People (Jen), State and Inter-state Relations

Human activity can be divided into individual, family, subgroup, social, national, international, etc. Foreign countries and foreign cultures constitute our “Outer World”. Human beings have lived in a relatively closed environment for most of their history, and the “international” level of activity came after the emergence of the state (or, to be precise, the modern nation-state).

From the theory of psycho-culturology briefly described in Chap.　2, it is clear that the Human Constant constitutes the main content of a society and a civilization, while the psychosocial homeostasis is the principle that explains individual and social changes.

In a paper published in 2016, Justin Rosenberg, a professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, made a somewhat surprising judgment about International Relations: International Relations has been bound to a “political science cage” and has failed to address the ontological singularity.

In the face of China’s rise, the waves of “China threat theory” in the West may not all be malicious, but there may be a cultural misinterpretation behind it because in the Western historical experience (and to a large extent in modern international relations), the rise of a great power must be accompanied by foreign expansion and, in most cases, ultimately by force. The problem is solved by force. It is natural to associate China’s future strength with its expansion and to feel a sense of insecurity based on this experience.

After the end of the Cold War, some scholars predicted, based on the experience of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, that China would also collapse. In their framework, China appears to be an unspeakable monster. On the other hand, China’s achievements in recent years have given us such confidence that the academic community has developed the concept of the “Chinese model”, arguing that China’s achievements and development concepts reflect the requirements of a new era and a new mission and further reasoning that “traditional Chinese culture has the capacity to abandon.

A common feature of Western (especially Anglo-Saxon Teutonic) societies is that the “Human Constant” is “the Individual Jen”. The Individual Jen is a “system of people who deliberately sever their ties with others or reduce their dependence on others in their interactions, under the concepts of independence and freedom, or who advocate such a state of being”.

The withdrawal of the United States from some world organizations and treaties after the election of Donald Trump and the “trade war” between China and the United States have prompted me to think about this question: is the trend of “globalization” going to be reversed? China and the United States truly want to fall into the so-called Thucydides trap?

Commentators often cite individualism as the key to understanding American society and culture. From our perspective, two points need to be made: first, American individualism is both related to and distinct from European individualism; the former is a refined version or extreme form of the latter, so the American version of individualism should be named differently from European individualism. Second, “individualism” is a value system or ideology that is a reflection of a more fundamental fact—the “Human Constant”—that individualism is a system of values or ideology. That is, individualism is the “end”, and the “Human Constant” is the “essence”.

We refer to the basic Human Constant of Americans as The Rugged Individual Jen—a refined version of the Individual Jen—and use it as a key to understanding American society and culture. According to the principles of science, if a concept is key to understanding something, it must be used to explain many aspects of that thing. Indeed, when we use this concept to explain American attitudes and patterns of behavior toward the “outside world”, we find that it does have strong explanatory power. For example, some literature discussing U.S. diplomacy from a cultural perspective point to the “natural human rights”, “individualism”, “liberalism”, “racism”, “utilitarianism” and “expansionism” of American culture. However, when asked further about the roots of these characteristics and how they are intrinsically linked, there are few convincing explanations. When these cultural observations of American diplomacy are examined in relation to the notion of the Rugged Individual Jen, a fundamental American interpersonal state, it is possible not only to examine the appropriateness of these expressions but also to elucidate their roots and reveal their interconnectedness.

The concept of “soft power” proposed by Joseph Nye, an American scholar and former dean of the Harvard School of Government, seems to have become a popular topic in international relations studies in recent years. The concept of “soft power” (also translated as “soft power” or “soft power”) proposed by Joseph Nye, an American scholar and former dean of the Harvard School of Government, seems to have become a popular topic in international relations research in recent years. Nye defines soft power as “the ability of a country to gain the benefits it desires internationally through intrinsic attractiveness”.

Commentators often talk about “the West of individualism” and “the East of syndicalism” and conclude that Japanese people are completely submerged in their organizations and “lack subjectivity”. They conclude that Japanese people are completely submerged in their organizations and “lack subjectivity” and “have no self” (Reischauer in The Japanese, Chinese edition. Shanghai Translation Press, 1980; Hirosi in Nhon no jiga (Japan's Self). Iwami New Book, 1983). Obviously, this opinion is based on a society with “subjectivity” and “self” (in fact, the American and European individual societies) as a reference point, which implies “immaturity” and “underdevelopment”, “underdeveloped” in a pejorative sense. Other scholars, seeing the difficulties in explaining Japanese behavior using social science concepts based primarily on Western experience, have tried to move away from a Western-centric position.

Mainstream international relations theories originating from the United States, such as neorealism, neoliberalism, and constructivism, are all systems theories based on the presupposition of anarchy. Waltz (Theory of International Politics. Addison-Wesley, 1979) argued that the fundamental difference between domestic and international politics is that domestic political systems are centralized and hierarchical, while international political systems involve relations between equal actors, with no country having the authority to issue commands. Therefore, he considered the international political system as a structure of anarchy, viewing states as “like unit” actors. He assumed that, in the pursuit of self-preservation, states would have similar reactions under an anarchic system, thus abstracting states’ values and cultures to become sameness units of the system and explaining the impact of changes in the international system on the actors.

India and China are both ancient civilizations that have experienced invasion and domination by Western colonialists in recent times and have become independent from colonial rule almost simultaneously. The difference, however, is that politically, India pursues a Western-style political system, with a parliamentary system, multiparty elections, and relative decentralization of power as its main features. China, on the other hand, has opted for a socialist system with Chinese characteristics, with “multiparty participation under one-party leadership”, “democratic centralism”, “people's congresses”, and the relative concentration of power. The nature of these two systems, and their pros and cons, are viewed differently by different people, such as Indians who boast of being “the most populous democracy in the world” and “the most democratic country in the developing world”. The Chinese, too, are grateful to have chosen the socialist path and have shown great antipathy and rejection of Western democracy. It is not scientific to draw categorical conclusions about these different views. In this regard, two things are certain. First, the political system chosen by each of these two ancient societies is something new, either in theory and practice from the West (the Indian option) or in theory from the West (the Chinese option). Second, after nearly half a century of experimentation, the institutions chosen by each have largely taken root in their countries and show no signs of collapsing in the foreseeable future, so that they can be said to fit their respective national conditions.

There are now three major international systems, namely the ancient Roman system (Colonial system), the ancient East Asian world system (or tribute system), and the modern international system (or “Westphalian system”) that emerged in modern Western Europe and have spread throughout the world, but there does not seem to be a South Asian international system. The absence of an international system in South Asia is often based on the region's long history of fragmentation and constant alien invasions. It is undeniable that the lack of credible historical information, the short period of political unification, and the high number of alien conquests are facts, but it does not seem to be possible to conclude that there is no international system in the subcontinent. The reasons for this are as follows. First, the region has also seen larger empires in its history, such as the Maurya Dynasty (321 BC–180 BC), the Gupta Dynasty (320 BC–550 BC), and the Mughal Dynasty (1526 AD–1707 AD), which ruled the subcontinent most of the region and formed a sort of international system, only for a relatively short period of time (compared to China and the ancient Roman Empire); second, the region was politically divided and suffered from foreign invasions only in relative terms, since the history of China and Europe was also marked by political divisions, mutual warfare, killings, and foreign invasions among the small states. In Europe, at least from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire to the establishment of the modern Westphalian system for nearly 1000 years, the region was politically divided, and the number and intensity of wars were no less than those in South Asia.