THE PROGRESS OF PLURALISM AND THE TUG OF WAR OF CIVILISATIONS

Year 2002, Volume: 7 Issue: 2, 1 - 17, 01.07.2002

Erik Cornell

Abstract

The present world order is reflected in the United Nations as the international forum for sovereign states. The UN was founded at the moment of triumph for the Great Powers, which were just winning the greatest war in history. Consequently, it was the self-evident basis for membership of all recognised states. During the Cold War period and the decolonisations, UN membership grew and nations clustered into groups according to their economic and political characteristics: the industrialised countries, the socialist states and the developing countries. When The People’s Republic of China joined, it formed a ‘group’ of its own. After the dissolution of the socialist group, most of its former members tended to join the industrialised group while Russia is likely to follow the Chinese example and form its own ‘group’. Now a tendency is discernible whereby some of the former colonies are being regarded as ‘empires’ in the sense that they comprise entities wishing to establish independent states. There exist no criteria for UN membership status – a small island with a few thousand inhabitants is eligible, a people of millions inside some state or divided as nationals of different states are not. If every state composed of several ethnic or otherwise self-identifying groups divided itself into a number of eligible states, the consequence would be no upper limit for the number of UN members. It has been pointed out that such tribalism and fragmentation, if unchecked, is likely to gain the upper hand in many parts of the world.

References

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• 12 For an analysis of residual impacts of Ottoman modes on the contemporary Turkish Republic, see Erik Cornell, Turkey in the Twenty-first Century, Richmond, Curzon Press, 2001. (Turkish edition: Türkiye Avrupa’nın Eşiğinde, Istanbul, Cem, 1998.)
• 13 For a description of North Korean society and ideology, see Erik Cornell, North Korea under Communism: Report of an Envoy to Paradise, London, Routledge Curzon, 2002.
• 14 Matthew 6:33.