Civilization – How Not to Defend It
Western civilization—so we hear—is under threat. Therefore, we must defend it. But what exactly are we defending? The American Secretary of State Marco Rubio posed this fateful question in his speech at the Munich Security Conference 2026. His answer was:
“We are part of a single civilization—the Western civilization. We are bound together by the deepest ties that nations can share, forged through centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our ancestors collectively made for this common civilization.”
***
Rubio’s defense of civilization is symptomatic of a way of thinking that is currently gaining influence. It condenses into terms such as “shared history,” “culture,” “heritage,” “ancestry.” Particularly revealing, however, is another remark: “Armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people. Armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
At first, the mobilization of military force to defend civilization is unsettling. But regardless of how sensible it is to defend a way of life with weapons, what becomes evident here is a specific attitude: the rejection of the abstract— anti-universalism. This attitude can be seen today, for example, in skepticism toward an “abstract” rules-based order, such as the system of general international rights that has existed since the two world wars.
Even the choice of words is revealing. Rubio does not use “commonality” in the sense of universality, but rather in the sense of belonging to a particular culture—namely the “Western” one. Belonging, in turn, is a central feature of MAGA ideology. It draws on the idea of so-called “Heritage America”— that also defines itself religiously. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly speaks of “Christian warriors.”
Herein lies the tricky problem. There is an undeniable tendency to define human beings by their origin and belonging. This is a fallacy—perhaps even the oldest in human history. And it appears quite plausible, since all people develop their worldview from within the community in which they grew up. Most fundamental and formative experiences are embedded in the context of a particular culture. Even a seemingly universal commandment like “Thou shalt not kill” originally meant “Thou shalt not kill an Israelite”—and only later was it ex-tended to non-Israelites. That is ethical progress: the movement from commonality to universality.
***
“We live in a world, the real world, governed by strength, by violence and power—the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
This is how White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller justified the American intervention in Venezuela. Increasingly, the argument is being made that abstract principles contradict “human nature.” With these “iron laws of the world,” a vulgar Darwinist mindset repeatedly seeks to legitimize rivalry, brutality, power and violence by appealing to the struggle for survival.
This is untenable both logically and empirically. First, it is a classic fallacy: no norms can be derived from facts of nature. Second, biological insights show that competition and cooperation are not opposites but context-dependent strategies. The so-called “realists” are the true fantasists.
But above all, politically speaking, the appeal to “nature” is insidious. It encourages a fixation on origin, ancestry—on what has “grown organically.” From this, a selective universal-ism easily emerges—one that is not oriented toward humanity as a whole, but toward humanity in the small: toward “organic” communities, peoples, nations, tribes.
This narrowing to “humanity in the small” can also be observed in the context of identity and diversity politics. While the anti-universalism of the identitarian right primarily aims at exclusion, the anti-universalism of the postcolonial left seeks mainly to expose the pseudo-universal character of general norms such as human rights as ideological “fraud.” In place of the abstract, false “human being,” concrete identities take center stage: cultural, nation-al, religious, ethnic, gendered. They define themselves through difference and diversity—that is, through small-scale humanities.
***
Psychology has a term for this retreat into the small and manageable: parochialism—a narrowing of perspective in which a person feels belonging only to a very specific group and devalues others. Michael Walzer, an influential critic of liberalism, argued thirty years ago that the only thing all humans have in common is their tendency toward parochialism. It becomes especially acute in situations of real or imagined threat. In such moments, “I feel only—and radically—parochially: as a Serb, as a Pole, as a Jew, as Black, as a woman, as a homosexual—and as nothing else (…) This also means that our shared humanity will never make us members of a single, all-encompassing ‘tribe.’”
Walzer’s remark fits disturbingly well with today’s world out of joint—full of real and imagined threats, uncertainty, and confusion. In such a situation, parochialism offers itself as a source of stability by simplifying—and as protection by separating. As a survival strategy, it becomes almost irresistible in such times.
***
Today, many people experience a dramatic paradox: the planet Earth is our common habitat, and yet we are fragmenting it in self-destructive ways into competing world communities—“civilizations.” The urgent question, therefore, is whether there is another way to understand commonality. And this leads us back to the beginnings of European modernity—to the Enlightenment.
One can somewhat bluntly reduce it to a single basic idea: being human is always defined through ethnic, national, cultural, and religious belonging; but being a civilized human means recognizing “abstract” general principles, norms, or standards. One is not born into them; one can choose to acknowledge them. It is a decision made as an act of reason.
These principles do not float “Platonically” above people’s heads; they are politically embodied in practices that—despite all particular attachments—are guided by universal principles of thought and action. Universalist tendencies exist not only in the West; they also exist in Africa, South America, and Asia. One could say that the Enlightenment is entering a new phase of development: that of cultural polycentrism.
It was, incidentally, the recently deceased Jürgen Habermas, the “last European,” who tirelessly and steadfastly maintained that one can be just as loyally committed to an “abstract” set of rules as to concrete traditions and customs. That is what civilization is—a project of modernity that remains “unfinished,” as Habermas called it.
***
Of course, in defending Western civilization, we are also defending a historical heritage. And however self-flagellating its critique may often appear, it possesses a body of ideas worth defending—by keeping it up to date.
These include abstractions such as “international law,” “human rights,” “freedom of expression,” and “equality before the law.” They are not detached from reality. Quite the opposite: they are the very conditions that make it possible for people to relate to one another peacefully across boundaries of origin, religion, and culture. Without abstractions, there would be no political community that is more than an extended tribe. Whoever rejects them therefore advocates—whether consciously or not—a return to pre-civilized conditions. We are well on our way there.
