1 Introduction to International Relations, ‘Non-Western IR’: Beyond the Anglo-American Tradition

2 ‘Non-Western’ International Relations ViewKey Question: How does international politics look like when we view it from beyond the West? Historically a clear tendency to theorize about key principles derived from a Western vantage point, using Western ideas, culture, politics, historical experiences and contemporary practice. Some believe that the mainstream theories of realism, liberalism or constructivism are flexible enough and can be adapted to capture the voices and experiences of the non-Western world. Others disagree. We have to start thinking about global politics with our intellectual feet deliberately planted outside the powerful, prosperous and dominant West in order to bring a fresh, questioning attitude to the study of world politics. Moving it beyond its American-centrism or Eurocentric biases. From the Islamic world, classical authors Al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd; Chinese political thought – Confucius; Afro-Caribbean Frantz Omar Fanon; Indian Mahatma Gandhi.

3 Non-Western IR From a non-Western perspective the twentieth century could be said to begin in 1905 when Japan defeated Russia, an event that destroyed the widespread myth of European invincibility and was celebrated by millions from China to Peru. Or in 1918 when the savagery of the First World War, or what non-Europeans call a European civil war, shook their lingering belief in the cultural superiority of Europe. Have to be careful in separating both sides. The so-called Non-West gave the West many of its scientific and philosophical ideas such as Arab astronomy, Indian philosophy and mathematics, and the Chinese printing press and gun powder. The West’s presence in the non-West is even more extensive especially in the aftermath of European colonisation: so much so that large parts of its ways of life and thought are wholly unintelligible without reference to the West.

4 Non-Western IR By the beginning of the twentieth century most countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere had been exposed to extensive Western influence. In their own different ways, they were all struck by the enormous power of the West and their own lack of power. The West represented not only power but also a vision of life involving such values as individual liberty and rights, equality, democracy, scientific curiosity and mastery of nature – in short, modernity. Non-Western writers wondered about the sources of Western power, the nature of modernity, and the relationship between the two. They asked how they could stand up to the West, whether they should embrace modernity, and what they should do about their traditional ways of life. The question as to how to respond to modernity, acquire the capacity to stand up to the West, and reorganise traditional societies received a wide variety of answers which fell into four broad categories: Modernism, syncretism, critical traditionalism and, religious fundamentalism.

5 Modernism Modernist writers are enthusiastic advocates of Western modernity. They argue that traditional ways of life such as theirs are static, oppressive, poor, ridden with superstition and mindless conformity to established customs and practices, and incapable of concerted action. It was about time they ‘woke up from their long historical slumber’ and caught up with the West by embracing modern science, technology, rationalism, liberalism, the state and so on. As the influential Indonesian thinker Soetan Sjahrir put it, ‘What the West has taught us is a higher form of living The East must become westernised’. Modernists need to convince their countrymen, many of them highly sceptical, that the modern way of life is higher.

6 Modernism Arguments used by modernists: First, modernity represents freedom in the sense of freeing the individual from the tyranny of nature, customs, poverty, irresponsible power and so on, and creates a way of life worthy of human beings. Second, it releases individual energy and creativity, creates a resourceful and lively society and contributes to human flourishing and progress. And, third, it generates the kind of economic, technological and political power enjoyed by the West, which every society needs to stand up to the West and interact with it as an equal in the modern world. Since the first two arguments are not easy to defend and do not always convince their countrymen, many a modernist writer relies on the third argument and presents modernisation as an inescapable historical predicament and the only way to acquire power and respectability.

7 Modernism In India modernist ideas were advocated by a large number of liberal thinkers such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Motilal Nehru and his son Jawaharlal Nehru. In their view, mysticism, otherworldliness, the caste system, the ‘spirit of localism’, and the octopus-like grip of society that prevented the emergence of an independent state and civil associations had kept India degenerate for centuries and stifled all creativity and initiative. India’s only hope lay in making a radical break with its past and embarking on a programme of comprehensive economic, political and cultural modernization. In China, Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), the modernist chancellor of Peking University from 1916 to 1926, attracted independent-minded Westernised scholars and created a milieu that led to the New Culture and May Fourth Movements, both of which advocated comprehensive modernisation.

8 Modernism Science and progress were the modernist watchwords. Progress was defined and measured in terms of Western modernity, and involved transforming traditional societies along Western secular, liberal and democratic lines. Modernist political thinkers, then, demand a radical break with the past. The state should be organised as a nation state and should cultivate and mobilise the spirit of nationalism. This is the only way to unite society, generate the kind of political power it needs to stand up to the West and act as a self-determining agent in a hostile world, and to enable the state to undertake the massive task of social regeneration.

9 Syncretism Syncretists advocate a synthesis of the best in their own and Western cultures. They are highly critical of modernists for their uncritical admiration of the West and equally uncritical condemnation of their own society. For syncretists Western culture has many admirable elements, such as its scientific spirit, intellectual curiosity, determined effort to understand and master the external world, respect for the individual and capacity for organization and collective action. However, it is also flawed in important respects. It is narrowly individualist, materialist, consumerist, militarist, exploitative of weaker groups at home and abroad, driven by greed and desire for domination and devoid of moral and spiritual depth.

10 Syncretism True universality can only emerge from a critical dialogue between Western and non-Western societies and the resulting synthesis of the best in both. In India Bankim Chatterjee, Dayanand Saraswati, Gokhale, Ranade and other leading thinkers see themselves ‘sitting at the confluence of two mighty rivers’ and engaging in the great moral task of combining ‘ancient wisdom and modern enterprise’. Japanese thinkers such as Shazon Sakuma Nishi Amana and Kisaro Nishida want to combine ‘eastern morality and western technique’, ‘western and eastern thinking’, ‘western rationality and traditional Japanese values’, and create a ‘new form of modernity’ and ‘universality’. Democracy is a commendable form of government, but the role of the virtuous elite and men of wisdom should not be ignored either. The question is – can both be harmoniously integrated in practice?

11 Critical traditionalismCritical traditionalists are highly critical of both modernists and syncretists. They reject the modernist contrast between science and tradition. It is true that science relies on trial and error, experimentation and so on, and that its conclusions are open to criticism and hence corrigible. However, this is also true of traditions. They are never ‘blind’ and ‘irrational’ but products of a long process of trial and error in which misguided practices and beliefs often get weeded out and only the useful ones generally survive. For critical traditionalists, modernists are naive to imagine that human beings are like clean slates upon which one can write what one likes. Human beings are deeply shaped by their society and culture, and have certain characters, temperaments, dispositions and forms of self-understanding. A way of life that is good for one group of people might spell disaster for another. A society should do its thinking itself, both as a matter of pride and because there is no real alternative to it. It should critically examine its own constitutive principles, psychological and moral resources, needs and so on, stay loyal to traditions and practices it considers right.

12 Critical traditionalismCritical traditionalism commands the allegiance of some of the finest thinkers in non-Western societies. In India Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, Tilak, Aurobindo and others were its eloquent spokesmen, stressing both the richness of the Indian civilisation and the need to revitalise it in harmony with its spirit. In theWest Indies and parts of Africa many writers, deeply disturbed by the modernist assault on traditional African values, advocated ‘cultural resistance’, ‘return to the source’ and the consequent ‘reconversion of minds’. Amilcar Cabral wanted African society to ‘recapture the commanding heights of its own culture’, purge itself of the ‘harmful influences of foreign rule’, and evolve a suitably regenerated ‘national culture’ Kwasi Wiredu, a distinguished Nigerian philosopher, advocates ‘conceptual decolonisation’, the ‘unmasking of the spurious universals’ of Western culture, doing African philosophycin African languages, and the creation of an authentic national philosophy based on indigenous African foundations. Individuals are part of the family, the clan, the tribe, the village, the religious community and so on, and are tied to them by the bonds of social and moral obligations. These social institutions shape them, engage their deepest emotions, and cultivate moral and social virtues.

13 Critical traditionalismCritical traditionalists are deeply divided about the nature and value of nationalism. Some, such as Gandhi and Tagore in India, were hostile to it. In their view it turned the state, an administrative and legal institution, into a moral community and reinforced its power and prestige. It stressed unity at the expense of differences, moulded the entire society in the image of a particular conception of the nation, ‘homogenised thoughts and feelings’, and corrupted the very way of life it claimed to protect. Nationalism, further, was believed to be basically concerned with collective power not individual freedom, to harbour illiberal and repressive tendencies, and to represent nothing more elevated than collective selfishness. For Tagore, it aroused and mobilised powerful and largely irrational emotions and acted as a political anaesthetic that ‘drugs’ moral feelings and stifles critical reason.

14 Religious fundamentalismReligious fundamentalism differs from the three bodies of thought discussed earlier in several significant respects. It declares a war on the modernist vision of the world. Religious fundamentalism is to be found in one form or another in most non-Western societies, and takes different forms depending on the nature of the religion involved. Hinduism has no definitive scriptures like the Bible or the Qur’an, no organised clergy and no doctrinal orthodoxy. Although it is not amenable to fundamentalism in the strict sense of the term, that has not deterred Hindu militants from developing a highly politicised and homogenised view of their religion and insisting on a return to traditional social practices. Buddhist fundamentalism in South-East Asia and Sri Lanka faces a similar difficulty, and largely consists of insisting on a body of state-imposed moral values and practices. Jewish fundamentalism in Israel has a strong political content, involving the retention or conquest of territories associated with ancient Jewish history and giving the state of Israel a distinct religious identity. Islamic fundamentalism as articulated by Sayyid Qutb.

15 Should we study ‘Non-Western’ political philosophies as equal to Western based-science and political thought? Even if such approaches might advocate getting rid of the ‘state’ or ‘nationalism’?