Without Lenin and Locke: The Impacts Of Islamic Resurgent on International Politics

Contemporary international politics is essentially the function of the interaction between the West and its global strategic environment. The Western mind always has been the directing force. The Lockean idea of the Commonwealth with its inherent war and peace attributes, and the Leninist conception of the world with its emphasis on capitalism and class conflict, are but different manifestations of the Western post-Enlighten­ ment universalism. Colonialism and imperialism were mainly European preoccupations, and even with the best of intentions, as encapsulated in the Kipling's version of the "white man's burden", European nations had emerged as predatory states whose activities led to the subjugation of the non-Europeans. The League of Nations to all intents and purposes was also a Western creation meant to salvage Judea-Christian civilization, while the United Nations, a post-World War Two concoction, was undergirded by the Anglo- Saxon desire to maintain its pre-eminent position.