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I'm Hans Koechler, I have been teaching philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria,
for more than 40 years. In the year 1972 I have established together with some friends
from other continents from Asia, the Middle East and Europe, an international NGO, the
International Progress Organization, that is affiliated with the United Nations Organization
and our message at that time, that was in the middle of a so called "cold war" period
and the tensions between East and West, our message was that a stable basis, a sound basis
for a worldwide order of peace can only be established if one is able to understand the
other systems on the basis also of a better comprehension of their cultural identity.
In order to study those issues we have been establishing contacts around the globe. I
travelled in 1974 to more than two dozen countries on all continents to discuss this notion,
what I called at that time "dialogue between different civilizations" with intellectuals,
diplomats and political leaders. We prepared an international symposium on the issue of
cultural identity. We did this in cooperation with UNESCO. What was important for us at
that time was that one should get away from ideological rivalry as it existed at that
time between communism or socialism on the one hand and capitalism on the other. And
that one should reach a common level of understanding and that in our view was not possible on the
basis of political ideologies, but it was only possible and it is only possible on the
basis on defining or shaping one's cultural identity. It has been my view that cultural
identity is something that can only develop in relation to other cultures. It cannot develop
in a closed framework or in isolation. At that time when we did begin to discuss this
idea, as I said at the beginning of 1970s, this was also the era of decolonization of
many countries, particularly in Africa becoming independent and cultural identity was very
important issue. I became aware in our discussions that, for instance, we in Europe, and generally
in the Western world, we are rather ignorant about other cultures and civilizations. We
had been learning in our classical education about the history of the ancient civilizations,
of Greece in particular, but that was historical and cultural tradition that anyway had shaped
our European identity, but we did not go beyond the confines of this civilizational frame
and the European countries in particular had got used to export their own worldview and
lifestyle in the period of colonization, because we brought our own way of thinking to the
countries on other continents, so when we did engage in meetings, in conversations and
in exchanges with people on those continents, I felt essentially these meetings quite often,
or discussions where kind of self-encounters, because we did talk with people that had anyway
been already informed or whose identity had been shaped by our own Western identity and
that's why I tried to develop on the basis of philosophical hermeneutics a theory of
cultural self-comprehension. I did used the term of the dialectics of cultural identity
which means only if I am able to relate to another culture that is not totally dependent
on my own, can I fully understand myself? If I'm not making this step, I will remain
on the level of naïveté and I will not be prepared to engage in cooperation at the global
level. At the time when we spoke about these issues of culture and civilization and issues
of cultural identity, were not widely discussed, because everyone was preoccupied with the
East-West conflict and with the issue of the threat of nuclear war or one was also preoccupied
with issues of North-South cooperation and development policies.
In the meantime the situation seems to have changed. Now what we called in these early
years dialogue of civilizations has become a password so to speak of international relations.
Now the big challenge in my view is that one has to give a concrete meaning to that word,
so that one does not remain on the level of generalities, one has to make clear and this
has also been my effort in the framework of the International Progress Organization and
later of the World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations", one has to make clear that
dialogue is only meaningful if it is situated in a proper political, social and economic
framework. What do I mean by that? For instance, the aim of myself engaging in a dialogue with
other cultures is just to have a Forum to propagate my worldview or to become a missionary
of my lifestyle, the entire undertaking will lead nowhere and the dialogue as such would
not be credible. At the same time, if for instance we are engaged in armed confrontation
with other countries, we cannot claim to base our political strategy on the principal of
dialogue. That is one of the big challenges in this era in which we are living now since
the end of the cold war. It is a particular challenge also for the United Nations Organization,
that's just recall in 2001 the United Nations declared that year and it was several month
before September 11 as the year of dialogue of civilizations and a few years later in
2005 a structure was created, an intergovernmental structure was created that is called the Alliance
of Civilizations which is now officially supported by almost 140 countries, that means by a large
majority of the United Nations member-states, but what has happened since this time in 2001,
when the UN made this dialogue of civilizations, it's one of its main principles for international
relations. We have seen so many wars, we have seen the use of force, also in the name of
civilizational values and we have seen strategies to change or to reshape cultural and civilizational
identity in specific regions of the world and for that reason it is of utmost importance
that one should, for instance, remember the philosophical approach that did underlie the
ancient Olympic idea, the idea of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, when the nations
people of Greece did compete in the field of sports one felt that this kind of competition
was only credible if there was no war going on at that time. So in analogy I would say
if the UN and the UN member-states are really convinced that one of the basic principles
how to conduct international relations is the dialogue among civilizations or as they
now even say alliance between civilizations, they should first of all create the conditions
for such a dialogue and they should not engage in the use of force against each other.
Of course another big issue and a big challenge at the present time is how we assert our cultural
identity at the domestic level in many parts of the world, including in Europe cultural
identity now has become one of the big issues, also big issues of domestic politics. For
instance now in Europe the debate is about how to place or how to assert the cultural
identity of our Western Christian identity, our Christian heritage, as one says, vis-à-vis
the new cultures and new cultural identities that are being more and more also established
in the European countries because of globalization, because of the migration on a very large scale,
because of the demographical change in many of the countries and because of the so-called
multicultural realities that now exist in almost all the industrialized countries of
the West and here I would say a careful analysis of the principles that underlie cultural identity
would be of help in order to get away from this attitude of confrontation or from this
perception of threat. At that point one should make and I think one of those who do use the
term dialogue of civilizations also for a kind of political legitimation strategy should
be aware that exertion of cultural identity is not necessarily implying that one antagonizes
another cultural identity, to relate to another identity is the very condition for shaping
one's own identity and if this is so the presence of other cultures, people with other cultural
identities in our midst cannot be perceived as a threat. It is just one of the conditions
or an opportunity for us to develop a more mature and richer understanding of our own
civilization through the interaction with other civilizations. In earlier centuries
we did live apart and the geographic distance did mean that we were not under the pressure
to decide how to relate to the other. That's not the situation anymore. Now in the era
of globalization even civilizations that are continents apart will have an impact on our
daily life, if you take the trade relations but also international information and communication
ad in addition to that because labor migration we will have the multicultural reality at
the domestic level. That should also bring us to a more profound understanding of conflicts
in the countries that by tradition are composed in a multicultural and multi-ethnic sense
and what is really frightening in those days is how the world is dealing with conflict
situations that are now evolving along cultural lines in the region of the Middle East. If
you take for instance the example of Syria this is really a test case for the doctrine
of the dialogue of civilizations, because what we see now is that a kind of civil war
has evolved which is more and more is a confrontation also along civilizational and cultural lines,
distinct religious and ethnic communities are in a situation of confrontation and are
being encouraged in this confrontational attitudes by support from outside actors whether those
are states or religious communities. A country can only claim to be a friend as the United
Nations says of the Alliance of civilizations, if it does not fuel this conflict by interfering
with arms or other means on the side of one of the parties of the dispute, the country
is only credible in this commitment to dialogue if it tries to promote diplomatic negotiations
between the different groups and if it does not take sides in the sense of cultural, or
religious, or civilizational issues. The commitment to the human rights is certainly
one of the test cases of dialogue between civilizations, but one has to be very cautious
in one particular respect. If we speak about human rights, we should do it in a way that
is compatible with other civilizational and cultural identities. It would not be fair,
it would not be credible if one is conducting a human rights discourse from a position of
cultural supremacy so to speak. So if one has to be prepared to reflect on one's own
notions of human rights and one has to acknowledge that there are different cultural traditions
different social-cultural environments where people may interpret general human right principles
in a specific way. We cannot force other people in other cultural environments to live exactly
by the standards which we for instance have set for us in the secular environment of the
western industrialized world. That would not be fair, it would intellectually not be credible
and it would be ultimately be counterproductive because it would mean that people in other
regions of the world would feel that they are being reeducated by us or use a more drastic
word that they are being brainwashed by us. That of course also relates to certain basic
notions of the political system, of democracy. The role of the individual in society and
how a person defines himself or herself as a citizen in the state depends also on the
cultural environment and we cannot for instance, just to give one of the most drastically examples,
we cannot impose certain Western notions of gender policies on the rest of the world.
That would not be in any way undertaking and what one also must avoid is to intervene in
other countries militarily if there is not a clear humanitarian justification, first
of all one must not intervene on the basis, so to speak, trust of ideological issues,
on the basis of issues that relate to how we see democracy or human rights, and one
must be proportional in the action and for that reason I have great suspicions, as I'm
very cautious as far as this new doctrine of humanitarian intervention is concerned
because the examples we have seen so far are not very encouraging in quite many instances.
There is a risk that through such an intervention one is producing failed states. That is a
new term in the political circles of the Western world. Humanitarian intervention is also nor
certainly not compatible with the idea of dialogue because it means that countries decide
from outside who the good people are in particular country and who are the bad people. They declare
that they have to come to the rescue of the good people in order to safe them or in order
to establish the rule of law and a system that is based on human rights. But in almost
all the cases if you take for instance the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a situation that
recited from such kind of interventions which somehow were justified with the humanitarian
motives. The consequences are quite negative. These interventions in almost all the cases
have caused great suffering and have the caused the death of thousands if not hundreds of
thousands people. I would say that it makes sense that such use of force in the name of
noble principles of dialogue should be quite strictly controlled in the framework of the
United Nations Organization. Unilateral action by individual states or an alliance of states
is always risky and is almost always just an action under the pretext of humanitarian
motives while an actual fact is an economic interest or power politics. If we look closer
for instance to the region of Europe I would say that humanitarian intervention in many
of the cases so far has not been able to produce a sustainable order of peaceful coexistence
among different population groups, for instance on the Balkans. It will take a long time until
one can make a final evaluation in terms of the results of these interventions which a
certain groups of countries have undertaken, can in this part of the world.
Alliances are important if they are rich in forms of regional cooperation. If there are
structures of regional cooperation, institutionalized structures, this will certainly be very important
for a particular region, for the countries of a particular region not becoming victims
of that old-fashioned policy of "divide et impera" (divide and rule). It is certainly
true that structures of regional cooperation maybe a source or maybe an element of political
stability in the wider sense. But one also has to be aware of one thing: if we understand
or if we mean by alliance a military structure, a military alliance such as NATO or earlier
its rival organization, the Warsaw Pact, such alliances are not credible enforcers of the
rule of law internationally and I would not for instance leave the enforcement of human
rights to a group of countries that are organized under the umbrella of a military alliance.
Of course now there exists only one military alliance with global outreach, that is NATO,
but during the cold war there were certainly two and that would also have applied to the
alliance of the Warsaw Pact countries. The negative example in my assessment recently
has been how the Western alliance, I mean how NATO as a military alliance direct in
Libya in the year 2011. There was a general authorization by the United Nations Security
Council to undertake measures to protect the civilian population, but not to intervene
on the ground and not to interfere into the political process. What has been done or what
has happened was that the NATO member countries did an air complain and the main goal was,
as we know by now, regime change and as such we see at the moment for the time being the
country is not stable and it is not to be taken for granted that the country can preserve
its territorial integrity and there is certainly no rule of law but there is a number of territories
that is ruled by different tribal leaders and now the territory of the country again
being used by certain French terror groups that are out to destabilize the entire region.
We have seen what that means for instance recently in Mali. We see also the devastating
consequences of this situation of anarchy which the NATO intervention has created in
Libya now in Syria because many of the most intransigent fighters and also their ammunition
are coming from groups in Libya where the government has absolutely no control. Getting
back to the issue of dialogue that is certainly not a situation where a military alliance
has been successful in promoting a dialogue between the groups or in integrating a country
into the community of nations on the basis of rule of law, human right and so on.
I think it is crucial that in all these initiatives that are based on the principle of dialogue
between cultures, religions or in a more general way between civilizations, one is always very
clearly distinguishing between political interests and economic interests and what I have been
characterizing as the shaping of one's cultural identity and trying to reach out to other
nations and trying to better understand their own identity. What has to be avoided, if there
is any hope for this project of dialogue of civilizations is that the issue of civilization
is not used just as a cover to promote a certain political or economic or military agenda.
I mean if a certain country or a group of countries would like to strengthen its influence
in another part of the world, it should indicate the motives and it should do it transparently.
Of course I know maybe it is a wishful thinking in the field of international power politics,
but they should leave out culture and civilization, they should not say that they act in the name
of civilization and that they want to promote dialogue because if the instrumentalization
of issues of civilizational identity is becoming a common practice of states that would totally
discredit the entire project of the United Nations Organization. Frankly I would say
that many of these countries, member states of the United Nations that have declared themselves
officially to be friends of this alliance of civilization, should think twice about
whether it is really meaningful and credible for them to continue in that group of states,
as long as day use dialogue in the context of their own strategic interests. I would
say it would be much better to place that issue of civilizational and cultural identity
and how to broaden one's own horizon if one would believe this with the specialized Organization
of the United Nations that was particularly created for those purposes, namely for UNESCO,
the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, the issue of intercultural
dialogue should not be located just within an exclusively political structure that has
as its most influential body the Security Council.