be wary of.
We tend to forget that nations are lead by individuals like us with all the emotional reactions to things on the macro scale that we have on the micro. At international conferences – how close to the US president did I sit, who blanked me, what did I (my nation) have to be proud of or what shame to hide, who is trying to steal my power at home: 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown'.
Leaders always look invincible but of course as simple humans they are totally dependent on the loyalty of their staff and security forces. These in turn reckon that loyalty, even to a despot, is worth it for their own security.
'the holy ones [angels] declare the verdict: so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of people.' (!)
Modelling the World as 'Civilizations'
In the 1990s Samuel Huntington took an astronaut's view of the world in his book Clash of Civilizations, which was endorsed by Henry Kissinger, previous US Secretary of State. Huntington saw the new alignments as being very strongly based on religio-ethnicity, each being a 'Civilization' with a strong family likeness. As well as language, blood-lines, homeland, there are also values and behaviours:
- sanctity of life
- state control vs individual choice
- freedom of speech or censorship
- private-property or state owns property
- big state or small state
- merit or nepotism (or DEI)
- family duty or self-realisation
- religious choice or coercion
- equality of individuals or discrimination by race, sex or power
- protestant-work-ethic or sloth
- sense of purpose or fatalism
The world's nations could thus be grouped into a few Civilizations, each with close ties of kinship within and various degrees of hostility without. A Civilization can have intense and deadly sibling rivalries but somehow manage to get over them, but clashes between Civilizations seem to endure.
The main Civilizations can be seen as:
- Hindu - India, Nepal, Mauritius
- Japan - Shinto
- Islamic – N Africa, Turkey and the 'Stans', Middle East, Indonesia
- Sinic - Confucian - China, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam
- Slavic - Orthodox - Russia etc
- African - Christian, Traditional - Sub Saharan
- Latin America – Leftist Catholic
- Western - Christendom
Most of these have a powerful core state – for the West it's the US, for Sinic it's China. Islamic nations are still vying for lead status – Iran, Turkey or Saudi. Africa is also undecided and although in Latin America Brazil is the largest, others tend to look to their benefactors for the nod – the West or the East, eg Panama tilting from CCP to US, Argentina from anti-West to pro-West. It's the presence of a core state that decides inter-Civilizational conflicts.
It might be a surprise to think of the West as 'Christian' – but its institutions, particularly in those countries most blessed by the Reformation, do mark it out from other Civilizational-cultures – you only have to look at international reports on democracy, corruption, human-rights to see that. In many ways secularism is only possible where a religion preaches freedom of conscience and belief – it's dangerous (traitorous) to be 'secular' almost everywhere else.
Why no Communism? Various tyrants adopted Marx's atheistic theories to advance their own ends and when these failed the peoples reverted to the deeper cultural memory, as everyone has a 'God-shaped hole', however imperfectly that is filled. The post-communist Slavic states re-embraced their suppressed Orthodox legacies, not least in Russia. They are not kin to the West due to the thousand year old 'Great Schism' and a subsequently different cultural heritage in written script написано, art and ancestors. Catholic and Protestant proselytising is not welcome in Orthodox lands as Bible smugglers of the 60s and 70s found out. Greece is our nearest Orthodox friend, not least as we helped liberate it from Islamic rule.
What about Globalism? Various other tyrants in UN/WEF are trying to achieve the same ends, total control, but like its Marxist cousin some Civilizations will take advantage of it for their own ends but it will not endure.
They don't like us
These Civilizations are more self-confident than we easy-going Westerners imagine. They are proud, angry and resentful about being told what they should do. They believe their way is actually superior to others – including the West's - something we cannot fathom. Indeed it's our assumption that as everyone seems to want to come to the West, or have a piece of it, it really must be the best. Relatively rare visits to other Civilizations reinforce this impression.
We are persuaded into giving Aid. Government ministers and the World Bank give development support at Western tax-payer expense. Our politicians might think this also buys good-will, or human-rights improvements – but any smiles seem to last only as long as the money. The UN/WEF's climate project is designed to transfer finance from the West to other Civilizations with the aim of weakening one and strengthening the others. Most Western countries are massively in debt so should give nothing as nations (individuals may give as they are able).
It was also shown that some Civilizations are more aggressive than others. Islam has been shown to be – but so is the CCP in China. They are an enemy as US & UK officials and minsters have acknowledged in the past and they no-doubt laugh at the antics of the UK and its recent demonstration of moral, patriotic and economic weakness.
A mini-clash
The splits and civil war in the former Yugoslavia show how these fault lines have developed and how Civilizational dynamics play out. After the enforced peace of authoritarian rule it broke into half a dozen pieces, Slovenian and Croatian Catholic majority ethnicities achieved statehood. Montenegro was Orthodox, Albania Muslim. Between them in Bosnia and Herzegovina were balanced groups of Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians each vying for control. As the conflict escalated each group was backed up with money, arms and soldiers by 'second level' kin neighbours including those who had emigrated to other countries.
We see that today in the large number of UK Muslims supporting the actions of Oct 7 and the ongoing mass support, however most Westerners are sympathetic to Israel. The CCP expects ethnic Chinese to do its bidding even if a person had fled China and was living in another nation with a new passport.
In Bosnia the US, as tertiary-level core, sought peace but using the wrong 'model' and not understanding the strength of the Civilizational animosity, just tried to get them all to be nice – that didn't work. Then the Russians tried (as the core state of the Orthodox). Eventually, as exhaustion set in on the ground, Russia and the US jointly brokered the Dayton Accords leading to the messy shared, but mostly-peaceful, politics of today which includes a NATO presence and a three-member presidency! They must have fun choosing a representative for Eurovision!
Can nations change?
Not all nations are monolithic and cultures can be transformed - it happened in the West. People have exceptional emotional attachment to their roots as the basic source of stability and identity, even when less than ideal. This intensifies when in peril as seen in Bosnia. So the changes wrought in Europe by successive Christian renewals and subsequent cultural reforms cannot be under-stated. Blood is thicker than water – except the water of baptism.
Many nations have significant subsets that want to go another way. In Australia in the 1990s Labour PM Paul Keating wanted to move closer to the Sino sphere (China, Singapore etc) economically and culturally and thus further from the West. This was resisted at home by the power brokers, the elites and media, so it became a 'Torn' nation. It was also rejected by the Asian block who did not like being lectured on 'Western' ideas of Human Rights – they were happy with their own versions based on local customs and traditions… Keating retreated.
Others nations are 'Cleft' where two large groups exist belonging to different Civilizations – as in Nigeria, Sudan, East Timor. Long-term conflict is inevitable, often armed and will continue until defeat, mutual exhaustion or a formal split. By this model the Ukraine conflict was predictable, West-leaning vs Slavic, but not inevitable.
Relative power in these struggles for hegemony depend on control of resources including demographic growth (birth rate), economic strength (assess to food, energy, defence), control of public thought and institutions (truth and direction). We see attacks on these with the unrelenting attempts to subvert the West's core ideology back to the despotism of most of the others – the default condition of a fallen world.
Where is Britain and how do we respond?
What does this model indicate for decision-makers?
We are a 'Torn' nation – the leadership and institutions are captured by an ideology that is against any Christian conception of flourishing. It is also against the express will of its people in some areas areas and its best interests in others. The authorities are supposed to punish evil and reward good (as defined by God) but what they actually practice is a civil 'doctrine of demons'
In the UK & US the institutions and gate-keepers aligned with the leadership and as there was a strong tradition of good-government in the UK & US, we kept swallowing it. However with the more obvious failures over the last 5 years, the equally obvious manipulation of facts and the rise of new-media, the people are the ones pushing back and, under pressure, trying to rediscover what that virtuous history was. Is it not God who gives us a desire for truth?
We have to understand the realities. It's not enough to choose to look benevolently on difficult situations hoping than if we're nice they will work themselves out, they wont. It requires courage to be realistic, to bear the stress of it. There are many that believe they are culturally superior to the West. Even if self-deluded they are no less dangerous and require extensive effort to resist and pacify.
We are also a 'Cleft' nation in some parts. In the capital we have a democratically elected Islamic mayor. 'We have 1 million people in the UK who cannot speak our national language. We have 20-25,000 radical Islamists living among us … hate marches ' Matt Goodwin. Also ethnic rape gangs, segregation in our major cities (Birmingham), refusal to integrate - instead calls for out-Civilizational laws and special treatment. Linked to this is high unemployment with resultant social and economic cost to the nation. This links to the roots of Civil War.
This is a clash of Civilizations and Britain is not alone with this in Europe. The US recognises the danger to the Civilizational fabric, and as our core nation strongly warned us at the UN General Assembly.
Preserving His good work
The Islamic issues are just one aspect, the other anti-Christian laws being passed with so little outrage from the Church are equally perverse. The high-tax, anti-growth economy is depressing and impoverishing. The over-reliance on predatory trading partners is dangerous.
Is it right that we allow the destruction of so much that is good, that has been wrought in our culture by the Lord through His people?
We need all our efforts to reduce the internal damage by reforming or removing those who hate us, politicians or people. Change happens - they can with
As with modern Israel – literally surrounded by a hostile Civilization - the solution is security by physical strength locally, backed by a vigorous economy, strong spiritual and community nation-building and strong links with its core Civilizational nation. Above all a clear-sighted understanding of the threat and the courage to deal with it when attacked. It can be done, it has in the past, in the Bible with Nehemiah, and in Britain.
Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling.
