Beware when the world’s most powerful leaders talk of “civilization.” Their abuse of the term could spawn a new international order.
Russia is “an original civilization-state,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a prominent annual forum in Sochi in 2023, adding that “the world is on its way to a synergy of civilization-states.” The same year, Xi Jinping called China “the only great, uninterrupted civilization that continues to this day in a state form.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi describes his own state as “the most refined idea of human civilization.”
