The World Faces a World War over Values, nationalinterest.org

av
Joergen Oerstroem Moeller, former state-secretary for the Royal Danish Foreign Ministry

We do not know when and how the war in Ukraine will end. But all wars do end eventually.

The conflicts underlying this current war, however, will not end. They are global, permanent, and will cut across any kind of war in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

The first of these is the determination of the West to defend its domination of the world—economically, militarily, and culturally. The second, more difficult to define, is a clash between two opposing value systems. Sometimes this is popularly depicted as “democracy versus autocracy,” but this perspective is imprecise and superficial. This is more about abandoning or keeping family values, as we have known them for several thousands of years. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the second conflict is about whether one accepts or rejects the aggressive strand of liberalism—what some call “wokeism”—in their national culture.

These two conflicts clash for historical reasons in Ukraine, which serves as the canary in the coal mine, drawing our attention to what will define the global power game for a very long time. […]

The omens are not good. A value-based conflict tends to be uncompromising, as values cannot be divided. Compromises cannot be found. Fanaticism gains ground. “We” are right and “they” are wrong. Läs artikel

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