The profound civilizational anxiety crystallized in Sam Brownback’s China’s War on Faith compels a comprehensive interrogation of the crisis of Western universalism. What distinguishes Brownback from many of his contemporary political figures is his grasp of China’s global rise not merely as a geostrategic threat, but as an existential challenge directed at the definition of the human, the philosophy of freedom, and the individual-centered ontology constructed since the Enlightenment. Brownback’s conceptualization of “authoritarian civilizations” confines this challenge within a moral binary, yet it is precisely through such reduction that the fundamental question demanding scrutiny is laid bare: to what extent did the West’s claim to universalism rest upon genuine universality, and why is this claim now eroding so rapidly on a global scale? These questions point beyond debates on power transition to a crisis concerning the very definition of modernity and the plurality of the human condition.
The Founding Contradictions of the Western Normative Order
The United States-centered world order constructed after 1945 rested not only on military and economic supremacy, but also on a set of values proclaimed as universal. Democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and the free market were promised to all of humanity as the four pillars of this normative hegemony. However, this order harbored a structural contradiction from its very inception: the West circulated these values as universal rhetoric while systematically subordinating them in practice to its geopolitical interests. Support for military coups in Latin America throughout the Cold War, strategic alliances forged with authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, and the humanitarian devastation wrought by military interventions stretching from Afghanistan to Iraq constitute the historical record of this double standard. The rest of the world long found itself compelled to overlook this contradiction, for no alternative existed to the financial architecture, security umbrella, and technological infrastructure established by the West. The concrete emergence of alternatives in the twenty-first century has led to the rapid depletion of accumulated moral credit and the shaking of the foundations of normative hegemony.
Epistemic Plurality and the Phenomenon of Multiple Modernities
Multipolarity is predominantly read in terms of the redistribution of military and economic power. Yet the neglected deeper layer of the ongoing transformation is the pluralization of ways of knowing and definitions of truth. The People’s Republic of China’s “performance legitimacy” grounded in concrete developmental achievements, the Russian Federation’s Eurasianist civilizational discourse, and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s resistance narrative rooted in divine justice fundamentally shake the West’s assumption that all political models outside liberal democracy are illegitimate. These three actors, while each drawing upon distinct historical and philosophical sources, converge on a complementary common ground: the assertion that the definition of the human, the ultimate purpose of society, and the criteria of political legitimacy cannot be reduced to the West’s secular, individualistic, and rationalist framework. The true tremor that Brownback intuitively grasps yet obscures with the label “authoritarian” takes place precisely at this point. The rest of the world is now demonstrating that it possesses not only different centers of power, but also different definitions of modernity and different visions of the good life. The paradigm of multiple modernities replaces the linear narrative of progress that universalizes the West’s historical experience with a portrait of the world in which simultaneous and distinct paths of modernization are possible.
The Limits of Secular Reason and the Political Manifestations of Spiritual Resistance
The least understood dimension of the rising axis is the metaphysical weight it carries. Western modernity, since the Enlightenment, has pushed the sacred out of the public sphere, confined religion to the private realm of individual conscience, and reconstructed politics on the ground of instrumental rationality. In response, the Iranian Islamic Revolution declared that modern political institutions need not be secular, and that a transcendent idea of justice can be placed at the center of state governance. The Russian Orthodox Church has been reinterpreted as the spiritual shield of Slavic civilization and the spiritual dimension of state sovereignty. Chinese civilization, meanwhile, synthesizing Confucian collectivism and a philosophy of harmony with modern state capacity, has put forth a distinct model of social contract based on the individual’s responsibilities within the community. Each of these actors, within their own cultural codes, defends the idea that the human being is not merely a consumer chasing material prosperity, but that spiritual belongings and collective identities are integral components of political legitimacy. The West’s secular rationalism tends to label such claims as irrational or dangerous; yet this labeling is an expression of a presumption of universalism unaware of its own cultural boundaries.
The Implosion of Western Universalism: Double Standards and the Crisis of Legitimacy
The erosion of the West’s normative hegemony is not solely the result of alternatives rising from outside; the true destruction comes from within. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, met with large-scale indifference by Western governments, has irreparably damaged the claim to the universality of international law. The chasm between the principled stance exhibited towards the war in Ukraine and the silence in the face of civilian massacres perpetrated in Palestine during the same period has emptied the discourse of the “rules-based order” and thoroughly discredited it in the eyes of the Global South. Moreover, democratic backsliding within the West itself, the rise of populist movements, the collapse of trust in institutions, and deepening social polarization demonstrate that the liberal democratic model sought for export is in serious crisis in its very homeland. A West that proves through its own actions that it is in no position to lecture others on morality appears unable to sustain its claim to global normative leadership.
The Structural Vulnerabilities of the Alternative Axis and a Multi-Layered Future
Nevertheless, the internal contradictions and structural vulnerabilities of this rising Asia-centered alternative must also be rigorously assessed. The People’s Republic of China faces serious demographic and structural problems, including rapid aging, a shrinking workforce, and an economic slowdown triggered by the real estate sector. The Russian Federation struggles under the West’s comprehensive sanctions regime with shrinking energy revenues, technological isolation, and human capital flight. The Islamic Republic of Iran, meanwhile, undergoes a structural stress test characterized by long-standing economic embargoes, internal social tensions, and legitimacy debates. The divergences among the worldviews of these three actors are just as significant as their common ground: China’s pragmatic state capitalism, Russia’s geopolitical revisionism, and Iran’s revolutionary theocracy do not always form a coherent whole. The strategic convergence among them is nourished not by a common ideological project but by a shared perception of threat directed against the hegemony of the United States. This circumstance invites scrutiny of Brownback’s assumption that a homogeneous and institutionalized “authoritarian civilizational bloc” currently exists. A more plausible scenario for the future is not the birth of a new bipolar world order, but the institutionalization of a far more complex, fluid, and multi-layered global disorder.
Conclusion
The civilizational fear articulated by Sam Brownback points to an issue too fundamental to be reduced to the ideological reflex of a conservative Evangelical. Brownback senses that the West’s three-hundred-year project of modernity is, for the first time in history, confronting a systematic, multidimensional, and mass-based alternative. However, confining this alternative to the category of “authoritarian civilizations” signifies both a refusal to understand the formation in question and an absolutization of the West’s own moral position. The present historical juncture marks the beginning of a new era in which Western universalism has come to an end and the simultaneous existence of multiple modernities has become a permanent reality. In this new era, the central issue is not which civilizational vision will ultimately prevail, but how radically different definitions of humanity and models of political legitimacy can coexist on the same planet. This war for the soul of civilization will be won or lost not through military capacity, but through the transformation of maps of meaning and collective imaginations.
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Sefa Yürükel
Danish ethnographer and social anthropologist (MA)
Aarhus University, 1997
Independent Researcher
Fields of Research: International Politics, Public International Law, Geopolitics, Sociology, Psychology, Cultural Studies, Systems and Structures
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