Alliance of Civilizations: United We Stand, Divided We Fall?

United Nations Alliance of Civilization was created immediately after 9/11 to give another look at the role of cultures and identities in international affairs. The Alliance closely interacts with various educational institutions around the world, think tanks and universities. Mustapha Tlili, Senior Advisor of United Nations Alliance of Civilizations has recently visited RIAC to discuss prospects for cooperation between the two organizations. He also shared information on the Alliance and expressed his opinion on the UN system and current international affairs.

United Nations Alliance of Civilization was created immediately after 9/11 to give another look at the role of cultures and identities in international affairs.

The alliance attempts to address culture as part of soft power and has a double mission: to think of civilizations as categories of international diplomacy and focus on culture within civilizations as a potential source of conflict and peace.

The four defining pillars of the alliance are: immigration, media, education, and youth. The Alliance closely interacts with various educational institutions around the world, think tanks and universities. Mustapha Tlili, Senior Advisor of United Nations Alliance of Civilizations has recently visited RIAC to discuss prospects for cooperation between the two organizations. He also shared information on the Alliance and expressed his opinion on the UN system and current international affairs.

Many argue that the UN has lost its ability to solve international problems. Do you agree with this statement?

I think this is the wrong question, since the UN does not have power on its own. The UN derives its power from the will of the 193 members of the General Assembly of the United Nations. When they agree to act, the UN does so. I don't think that this question should be addressed to the UN – it should be addressed to the member states and the Security Council. The Security Council is facing so many conflicts around the world that often it does not act. Why? Because if the five veto members – the US, the Russian Federation, China, the United Kingdom and France – do not agree on the action to be taken, what can the UN do? Nothing. There have been a number of instances when the UN was united and acted. Without the UN, the question of apartheid would not have been solved.

Do you think the UN system needs to be reformed?

Mustapha Tlili

When you are talking about reforms in the UN, you mainly mean the Security Council and the issue of how to make the veto less harmful to the actions of the UN. This has been an ongoing debate for the last thirty years, and I don't see any way of overcoming the difficulties. Why? Because those who have the veto are not going to give it up. There are two aspects to this problem. The first is to find a way to overcome the effect of the veto, which makes the UN powerless. The other concerns how to enlarge the membership of the Security Council in a way to make it more democratic. The Security Council was set up immediately after the end of the Second World War, and the veto that was then granted to the victorious powers, remains exactly the same as it was, except that the victorious powers of that time are no longer the powers of today. In Europe, France and the UK have veto powers. Yet we face new emergent powers like India, Brazil, South Africa, and the new Germany, re-united Germany. The question is pressing of how to adapt the existing system to the realities of today.

What are the biggest threats to international security nowadays in your personal opinion?

First, terrorism has become a threat to the whole world. War and peace up until the late 1970s were seen as issues for nation states: they declare war, end war, reconstruct after the war and so on. What we have today with terrorism is something different. There are two aspects. One is non-state actors that you can in no way control. Second, if terrorism was limited to one country, which was the case up until the 1980s or so, you could find a way to deal with it. However, today it is an international phenomenon that touches everyone, affects every state and has an impact on the whole world. And the question is how to address it.

Secondly, we have climate change, which is a big threat to our survival as human beings. If we do not act and if we do not become aware of the urgency to act, the world will end in catastrophe.

Thirdly, I would name sustainable development. Why is it an important issue? Simply because the resources of our planet are finite, we need to manage them reasonably; otherwise we are heading towards extinction.

You mentioned that one of the four pillars of the Alliance is media. How would you categorize the role of media in international conflicts?

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It's a big question. Media today have become a pervasive part of our lives, for bad and for good. For good, let’s start with us being more connected today through the Internet. For the first time in history we are part of the prediction made by Marshall McLuhan – of the global village: you are here in Moscow, and in an instant you can see what is happening in New York, and talk to your friends and colleagues in Germany or China.

Information circulates more rapidly, and governments have less and less authority. There used to be the option of suppressing information by censoring the press, by not allowing books or newspapers. It's over now as we face democratization. One cannot imagine 10 or 20 North Koreas. To achieve what leaders of North Korea do, one needs to spend time closing every door of information. Imagine a system like that spread throughout the world – it's impossible.

Social media has made us wiser, we make better economic and personal decisions. We are freer, we are more responsible in choosing what to read. The new generation, in fact, is more powerful than the generation before. But at the same time, it makes you more vulnerable, because if things go wrong you cannot pretend that you are not informed.

Moreover, the fact that information circulates so rapidly does not leave you the time to assess the accuracy of the information. We were brought up in this classical mode of the written press that underwent a whole line of scrutiny to assess the accuracy of information. Nowadays the Internet is filled with rumors that can potentially transform into seeds of conflict and have a devastating effect on states, groups, peace, and security.

These are the issues that we face when we are talking about the media. And therefore, when the Alliance of civilizations intervenes, it does so to make sure that information is approached in a more responsible way. And for that matter we have an educational program for editors of newspapers and websites.

Could you share some thoughts about how international affairs should be taught?

From my experience and from what I know from colleagues who teach courses in international affairs, different approaches can be used to teach the subject. The historical approach, of course, is one based on the evolution of international affairs. The sociological approach is important because international affairs are a reflection of sociological development. The economic approach is also important in some cases because today we cannot understand the architecture of the international set-up without understanding the socio-economic relations between different actors.

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The most popular approach in US is the case study. I'll give you an example. For a number of years, I ran a high-level seminar for second year students at the School of International Public Affairs at Columbia on the development of international communication systems and the role of the UN. It was a one-day seminar: in the morning there was a theoretical part, then in the afternoon, students reported on their assignments. Then I would invite, for instance, a head of major media technology organization such as Microsoft or Cisco to come have a conversation with us and share his experience. After the discussion we would work on new projects in groups.

I always try to marry the theoretical and the practical and make this interconnection organic and smooth. This is clearly an American approach. If you compare it to some of the institutions that I know in Europe – to the French system or the English system – it is a different approach – theoretical.

The Arab spring and the Ukrainian crisis demonstrate that there is no peace and unity within Muslim and Slavic civilizations. In this regard, do you think we should work not between the civilizations but within them, with cultures? What is your personal opinion?

Unlike the nation-state, the concept of civilization has never been an element of international debate. A state can be assessed and defined through a number of objective factors: territory, population, etc. Nation and state were united in holy matrimony when the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. A sovereign could do as he/she pleased with the given territory. The evolution of the international system erected by Westphalia Treaty led to the set up of the United Nations – the most universal organization grouping of all the states of the world that are part of this system. Therefore, the actor in the international system is still the state. Civilizations have always been a rather vague academic concept developed in schools and universities. There is no agreement on the definition of the civilization. Some give the preference to culture, some think of civilization as a cultural entity, and so on. Samuel Huntington was the visionary who broke away from the familiar mindset in his famous Foreign Affairs essay. We started thinking about civilizations as an independent category in the international system. However, there is still no concrete knowledge about civilizations.

What is a civilization? There is no universal agreement. Are civilizations clearly defined and isolated? Can you talk about Slavic or Islamic civilization? If you take Islamic civilization, for instance, there are certainly a number of elements that would vaguely define Islamic world – historical and cultural segments, etc. All these elements make up an umbrella which is called Islamic civilization. In fact, Islamic civilization cannot be defined without the contribution and the influence of Judaic civilization or Persian civilization alongside with Indian, Greek and Roman civilizations. All of them nourished each other through cultural heritage, books, debates, architecture and shared common roots.

The same applies to European civilization. The French will say they have their own civilization. The English will follow suit. So what is a European civilization? Does it exist? The answer would be “yes” because a civilization is defined in opposition to other civilizations. However, even such approach cannot really render the understanding clearer. Therefore, I think it's more of a logical category than a reality or a substance that you can define. A 'logical category' can help us think about a number of issues that we cannot fully cover if we consider the international system in the classical way as based only on perceiving the state as the main actor. Over the last decades we have witnessed a number of phenomena that cannot be fully addressed unless we introduce the new concept of civilization. To jump from a concept to substance, this remains a big question that is not easily solved. It is not a political decision. It is a matter of intellectual thought and honesty.