The interregnum between ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and the ‘Concert of Civilisations’ playing now on the World Stage
Author : Chandra Vikash | Interim President | Earth Federation

Published: 28 January, 2026 | 17:00hrs ISTTheatre of the Absurd | The interregnum between ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and the ‘Concert of Civilisations’ playing now on the World Stage

Part I : From “Clash of Civilizations” to the Absurd Drama of Modern Geopolitics
Part II: Beyond the Clash: Huntington’s Thesis and Its Discontents
Part III: Toward a Concert of Civilizations: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and ViBES Global Alliance

Part I
From “Clash of Civilizations” to the Absurd Drama of Modern Geopolitics
In the post–Cold War era, many scholars predicted paradigms to explain global conflict and cooperation. Among these, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis (formulated in the 1990s) argued that future conflicts would be rooted less in ideology or economics and more in cultural and civilizational fault lines. Huntington foresaw a world polarized by enduring identity blocs — Western, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, etc. — locked in structural, often violent, competition.

However, the world stage today looks less like a coherent pattern of civilizational blocs and more like a Theatre of the Absurd — a chaotic interplay of fleeting alliances, transactional diplomacy, and volatile rivalries among “sovereign” states with deep mistrust and unpredictability. National interests fluctuate rapidly; treaties and institutions designed to manage conflict decay or are ignored. Rather than disciplined statecraft, global politics has increasingly featured opportunistic deal-making, brinkmanship, and rhetorical posturing.

Figures like former U.S. President Donald Trump symbolize this shift for many observers: unpredictable leadership, transactional international engagement, and a reduced emphasis on rule-based multilateral order. In this setting, diplomacy sometimes feels like petty bargaining rather than principled statesmanship — a dynamic that contributes to instability in an already fragile world order. contd.