Figure 1: Map shared by former President of Russia, Dmitri Medvédev in his official telegram channel. The map shows a prediction by Medvédev towards the end of the Special Military Operation (SMO): A split Ukraine where there is a Western non-Orthodox side absorbed by Poland, a residual central Ukraine with Kiev at the center, and an oriental side with Orthodox nature now part of Russia.
In this post I continue the last discussion about the different world civilizations. Before we focused in demography, but civilizations as you would notice, are highly represented by two major ingredients: The religion and the language. Perhaps, religion might be, the most important feature of what defines a world civilization. Already in 1996, S. Huntington wrote in the first pages of his famous book The clash of civilizations, that using old paradigms one could expect that Russia was going to eventually be attacked by Ukraine, because of a possible threat and that Ukraine was going to be conquered. This was a prediction by John Mearsheimer based on a statist paradigm where big nations with a long and unprotected border tend to clash into direct confrontation driven by security fears. However, Huntington stressed the fact that using a paradigm or a model based on world civilizations, it was more likely that the conflict would end in Ukraine split into two Ukraines: One oriental Ukraine that to be absorbed by Russia given its high Orthodox population, and another Ukraine, a Western Ukraine, as a residual with a non-Orthodox population. We can observe nowadays that the current SMO seems to be part of this direct confrontation (which however has larger roots beyond just Ukraine as a nation, but a whole set of nations that we can more or less represented as NATO). The scenario described by Mearsheimer and Huntington is also represented in reality by the recent annexation of Ukraine territories by Russia (the Donbass region). Moreover, we can add that the former President of the Russian Federation, Dmitri Medvédev shared in July 2022 the map that I show in Fig. 1, which highlights a split Ukraine, not as expected by Mearsheimer but as described by Huntington (except for a spontaneous appearance from Poland). Hence, I show here a clear example of the relevance of the religion being a key civilizational feature in the current world geopolitics.
Figure 2: Percetage of world population that can be associated to the different major religions in the world. The vertical dashed line represents the year 2022.
Going a bit deeper into the data and labels, we can say that the principal religions in the world, in demographic terms of course, are: The Christianity, the Islam, the Hinduism, the Buddhism, the Judaism, the Sikhism, and the Chinese folk-religions such as the Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, etc., encapsulated as a whole set. If we consider these religions, which are highly correlated with the world civilizations that we described in part 1, we can plot the percentage of the world population that follows the aforementioned religions (see Fig. 2), using the Gordon-Conwell theological seminar data (Status of Global Christianity, 2022). As we can observe, right now the highest number of followers is held by Christianity, but it will be eventually surpassed by the Islam. While the Christianity is spread principally by evangelization (conversion), the Islam is propagated by both conversion and at a higher rate compared to other religions, by reproduction. Hence, birth control policies (which I am not a fan of) would be easier to be applied and people will be less reluctant to accept them in countries such as China, rather than countries with a high muslim population such as India or Bangladesh. Next, we have a high percentage of Hindu population, and I will add the Sikh population to it, although they are different religions that live in the same country. These two religions mostly innhabit in India, which is probably the most representative example of a secular country, being a land inhabited by christians, sikhs, muslisms and mostly hindus. This makes India a highly complex country with a bunch of different religions, but dominated by the Hinduism which makes this country's idiosyncrasy a country with a high mediator capability in the international affairs, and we can observe this, up to some degree, in the current Ukraine's situation. It is more likely that a country such as India achieve to be a conflict mediator between the Rusia-China axis and the NATO axis, than a country such as Mexico, for example (which indeed has been proposing India to play this role in previous United Nations meetings). Then, still looking at Fig. 2, we can also notice a decline of the religion (in terms of demography) in China and, although not evident, a decline in the non-religious population, that even though it has a net growth, it does not grow in terms of percentage of the world population, since other religions grow at a faster rate.
Figure 3: Percentage of world population associated with the different branches of Christianity.
If we focus now just on Christianity, which is a major religion in the world, we can divided it into catholics and orthodoxs, which decided to split around a 1000 years ago. Moreover, a branch of Christianity separated from Catholicism as well, but this happened only around 500 years ago, this is the so called Protestant religion. Now, we can observe how these religions have been distributed around the world. The religion that comprises the russian territory, which is the Orthodox religion, has been declining (in demographic terms) over the years with respect to other religions. Then, we have the catholic population that leads the Christianity demography, followed by a protestant population that is growing (relative to the others). For example, the United States is already a protestant country, although with a zionist shade sometimes. Moreover, the Protestantism has been growing even in Latinoamerican soil (notice that Latinoamerican civilization is primarily catholic, and holds the highest number of catholics in the world). We can take a look at Brazil for instance, where around 30% of its population is already protestant, and we can roughly say that around 50-60% are catholics. This fact had a repercussion is the recent Brazil elections, where the protestant side of Brazil clearly leaned towards the Jair Bolsonaro who almost got the victory in the second round, agaisnt Lula de Silva. We can see that the Western civilization has a big number of catholics, but countries such as United States and United Kingdom hold a protestant majority, not catholic (funny enough, the rest of Europe is not protestant dominated, this is consistent with the clear link of the USA and the UK, both strongly linked by language and religion). The european countries that are near to Russia have a highest percentage of Orthodox population, that can be even the major religion in countries such as Romania. It seems then, that Latinoamerica will be the major pole of Catholicism in the upcoming years, if its not already. It is also worth highlighting that countries with many religions, often tend to show a higher degree of complexity in their domestic politics. This seems to be due to believers of different religions to take sometimes different political paths (represented often by politicians) as is the case of Brazil. Also, sometimes countries foster work, education, or economic advantages for minority religions. An example of this is the so-called reservation system in India, which provides extra job or university spots to groups of minority religions (such as Sikhism and Islam) sacrifiying or borrowing spots that in some cases are well deserved, but that in some other cases would be taken by hindus, in a merit based system. For example, a student with a good academic degree, which got a high score compared to a non-Hindu student, may lose its spot despite of having a better grade. This is part of the reservation system policy in India that seems to bear some resemblance to typical Western policies encompassed around the concepts of "Equity, Diversity and Inclusion". However, given the vast history of India, this policy rather comes from the ancient caste system in India, and not Western values. On the other hand, countries like China with also many religions such as we mentioned before (Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, etc.), seem to achieve something remarkable. Based on a merit system and putting aside the religious interests from the government, they get a solid governance in an organized society, since the different religions do not have an actual resonance on goverment decisions. This outcome can be seen as an aftermath of China not being a democracy in the old sense of the word or at the american style, being the idea of classic democracy a creation from the greeks and that has been modernizing itself according to the western rules. But rather, and I would like to quote Dr. Zhang Weiwei, who considers China to be a civilization-of-state and highlights the following: Throughout the history Europa has suffered a series of religious wars (where I highlight the Crusades, involding the Christiniaty and the Islam, or the current hybrid war along with the split of a Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Ukraine). However, even though China also have many religions, China has never, in thousands of years of history, suffered from religious wars at such scales, and different religions have learnt to live in armony. In current China, religion is simply a way of living, something personal, but when considering the nation as a whole, the religion should not interfere with politics. With this, I conclude that defective point of democracy, and that makes it "Manichaean", is that the democracy at the Western style, is a model that tends to be vulnerable when a nation has many relevant religion, demographycally speaking. For example, new policies will be proposed in order to obtain votes to satisfy a particular religious group, deviating from the merit system and dividing the nation from the inside. Therefore, such vulnerabilities will create instabilities in the country's domestic politics if not deal with carefully.