The return of international Darwinism

IstanbulA few days ago, strolling through the streets of Istanbul, I was surprised by how familiar Turkey felt. The Ottoman mosques had shapes and details that would have fit perfectly in Italy; the flavors evoked a Mediterranean world; the old men in berets drinking on street corners could have been transplanted to Athens or Lisbon. The OttomansMarc David Baer argues that the Ottomans were clearly a European empire, participating in both milestones like the Renaissance and maritime exploration, and horrors like colonization and ethnic cleansing. The Ottoman Empire gave birth to the cafés that Steiner would later say represent Europe; it also created a model of religious tolerance—though not equality—at a time when Jews were being expelled and massacres between Catholics and Protestants were taking place in Europe. The narrative of a civilized Christian West and a barbaric Muslim East concealed far more commonalities than differences.

Perhaps one of the times when Turkey felt most Asian was at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the same intellectual debate resonated through the universities, cafés, and political and revolutionary circles of Istanbul, Beijing, New Delhi, Tokyo, and Tehran. In all these cities, the same questions were repeated: Why has the West surpassed and dominated us, the great empires of the past? How have we allowed ourselves to be crushed? What must we do to reclaim our power and dignity? How can we become strong and prosperous again?

The law of the strongest

In these capitals, an idea originating in Europe was taking root among Asian intellectuals: so-called "social Darwinism," a worldview that held that only strong nations survive, while the rest are crushed and dominated. Turkish, Chinese, Indian, and Persian intellectuals of the time—as Pankaj Mishra explains in From the Ruins of Empire They looked to the Japanese, an Asian country that had defeated the Russians in 1905, as a great example. Western empires were the enemy, but, in a way, also the example: both the Japanese with their colonial empire and the Young Turks with their ethnic massacres sought to be strong and ruthless, arguing. Even humanist writers like the Chinese Lao She saw the world as a schoolyard where only by responding forcefully could you earn respect.

The purely Darwinian world of the first half of the 20th century was diluted after World War II. The Cold War system was not egalitarian, but relatively stable and positive international norms and institutions were built, which in turn served as a network for the United States to consolidate and extend its power—although the rules of the game were often broken, especially against weaker nations. However, the great pillar that supported this system has decided to break it from within. Trump's Washington believes that a return to a Darwinian world order is how the US can maintain its hegemony. The Turks, the Chinese, the Indians have already learned what it means to be at the bottom of the food chain. We Europeans, on the other hand, are disoriented in a new and dangerous reality.