How civilisational divides are threatening the independence of small nations

For decades after World War II, the international system was built on the principle of sovereign equality. Institutions like the United Nations and multilateral treaties were designed to prevent great power conquest and give small states a voice and security protection. This modern nation-state system brought stability and security by ensuring that even the smallest countries could stand as legal equals to the most powerful.

Today, however, this system is crumbling before our eyes. The United Nations (UN) — once the symbol of sovereign equality — is fading from the stage of world affairs. While Gaza burns under relentless bombardment, the UN Security Council sits paralysed. Even worse, Israel has expanded its campaign beyond Gaza, bombing Qatar — a sovereign state that hosts the US Central Command. 

Such a direct assault is unprecedented in the modern era under the nation-state system and even more shocking than the West’s complicity with Nazi aggression during World War II. At least then, there was still a pretence of defending international law. Even the League of Nations, founded after World War I, despite its many flaws and lack of enforcement power, dispatched an investigative team to examine Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931.

Today, by contrast, Western governments do not merely look away — they actively enable genocide and the destruction of international law, despite large-scale protests from their own citizens. This behaviour is even more shameful and dangerous than the appeasement politics of the 1930s, when fascist powers were dismantling the nation-state-based international system. It can no longer be explained solely in terms of lobbying or political complicity. Instead, it reflects a deeper shift: the embrace of “civilisational” discourses promoted by Israel since the end of the Cold War.

The much-celebrated Abraham Accords reveal the depth of this strategic deception in the Middle East. These agreements do not resolve the core territorial disputes or address the legal status of occupied lands. Instead, they obscure these issues, cloaking illegal occupations and criminal settlements under the guise of religious and “civilisational” rhetoric.

If the Accords were truly about fostering dialogue and mutual understanding between Abrahamic traditions, they would bring together influential Jewish communities and religious leaders — such as Orthodox Jews in New York — and major Muslim-populous countries like Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. Instead, the deals are struck between Israel, dominated by primarily Eastern European Ashkenazi elites, and tiny Gulf monarchies with small native populations, limited intellectual influence and little geopolitical weight. 

These hollow partnerships demonstrate how “civilisational” language can be used to mask hard geopolitical realities and normalise power imbalances. Indeed, the so-called Abraham Accords are part and parcel of Israel’s “civilisation” strategy.

These cases make one thing clear: international law is being systematically dismantled and replaced by competing “civilisational” narratives. Powerful states no longer respect borders, treaties, or the sovereignty of others. Instead, they claim to speak on behalf of entire civilisations, invoking history — or even mythology — to justify expansion and the occupation of perceived historical territories on the edges of their so-called civilisational spheres.

Alarmingly, some scholars, policymakers, and even resistance movements in small and medium-sized nations are being drawn into these civilisational narratives, whether knowingly or not. By adopting “civilisational” frames, they inadvertently legitimise a world order where might makes right, and cultural or religious claims override legal norms.

This shift poses an existential threat to weaker nation-states. When self-proclaimed civilisational “cores” or so-called civilisational states elevate their history and civilisation over international laws and rules, small states are left defenceless. The UN is becoming the hypocritical League of Nations. We see this today in the Arab monarchies, which face Israel’s jingoistic aggression without facing any sanctions or retaliation, while no collective body steps forward to defend them.  

If the world continues to fragment into competing civilisational spheres — with no court to appeal to, no institution to guarantee sovereignty, and survival dependent solely on power — then weaker nations will be reduced to bargaining chips in the struggles of giants, forced to live at the mercy of their dominant civilisational “big brothers” or neighbours.

To halt this descent, the world must strengthen — rather than abandon — the nation-state system. Small states need genuine security guarantees and meaningful representation in global governance. Major powers must resist the temptation to cloak conquest in the language of civilisational identity, a narrative that Israel has been actively exporting. International law must be reaffirmed as the ultimate authority for resolving disputes, while multilateral institutions like the UN must be either meaningfully revitalised or replaced with bodies capable of enforcing rules and protecting sovereignty.

If global governance reform proves impossible due to the veto powers of major states that have whitewashed the crimes of their religious or sectarian allies, regional solutions must be pursued. Regional leagues should evolve into collective security treaty organisations, backed by nuclear deterrence to ensure lasting stability. In this sense, nuclear proliferation becomes the only viable means of deterring aggression, expansion and occupation. In the Middle East, for instance, a security arrangement involving nuclear-armed Pakistan could potentially offer a viable path towards lasting peace. 

The rise of “civilisational” big brothers is not inevitable — it is a political choice made in the vacuum created by the collapse of an international order based on nation-state principles. Civilisational politics is seductive because it appeals to pride, history and identity. But it is profoundly dangerous.

The challenge of our time is not to choose between civilisations, but to preserve the principle that every nation-state, no matter how small, has equal rights under international law. Without that principle, sovereignty itself will vanish — just as the UN is vanishing today.

Related: The costly standoff between fragile superpowers | The clash of civilisations has finally begun?