Strategic Council Online - Opinion: It is hoped that the war in Ukraine will lead to a security-diplomatic renaissance in Europe, and a new era of flourishing diplomatic wisdom will be created through empathetic intuition on the European continent, to such an extent that Eur Countries will adhere to rational standards in foreign policy and peer communication with other nations.
Dr. Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Secretary of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, and Nematollah Mozaffarpour, Researcher on Diplomacy and Political Thought, in a joint note for the website of the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, addressed the question of “Is concern and experience of Europeans from the insecurity caused by the war in Ukraine, can bring them down from the ivory tower of the traditional flawed mentality so that they empathetically understand the concerns of other nation-states, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, about insecurities and threats?”
Knowingly, it is also illustrative of “intellect and development” and especially “diplomatic wisdom and awareness”. It can even be said that if empathy is not possible in the field of knowledge, according to the opinion of many new thinkers, but in the field of politics and diplomacy, it is not only possible to a certain extent but also a sign of reason. In that case, the war in Ukraine, despite irreparable damages, can have a positive result, and that is the formation of a new era in the foreign policy of Europeans, which can perhaps be interpreted as the enlightenment and flourishing of diplomatic wisdom through empathetic and wise intuition of the current world. With the difference that the former Renaissance and Enlightenment era was the “flourishing era of philosophical, social and political reason”, but following the Ukraine war, we can and should expect the “flourishing era of foreign and diplomatic policy reason”. This means that Europeans should obey rational standards in foreign policy and relations with other nations.
Although Europeans have a problematic view of their internal problems, in the rest of the text, lack or poverty of Europe’s problematic view of diplomatic affairs and relations with other nations and civilizations will be pointed out, and it will be said that the new Renaissance means transformation in this field, that is to say, the field of foreign relations.
The Renaissance era and the subsequent Enlightenment era of Europe transformed human, moral, political, economic, and security relations step by step. They ended in a new position with Westphalia and the Age of Enlightenment. But the truth is that “politics” overcame reason, culture, and philosophy after a while.
All such developments ultimately created the mentality that the West is the superior civilization, and therefore, step by step, it lost the intellect of conversation and communication with others, and became arrogant and colonialist, and the structure and context of a fundamentalist ideology that wanted and still wants to order, rather than negotiate. It is reported that in the case of the separation of Herat from Iran and the initial negotiations in Istanbul, the English side told the Iranian side that ‘I have come to give orders, not to negotiate!’
It is surprising that the Western camp accused communism for decades of trying to “engineer” the affairs of other countries and nations and considered this strategy as the enemy of freedom and open society, poisoning the world and disrupting world peace, but it itself for two centuries embarked on engineering world society and politics, and for four decades engineering Iran’s transformations. It is more interesting that after eight years of Iran’s resistance against the dictator of Baghdad, who benefited from the Soviet long-range missiles, French Mirage fighters, British Chieftain tanks, German materials for chemical weapons, and information from the US AWACS planes, they still ask why Iran should have ballistic missiles?! Or, while Europe and the US have turned the four sides of Iran into warehouses of advanced weapons, they complain about Iran’s regional policies and consider Iran’s regional influence, which is a geopolitical requirement, a threat.
Coordinates of diplomatic dementia in Europe
This type of Europe’s view of protecting its own security and destroying the security of others is not reason; rather, it is instinct and naturalism. With this mentality, Westerners cannot interact with the world unless they can put themselves in the place of others and assume the right to defend national interests and security for everyone. This is the same commitment to the “logic and method” of diplomatic interaction, which means the need for “empathy” and a rational understanding of other people’s security concerns and not threatening them excessively.
It is a fact that for two centuries, Europe has tried to repeat its lived experience before the Treaty of Westphalia by engineering the internal affairs of countries in West Asia. Their recent effort to support anti-religious and subversive foreign elements can also be seen with the aim of polarizing and igniting the religious fire and internal conflict in Iran, a fire that they experienced before Westphalia. This time they did not overthrow the government but overthrew the nation through radicalization and riding the wave of internal problems.
Ukraine war, possibility, refusal of flourishing diplomatic reason
The war in Ukraine is a great impulse for Europe. But this time, is the West willing to take a realistic look at others and their security concerns? For this Renaissance, Europe must go through a corridor that phenomenologists call the “gate of empathy”.
Such a conclusion is attainable that Europe’s problems with the Islamic Republic of Iran are not merely technical and technocratic differences, such as the deployment and monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s cameras, but rather an intellectual problem on the part of Europe, which Husserl calls it a product of the dominance of experience and empirical perception on reason.
The view of Europe and the Western world, towards Iran and the world, needs a perceptive upgrade, and this view should be “contextualistic”. With this approach, it can be said that the securitization of Iran and the imposition of economic sanctions, more than violating the economic rights of Iranians, remove civil and political rights from the healthy civil sphere and brings them into the pit of the security sphere, and sterilizes them.
Conclusion
It can be safely said that all European humanities schools have become contextual in the past half a century. However, it is surprising that Western politics still seeks to engineer the affairs of nations. In fact, these anti-pacifist doctrines of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and fascism are the ones that practically have complete control over Western politics. The door of their foreign policy and human rights still closes on the heels of fundamentalist and absolutist ideas of abandoned positivism of the 18th and 19th centuries, who wanted to build the world with their mentality.
It is hoped that the war in Ukraine will lead to a security-diplomatic Renaissance in Europe and a new era of flourishing diplomatic intelligence through empathetic intuition will be created on the European continent, to such an extent that European countries will adhere to rational standards in foreign policy and peer communication with other nations. In that case, the world will become a better place for mankind.
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