Inter-Civilisational Dialogue:
A Path to Conflict Transformation

Joseph A. Camilleri
La Trobe University, Australia

The global condition is one of heightened vulnerability. National boundaries are increasingly porous. States are finding it harder and harder to run their economies and defend their borders. As the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Bali, Madrid and London have demonstrated, wealth, power and nuclear arsenals offer little guarantee of protection.

The word global is now a cliché. So are such terms as global village, global economy and global culture. We are often told that we live in an era of globalisation. In the words of Roland Robertson, the world is fast becoming a ‘single place’ (1992).  Others speak of an emerging global consciousness. Globalisation has become a subject of discussion among corporate managers, scholars, policy-makers and citizens alike. Yet, there is no consensus on its meaning, its origins, or even its long-term implications.

Globalisation is in some ways as old as capitalism itself, yet it points to a new historical phase (Higgott and Payne, 2000). The contemporary world is one in which a number of seemingly distinct processes are occurring more or less simultaneously, and acquiring a global reach, often in highly interconnected fashion. 

In a rapidly globalising world ‘high consequence risks’ (Beck, 1992) have become integral to the functioning of society. The global condition is one of heightened vulnerability as much for states as for groups and individuals. One need only think of the effects of financial crises, oil spills, ozone depletion, global warming, ethnic cleansing, genocidal policies or terrorist attacks. If there is one characteristic that distinguishes contemporary life it is the ‘globalisation of insecurity’.

If this reading of events is at all accurate, then a number of difficult questions suggest themselves: What challenges does the globalisation of insecurity pose for ethical and political discourse, for the way societies organise themselves, for the way people participate in society and in the decisions that vitally affect their future.  What are appropriate cultural and institutional responses? And what of the role of the world’s religious traditions and civilisations? Before turning to these questions, it may be useful to probe a little more deeply into the dynamic of globalisation.

Globalisation of Insecurity

To make sense of this current we first need to revisit the meaning of ‘security’, since it remains a problematic and highly contested concept. It has been traditionally understood as referring to a set of objective conditions involving some form of protection from military threat.  There is, however, much to be gained from conceptualising security as a state of mind and not just as a physical condition. This is precisely the nature of the terrorist threat. Its effectiveness does not normally lie in the destruction of the enemy’s military capabilities. The terrorist succeeds if his actions and utterances manage to produce fear, panic, and a combination of counter measures that are at best costly, and at worst likely to prolong the current state of uncertainty. In reality, all security discourse and practice ultimately revolves around the experience of ‘insecurity’. Security policies, whether or not they rely on the use and threat of force, derive their content and legitimacy from the way they address, or are thought to address, this generalised sense of insecurity.

The question arises: how does the insecurity/security dynamic manifest itself in the present conjuncture? What, in other words, are the specificities of this period of transition? A key part of the answer lies in the first of the three currents that we propose to examine, namely the ‘globalisation of insecurity’. To convey something of the multi-dimensional character of this phenomenon, we focus on three distinguishing traits: the destructiveness of military technology, the rise of transnational threats to security, and the growth of international and transnational actors on the world stage.

The lethality of modern warfare has intensified over time. The ascendancy of offensive over defensive weapons systems has meant a marked decline in military protective capability. The fortress-type shells of defence characteristic of the European state system in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries have been rendered obsolescent by the advent of total war (Herz 1962), the potency of economic and ideological instruments of warfare, and the rise of urban and aerial piracy. These trends have combined to increase the vulnerability of all societies, including advanced industrial systems. In the atomic age, the power to hurt has vastly outdistanced the power to defend (Schelling 1966).

Nowhere is this trend more graphically exemplified than in the advent of weapons of mass destruction. The balance of terror, which underpinned the nuclear edifice of the Cold War period, was in this sense the ultimate exercise in competitive risk taking. Nuclear deterrence – the politics of reciprocal nuclear brinkmanship – was credited by some as making war unthinkable as a rational instrument of policy. Insofar as nuclear powers had to ensure that their rivalries did not degenerate into armed hostilities, nuclear deterrence, it was argued, made for a more stable system of international security. Such a conclusion, however, rested on the assumption that deterrence would continue to hold sway and that nuclear powers would continue to threaten wholesale destruction without ever having to carry out the threat. The validity of this paradoxical logic came under serious challenge during periods of heightened Soviet-American tension. The end of the Cold War has seen the reduction of the Russian and American nuclear arsenals, but not their destructiveness. The underlying logic that had driven their development and deployment continues to hold sway, namely the view that the actual use of nuclear weapons may in certain circumstances be effective, hence rational. Even with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Germany’s reunification and NATO’s expansion, US strategic policy continues to entertain the possible first use of the nuclear weapon. A new generation of nuclear weapons is envisaged which could be used pre-emptively to deal with chemical or biological threats or to destroy deeply buried and hardened targets (US Nuclear Posture Review, December 2001).

Mirroring and reinforcing the policies of the major declared nuclear powers has been the slow but steady widening of the nuclear club. Given the prospect of a North Korean or Iranian nuclear capability, it is now entirely feasible that US counter-proliferation policy might lead to a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Insofar as the nuclear weapon remains a symbol of power and prestige, proliferation tendencies are likely to intensify, with far-reaching implications for the reliability of strategic calculations and the predictability of state behaviour.  Adding fuel to these uncertainties is the scale of the nuclear black market. As of December 2004, the IAEA´s Illicit Trafficking Database advised that 662 incidents of illicit nuclear trafficking and other related unauthorized activities were confirmed as having occurred since January 1993 (IAEA 2005). The cumulative impact of these developments prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) in January 2007 to move the hand of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight – the figurative end of civilisation. In explaining their decision the BAS Board of Directors offered the following explanation:

We stand at the brink of a Second Nuclear Age. . . North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2007).

The multiple threads connecting politics, economy and technology in the nuclear age – porous national borders, expanded commerce in potentially dangerous dual-use technologies and materials, intensifying conflicts and nuclear ambitions – point to a trend that is pervasive yet diffuse, namely the globalisation of insecurity.

A second and closely related feature of the phenomenon has to do with the transnationalisation of security relations (Camilleri 1994). While the vocabulary of international security has traditionally focused on the dangers posed by the military policies of states, increasingly communities have had to contend with the threats posed by ‘irregular substate units such as ethnic militias, paramilitary guerrillas, cults and religious organisations, organised crime, and terrorists’ (Chad 2000). It is now commonplace to refer to the proliferation of transnational threats. International debt, destabilising financial flows, transborder pollution, epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, piracy, drug trafficking, other forms of transnational crime, and large unregulated population movements have all come to be viewed as actual or at least potential sources of insecurity (Buzan 1991; Renner 1996, Singer 2002). The trend has assumed global proportions not simply in geographic terms but in the more profound sense that borders are increasingly permeable and offer diminishing protection against the diffusion of threats. The transnationalisation or, as we prefer to describe it, the globalisation of insecurity stems from the rising volume, speed and interrelatedness of flows – financial, atmospheric, viral, population and other flows – whose impact on the experience of insecurity is compounded by the exponential growth of information flows. We are as a direct consequence of the communications revolution witnessing the rising consciousness of the scale and multifaceted character of global disorder.

Here a brief digression may be in order. It is not just the latest advances in communications and information technology that have propelled the transnationalisation of threats. Paradoxically, tradition has also played a part. The contemporary role of religion and culture as significant contributors to international tension offers perhaps the most graphic illustration of this trend. The large number of serious conflicts with a religious dimension to them (over half of the world total in 2001) and the steady rise in religiously motivated international terrorism are manifestations of a complex and wide-ranging phenomenon. Diverse local and regional influences are no doubt at work, but an important common factor is the widespread disillusionment with Western modernity, and in particular with the role it assigns to science, technology and bureaucracy, and its marginalisation of religion, the sacred or the spiritual. The increasing importance of religious beliefs, practices and discourses in personal and public life, and as a consequence in local and national politics, has spread across diverse religious traditions and regions of the world. The trend is not confined to Muslim societies, poverty-stricken countries or failed states. It has become a significant current in the life of many Western societies, where conservative and Charismatic Catholics, evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants, radical Christians, New Age spiritualists, and a growing number of converts to Islam and Buddhism have made their presence felt (Thomas 2005).

Gilles Kepel’s analysis is highly revealing in this regard. The religious identity movements of the last few decades, he argues, represent a response to two interlinked developments: the growth of transnational threats to security and the collapse of communism and socialism. They represent a response to the perceived confusion and disorder in international relations and an attempt to revive ‘the vocabulary and the categories of religious thought as applied to the contemporary world’. Many of them view the modern secular city as ‘completely lacking legitimacy’, and consider that ‘only a fundamental transformation in the organization of society can restore the holy scriptures as the prime source of inspiration for the city of the future’ (Keppel 1994). But beyond this agreement they have widely divergent visions of social order and are often deeply hostile to each other as well as to the wider secular society. In recent decades, the resurgence of religion has given rise to new and sharper forms of contestation in multiple local, national and international settings – a trend greatly amplified by the rapid growth of large religious diasporic communities. Put simply, the return of religion to international centre stage is one manifestation, albeit the most dramatic thus far, of the underlying tension between modernity and tradition.

The lethality of modern war and the pervasiveness of security threats that are simultaneously subnational and transnational point to another closely related trend, namely the interpenetration of the national and the international. In such diverse areas of security as terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, climate change, immigration or infectious diseases the dividing line between internal and external security has become increasingly problematic. It is as if the spatial dimension of security relations has been radically altered. Traditionally, the sovereign nation-state has based its assumed monopoly over security policy on its control of physical distance. State boundaries and their protection by means of armed force were widely seen as the necessary instruments for both assessing and countering threats. However, with the transportation and communications revolutions, and the exponential growth of transnational actors and processes, national control over space has steadily dissipated. As a consequence, agency is exercised by old entities (states) in new ways, and by new or relatively new entities (subnational, transnational, supranational and international) in ways both old and new. The telling blows inflicted on the United States by Al Qaeda and other small terrorist groups through use of the airwaves – courtesy of Al Jazeera and a wide array of western media outlets – are a case in point. Present-day terrorism may be understood as a product of the dual movement of communitarianism and transnationalism. Born of the variable geometry of communication, commerce, industry and migration, transnational flows often restructure space in ways that deepen and extend the sources of insecurity.

The net effect of the multiple trends we have briefly outlined has been to call into question traditional concepts of security and the bureaucratic mindsets that accompany them. Although national policy making elites and even the security studies community have found it difficult to break loose from the constraints of past discourse and practice (Rasmussen 2004), there has nevertheless been a noticeable drift away from highly militarised, zero-sum definitions of security towards more inclusivist conceptions which privilege or at least give added emphasis to notions of reassurance, co-operation and interdependence (Mack 1991). The decline of Cold War tensions and the attempts to overcome the division of Europe mirrored and reinforced notions of common destiny and common security, which Gorbachev’s slogan of a ‘European home’ sought to harness and institutionalise (Bialer 1988, Camilleri 1992).

In contrast to the idea of collective defence, which seeks to draw a sharp dividing line between aggressive and law-abiding states, notions of common security seek to manage the problem of aggression not so much by punishing or coercing the aggressor as by influencing his motivation, by offering a mix of incentives and disincentives which predispose him to act within the constraints set by agreed norms and procedures. The concept acquired considerable currency in both academic and political discourse, especially during the 1980s and early 1990s (SIPRI 1985), and has since continued to surface in a great many official documents issued by both national governments and international organisations (OSCE 1996). The minimalist approach to common security seeks to reconcile the competing interests of states by institutionalising co-operative behaviour, whether through confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) or more ambitious arms control and disarmament agreements.

Equally important in the changing conception of security has been the attempt to move beyond its purely military connotations, to include not only the physical control of territory but the protection of social, political, economic and ecological values deemed vital to material and psychological well-being. This idea has given rise to numerous formulations, including ‘unconventional security’ (Bedeski 1992), ‘democratic security’ (Johansen 1991) and ‘alternative security’ (Galtung 1994). But by far the two most influential formulations in a policy sense have been ‘comprehensive security’ and ‘human security’. In the Asia-Pacific context where the idea has gained considerable currency, comprehensive security, at least in the case of Japan, dates back to 1976. In time the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the most concerted attempt at regionalism in Asia, would formally adopt comprehensive security, at first largely as a rhetorical device but increasingly as a policy framework. For ASEAN the attraction of the concept was its emphasis on threats to internal security and the wider tasks of nation building (Alagappa 1988), but as time went on a broader security agenda embracing such transnational issues as narcotics, money laundering, environment and illegal migrants assumed increasing importance (ASEAN 1996). Comprehensive security became a major focus of regional second track diplomacy and an abiding, though uneven, preoccupation of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) established in July 1994 (Camilleri 2003).

A closely related but distinct conception of security has gained even greater prominence especially since it was formally enunciated by the UNDP Human Development Report of 1994 (UNDP 1994). While human security shares with comprehensive security a concern for inclusiveness in defining the security agenda, it focuses more explicitly on human beings rather than the state as the primary unit of analysis (kim and Hyun 2000).  As a consequence, UN policy discourse has tended to describe human rights and human development as essential pillars of human security. National governments have also made use of the concept, but with notable differences of emphasis, with some, in particular Japan, putting their weight behind economic development goals and strategies, and others, notably Canada, stressing instead the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms (Thakur 2006). A further development in this conceptual shift has come with the rising incidence of humanitarian emergencies (often accompanied by varying forms of institutional failure and gross abuse of human rights), which has stimulated and justified the recourse to ‘humanitarian’ intervention, and most recently the notion of the ‘responsibility to protect’. This shift in security discourse is still very much at an embryonic stage. There is evidence, however, of movement towards  a subtler understanding of the conditions making for insecurity, and of the structures, relationships and agencies that may be needed to sustain a viable security system.

The Contribution of the Dialogue of Civilisations

Globalisation, as we have noted, is an elusive, confusing and contradictory phenomenon. With the collapse of communism no credible alternative to global capitalism is in sight. There is as of now no international agency or political movement that can exercise effective leadership in interpreting, much less guiding, economic and political change. There is no simple or single solution to the globalisation of insecurity

In response to the uncertainties and complexities of the present conjuncture, numerous ideas and initiatives have been proposed since the end of the Cold War as an ethical and political compass for the journey ahead. Particularly useful in this regard are the various proposals to democratise the institutions and mechanisms which will make vitally important decisions about the future (Aksu 2002, Commission on Global Governance 1995, Held 1995). This is why the reform of institutions has become such a critical issue – institutions at all levels: local, provincial, national, regional and global (Prakash 1999). In this context, the rather limited achievements of the 2005 UN summit have been a source of widespread disappointment.

But if we are to develop a much more encompassing and integrated approach to the multiple sources of human insecurity, and if we are to build institutions that citizens can trust and in which their voices can be heard (Kymlicka and Norman 1995, Falk 1994, 1995, Ury 1999), what intellectual and cultural resources can we call upon as we approach these daunting tasks? It is here that the dialogue of civilisations may have a great deal to offer. It may in fact hold an important key to the future.

Dialogue across cultural and religious boundaries is not, of course, a new idea. It is now well over a century since the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, brought together representatives of eastern and western spiritual traditions. Today it is recognized as the occasion that formally launched inter-religious dialogue in the modern period. The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR), which officially dates from 1988, was established as a centennial celebration of the 1893 Parliament. The 1993 Parliament adopted Towards a Global Ethic: an Initial Declaration, a powerful statement of the ethical common ground shared by the world’s religious and spiritual traditions.

The dialogical agenda has since gained considerable momentum with several national and international centres making civilisational dialogue a focal point of research, education and advocacy. These include the Institute for Interreligious, Intercultural Dialogue, the International Interfaith Centre (Oxford), the Global Dialogue Institute, the International Movement for a Just World (Kuala Lumpur), the International Centre for Dialogue among Civilisations (Tehran, the Centre for World Dialogue (Nicosia), and the Toda Institute for Global Policy and Peace Research (Honolulu and Tokyo). Other important institutional developments have included the establishment of the World Council of Religious Leaders and the World Conference of Religions for Peace. More recently, the UN General Assembly adopted in November 1998 a resolution proclaiming the year 2001 as the Year of dialogue among Civilizations. In November of that year, the General Assembly adopted the Global Agenda for Dialogue among Civilisations, which has in turn given rise to a great many governmental and non-governmental initiatives. Most recently, the Spanish Prime Minister launched the idea of an ‘Alliance of Civilisations”. The proposal launched in partnership with the Turkish Government has now been endorsed by the UN. Any such initiative is to be welcomed, to the extent that it advances the idea of dialogue.

Let me, then, develop in greater depth what I believe to be the holistic contribution of the dialogical approach, which I believe to be central to the ‘Globalisation for the Common Good initiative. First what is envisaged is a prolonged and dynamic interaction between cultures, aimed at promoting an approach to world order which can grapple with the globalisation of insecurity and the divisions which it mirrors and reinforces. In such interaction all traditions, not least the Islamic, Hindu and Confucian worlds, must be accorded full respect. They must be accepted as major poles of cultural and geopolitical dialogue. Such a project needs to appreciate the specificity of each culture, while contributing to an evolutionary process that builds on commonality but more importantly strives for synthesis.

For all their differences, these axial traditions share a sense of the dignity of human life, a sense of the transcendent, a commitment to human fulfilment, and a concern for standards of ‘rightness’ in human conduct (Muzaffar 1999, 25–31). Common to all of them is the notion of humane and legitimate governance, although the criteria used to measure of legitimacy may vary considerably from one tradition to another. There is, one may reasonably conclude, sufficient common ground between these religious and ethical world-views to make possible an on-going conversation about human ethics in general, and political ethics in particular (Friedman 1999, 32–55).  

Needless to say, each of the civilisational currents and cultural formations has its own unique features, but such differences need not be inimical to normative discourse either within or between the major civilisational traditions. All of the world’s major religious and ethical traditions (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism and secular humanism) have in any case experienced over time a multiplicity of influences, both indigenous an external. In many societies they have furiously interacted with each other and have in the process contributed to the slow but steady transformation of norms and expectations. The emerging inter-civilisational dialogue may benefit as much from difference as from commonality.

The contribution, then, of civilisational dialogue to the contemporary crisis must by definition be multi-faceted.  Six dimensions merit special attention.

1.    Dialogue can provide a richer and more varied conception of political community and humane governance by establishing a closer connection between human rights and the range of human needs, not least those of the disadvantaged (hence the emphasis on social and economic justice).

2.    It can offer a more holistic understanding of the human condition by establishing a closer connection between rights and responsibilities and between the individual and the community.

3.    It can help to situate human rights within a larger social context so that their application is not confined to individuals as disaggregated atoms but as members of larger collectivities, and of the international community as a whole, hence the emphasis on the rights of peoples B not only the right to self-determination but the right to a healthy environment, the right to peace, the right to food security, the right to share in the common heritage of humanity.

4.    The fourth dimensions flows from the preceding three but has an importance of its own. Dialogue cannot be based on domination or notions of superiority. We in the West cannot approach the task of dialogue with the presumption that the West enjoys a monopoly on the definition of human needs and good governance. The Western liberal model B and the particular view of progress on which it rests B cannot apply universally across time and space. Human rights and governance standards may be universal in scope at any one time, but how these standards are defined and applied is likely to change over time.

5.  In dialogue the emphasis must be on respectful communication and interaction. The development of a world society must proceed by way of negotiation and involve all of the parties concerned.

6.    In many ways our challenge is to practise a dialogue that appreciates and celebrates the diversity of our civilisational inheritance. Indeed, one of the valuable spin-offs of such a dialogue is that it forces the participants to hold their respective traditions up to critical examination, to rediscover the fundamental ethical impulse which sustains that tradition and to consider ways of adapting it to the new circumstances of our epoch. Civilisational dialogue works best when it fosters a profound soul-searching within as much as between civilisations.

To put it simply, inter-religious and intercultural dialogue can help articulate a new internationalism that goes beyond mere economic or technological interdependence, and subjects economic and political orthodoxy to ethical scrutiny.

Civilisational Dialogue: Its Contemporary Function and Significance

But how are we to approach the dialogue of civilisations? How are we to apply dialogical principles in the present geopolitical and geocultural context? Here, it may be helpful to draw attention to two influential voices which have in different but converging ways helped to place the dialogue of civilisations on the intellectual and political map. They have much to tell us about the way forward.

The first is Mohammad Khatami, the fifth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a religious scholar steeped in the study of philosophy.

For Khatami, dialogue is the common search for truth. Dialogue cannot therefore obscure or evade the differences that separate its participants, which is why for him the act is one in which listening is at least as important as speaking. Dialogue is the encounter across cultural, religious, philosophical, ethical, civilisational boundaries, in which each participant listens to the other, becomes open, even vulnerable to the other. In this sense, dialogue engages the participant in a journey of self discovery:

It is only through immersion in another existential dimension that we could attain mediated and acquired knowledge of ourselves in addition to the immediate and direct knowledge of ourselves that we commonly possess.  Through seeing others we attain a hitherto impossible knowledge of ourselves. Dialogue among cultures and civilisations, rests upon rational and ethically normative commitment of parties to the dialogue. . . [It] is a bi-lateral or even multi-lateral process in which the end result is not manifest from the beginning (Khatami 2000).

What, then, are dialogue’s normative foundations? The recurring themes in Khatami’s numerous speeches on the subject suggest the following key elements: a) the dignity of human being – made possible only through will to empathy and compassion – as the measure of world order; b) the refusal of politics without morality; c) the notion that ideas and values, embedded in cultures and civilisations, are an important determinant of political behaviour; d) the sense that intellectuals, poets, artists, scientists and mystics, precisely because they have the capacity and authority to articulate the large questions of human existence, have a unique role in civilisation dialogue.  Many questions remain unanswered: Who participates in this dialogue? What are the modalities of dialogue? What is to be the role of states and governments in the dialogical process?

There is nevertheless one idea, central to Khatami’s conception of dialogue, which merits attention. In his celebrated 1999 speech at the University of Florence, he offered the following juxtaposition of East and West:

Orient, which even in an etymological sense signifies the process of imparting direction and order to things, can beckon Europe and America to equilibrium, serenity and reflection in the context of an historical dialogue . . . If deeply understood in their Eastern connotations, equilibrium and serenity lie beyond both the Dionysian and Apollonian extremes of western culture. The age of reason is an Apollonian age while romanticism is the opposite pull on the swing of the same pendulum (Kahatami 1999).

Khatami’s exposition takes us back to the question of what is to be the discursive framework that guides the post-Cold War era. For Khatami dialogue among civilisations is designed specifically to address the fault line that separates Orient and Occident, a fault line that has a long history, of which the present difficulties between Islam and the West are but the most recent, perhaps geopolitically most troublesome manifestation.

Another influential voice that merits attention is that of Tu Weiming, perhaps the foremost neo-Confucian thinker of our time. Born in February 1940 in Kunming, China, he grew up and was educated in Taiwan and is now Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies at Harvard University (Tu Weiming 1985a, 1985b, 1999, 1996).

A recurring theme of Tu Weiming’s intellectual contribution is the modern transformation of Confucian humanism (de Bary 1988). Confucian values, he argues, remain highly relevant to modernity and are evident in contemporary social practices, at least as principles of societal organisation. These include:  a) the role of the state in the management of the market; b) social civility as the key to civilised mode of conduct (law is useful but not enough); c) the family as the foundation stone of social civility; d) civil society as the indispensable nexus between family and state; e) education as the key to civil society; f) self-cultivation understood as both goal and process.

Confucian societies retain many of these values even as they embrace the fierce competitiveness of the West. The reason is not hard to fathom: modernisation and modernity are shaped by cultural forms rooted in tradition:

Traditions in Modernity are not merely historical sedimentation passively deposited in modern consciousness.   Nor are they simply inhibiting features to be undermined by the unilinear trajectory of development – on the contrary they are both constraining and enabling forces capable of shaping the particular contour of modernity in any given society (Tu Weiming 1999).

For Tu Weiming, these traditions constitute the critical elements of sustainable dialogue.

What can Confucianism bring to such a dialogue? Here is where Tu Weiming is at his most illuminating. He draws attention to what he calls the ‘ecological turn’ of neo-Confucian thought, and in particular to the contribution of three modern Confucian thinkers. Qian Mu (1895-1990), Tang Junyi (1909-1978) and Feng Youlan (1895-1990) based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China respectively. In their critique of the enlightenment and the discourse of modernity, they take us, he contends, beyond aggressive anthropocentrism and instrumental rationality, and pave the way for an inclusive cosmological and humanist vision that transcends the either/or mode of thinking in favour of a non-dualistic understanding of the continuity of heaven, earth and humanity.

The theme is a highly instructive one, for it offers another path to East-West dialogue. Placed in this context, it is not hard to see why Tu Weiming sees the long-term stability of the Sino-American relationship as likely to depend on China widening the frame of reference offered by its own civilisation. For its part, the United States which has hitherto functioned principally as a teaching civilisation may have to acquire more of the qualities of a learning culture. Put simply, Tu Weiming suggests that we may be entering a ‘second axial period’ in which all the major religious and ethical traditions that arose during the ‘first axial period’ are undergoing their own distinctive transformations in response to the multiple challenges of modernity. It is possible that such reassessment will make possible, through a process of mutual learning an ‘anthropocosmic’ worldview where the human is embedded in the cosmic order. This period of transition is the ‘dialogical moment’, the beginning of a new history that is simultaneously global and plural. Such a moment, Tu Weiming tells us, can flourish when ‘the politics of domination is being replaced by the politics of communication, networking, negotiation, interaction, interfacing and collaboration’ (Tu Weiming 2001).

Despite the vastly different cultural and ideological backgrounds from which they spring, influential voices have emerged calling for a distinctive approach to world order, sharply at variance with western triumphalism or imperial discourse. This approach lends itself to the following propositions:

1. Dialogue, that is encounter with the other, is the path to self-discovery and is therefore a profoundly transformative process;

2. Dialogue can proceed only with the renewal of tradition against the backdrop of modernity;

3. The dialogue of civilisations proposes first and foremost the dialogical encounter between East and West;

4. Such encounter will involve a new synthesis constituted of both differences and commonalities; 

5. The dialogue of civilisations offers a particularly promising cultural underpinning for a new conception of global citizenship and governance;

6. The encounter of civilisational insights should inform and even guide the political processes of states, but also the international rule of law and the constantly expanding network of regional and global institutions.

One other observation is highly relevant. Dialogue is no simple or easy remedy for the world’s current ills. If the philosophy and method of dialogue are to be applied to the theory and practice of citizenship and the wider normative framework governing state conduct, this will inevitably involve a good deal of pain. For citizens and the various communities to which they belong (as well as states themselves) must come to terms with the difficult task of reconciliation. Many communities have suffered from past violence, some continue to suffer today. Yet, we also know that many of these same communities have been the perpetrators of violence. Reconciliation will require citizens and authorities of different communities to share their stories, to listen to one another’s experience of pain, to confess past wrongs, to acknowledge collective responsibility for righting the wrongs of the past. Civilisational dialogue can become a force for healing to the extent that it nurtures a radical ethic in the evolving organisation of human affairs. The strong have to cultivate the vitute of humility

In this unfolding transitional moment, the initiative is likely to lie as much with civil society as with the state – though there is a great deal that states can and must do. If we as members of civil society (locally, nationally and transnationally), are to address the immense challenges of the next several decades, we will need to participate in a dialogue of global proportions – global not simply in geographic terms, but global in the sense that it cultivates a ‘global spirituality’. This will be a dialogue tailored to a new conception of citizenship that puts an entirely different complexion on unity and difference, and allows them to coexist, illuminate and reinforce each other.

The obstacles to such a project are obvious and daunting. Yet the opportunities for moving forward may be greater than is often assumed. We are in fact witnessing the emergence of a new kind of universalism, and the slow, at times erratic but unmistakable diffusion of power. Despite periodic setbacks, we are seeing the increasing universality of the UN system, as measured not only or even primarily by the number of member states, but by the increasing participation of a wide range of non-state actors, the widening scope of consultation, and the UN's steadily expanding agenda and forms and techniques of involvement. Increasingly, the world's global and regional institutions are in practice, if not in theory, rethinking the centrality of the principle of sovereignty. Mirroring and reinforcing that tendency is the embryonic development of a global civil society, which is giving rise to new processes of global communication and co-operation

A new universalism, nurtured by the dialogue of civilisations, may also facilitate the growth of a multipolar system in the United States is joined by Western Europe, Russia, China, Japan, India and possibly an Islamic coalition in defining the priorities of the international agenda. A dialogical universalism, attuned to the cultural, religious and philosophical plurality of the world, may be better able to handle the North-South divide, whether on issues of trade, debt or environment. It may in time give rise to a global reform coalition that includes a number of states and their agencies, international organisations, knowledge communities, and the rapidly expanding groups, movements and networks that comprise civil society. Participants in the dialogue of civilisations must stand ready to reimagine the future and so transform the present.

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