A former Danish minister has warned that the world is facing a global war over values, because values-based conflicts are uncompromising and because values themselves cannot be divided.
In an article for The National Interest, Jürgen Ørström Müller, Denmark's former state secretary for foreign affairs, wrote that the conflicts inherent in the current war in Ukraine will not end anyway, because they are "global, permanent," and will transcend all kinds of wars that broke out in the first decades of the century.
The first of these conflicts is the determination of the West to defend its hegemony over the world economically, militarily and culturally. The second, which is largely indefinite in the author's view, lies in a clash between two opposing value systems. This clash is usually described as a struggle for "democracy against tyranny," but this view is "imprecise and superficial."
Human values
It's more about abandoning or preserving family values as they have been known for thousands of years, says Mueller, who is now a researcher at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore.
Perhaps it is more correct to say that the second conflict inherent in the Ukrainian war is whether one accepts or rejects the aggressive side of liberalism, or what some like to describe in their national culture as anti-gender and anti-political.
These two conflicts are colliding in Ukraine for historical reasons, drawing attention to what will determine the global power game for far too long, says the former Danish minister.
The rise in capabilities of countries such as China and other medium-sized countries has eroded the superiority of the United States, which has long been the world's most powerful military power.
War of Hegemony
Its cultural dominance has been represented by entertainment, communications, and social networks that control people's daily lives around the globe.
However, this situation is currently contested mainly by Chinese companies and not limited to them alone. However, the United States is trying to take action to stave off this challenge.
On the economic and technology front, the United States has sanctioned the sale of advanced semiconductors to China in an attempt to impede progress in high-tech development, particularly related to artificial intelligence.
Similarly, the door is closed to selected Chinese investments in Western countries.
War on values
Over recent decades, the West has moved forward to radically change its entrenched value system derived from Christianity by diluting or modifying it to adopt a different value system, such as defending homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender people, leading to the formation of a family structure that has not been heard of throughout history.
But the rest of the world is not following the West's lead. Most countries outside the Western sphere still cling to "old" values, which may be fueling the rift between the West and the rest of the world.
The problem, Müller goes on to say, is not that there are two value systems, but that the West is espousing the view that this "new" value system should be embraced by the rest of the world, a kind of cultural attitude to the "end of history."