Civilizational States
Description
A-DB:
"Liberal internationalism considers ... the civilizational state ... (its) inveterate enemy because such states are opposed by their very nature to the spread of the values that liberal internationalism represents.
So what are these newcomers to whom some writers have given the name of “civilizational states” (or civilization-states)? They are regional powers whose influence extends beyond their borders and who conceive the nomos of the Earth as fundamentally multipolar. Originally, the “civilizational state” label was reserved specifically for China and Russia, but this qualification can be applied to many other states which, by leveraging their culture and their long-running history, manage to project a sphere of influence exceeding their national territory or their ethno-linguistic group: India, Turkey, and Iran, to name but a few.
Civilizational states set against Western universalism a model according to which each civilizational group is considered to have a distinct identity, both in terms of cultural values and in political institutions, an identity that is not reducible to any universal model. These states do not simply want to pursue a sovereign policy without submitting to the dictates of supranational elites. They also seek to thwart any “globalist” project aimed at making the same principles prevail throughout the planet, because they are aware that the culture they embody is not identical to any other. Here we must bear in mind that no single culture can encompass all cultures; the notion of a “world culture” is a contradiction in terms.
Civilizational states have the common characteristic of denouncing Western universalism, which they regard as a masked ethnocentrism, an elegant way of concealing hegemonic imperialism. But above all, the civilizational states rely on their history and their culture, not only to affirm that these imply a political and social model different from the one that liberal internationalism seeks to impose but also to identify a conception of the world deemed to be the foundation of a “good life”, both politically and religiously—that is to say, built on a set of non-negotiable, substantive values that the state then has the mission of embodying and defending.
The civilizational state, in other words, seeks to establish a conception of the good that is based on particular substantive values and a specific tradition.
Whether they are led by a new tsar, a new emperor, or a new caliph, whether the rejection of the universal occurs in the name of the Confucian notion of “harmony”, the heritage of “holy Russia” (“Moscow, the third Rome”), Eurasianism, Hinduism, or the memory of the caliphate, civilizational states refuse to submit to the standards of the West, which some of them had accepted in the past in order to “modernize”. Westernization and modernization, therefore, no longer automatically go hand in hand."
(https://www.agonmag.com/p/the-dawn-of-civilizational-states?)