When Civilization Became Geopolitics
For many people, the word civilization is primarily associated with computer games. Yet long before Sid Meier released the strategy game Civilization in 1991, historians of ideas such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee had sought to understand world history as an interplay among civilizations. After the end of the Cold War, the concept returned—not only in academic theory but also in the self-understanding of the great powers themselves.
In The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992, Francis Fukuyama argued that the great ideological conflicts that had shaped the twentieth century had effectively come to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Liberal democracy, he maintained, represented not merely one political system among many, but the final form of humanity’s political development.
The following year, Samuel P. Huntington published his famous article The Clash of Civilizations?, later expanded into the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. If Fukuyama envisioned a future in which ideological conflict had come to an end, Huntington saw the dawn of a new era in which the principal conflicts would instead be fought between civilizations.
Huntington developed his theory as a challenge to Fukuyama’s optimism, drawing on Spengler’s and Toynbee’s conception of civilizations as enduring and distinct cultural spheres. He warned the West against assuming that liberal democracy would automatically gain universal acceptance. Instead, he argued that the defining conflicts of the future would be waged primarily between civilizations rather than between ideologies.
Ironically, Huntington’s ideas may ultimately have had a greater impact outside the West than within it. While many Western scholars criticized his model as overly schematic and essentialist, it provided a language that authoritarian great powers could use to legitimize their own geopolitical projects. Huntington’s theory thus became not merely a description of the world, but also a political instrument.
During the 1990s, civilizations were discussed primarily as historical and cultural communities. Three decades later, they have become narratives that states employ to legitimize claims to power, territorial expansion, and political control. A theory originally presented as an analysis of world politics thus became part of the intellectual framework that several authoritarian regimes now use to justify their own exercise of power.
Civilizational States
It was in Russia, above all, that the idea of civilizations acquired direct political significance. Aleksandr Dugin, whose 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics (Основы геополитики) is widely regarded as one of the most influential geopolitical works of post-Soviet Russia, built upon Huntington’s theory and developed a Eurasian civilizational vision in which Russia was no longer portrayed as merely one nation-state among others, but as the core of a distinct civilization.
Huntington’s civilizational model also resonated with the Chinese conception of a multipolar world order. Whereas Fukuyama envisioned a future in which liberal democracy would gradually become universal, Huntington opened the door to the idea that multiple civilizations, each with its own value system, would continue to coexist. In that sense, his theory provided an intellectual justification for the view that Western liberalism is not the final stage of humanity’s political development, but merely one of several possible civilizational projects.
The Chinese leadership has rarely referred explicitly to Huntington. Nevertheless, its rhetoric of a multipolar world order and its portrayal of China as a civilization several thousand years old rather than an ordinary nation-state closely parallel the civilizational language that Huntington described.
In Russia, by contrast, Huntington’s ideas had a far more direct impact. Aleksandr Dugin not only embraced the notion of competing civilizations but transformed it into a geopolitical program in which Russia was portrayed as the core of a Eurasian civilization with a historical right to reunite the neighboring peoples around it.
Huntington’s theory, however, did more than shape perceptions of one’s own civilization. It also contributed to a new way of understanding the adversary. If the world consists of competing civilizations, it becomes natural to portray one’s rival as a civilization either in ascent or in decline. In the Russian interpretation, the West increasingly came to be depicted as a civilization in decay—morally decadent, feminized, and spiritually disintegrating—while Russia was presented as the civilization that still defended tradition, Christianity, and historical continuity.
This message was not directed solely at the domestic population. The same civilizational narrative was adapted to different audiences beyond Russia’s borders. Within the Russian World (Russkiy mir), the war was portrayed as a defense of Russian civilization. Toward Ukraine, the message emphasized that the country rightfully belonged to this civilization and therefore ought to return to it. For conservative audiences in the West, by contrast, the narrative focused on a decadent, post-Christian, and morally disintegrating Europe and North America, while portraying Russia as the last defender of traditional Christian values.
Turkey, meanwhile, offers an instructive example of how civilizational ideas are not always internally coherent. Under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, official rhetoric has increasingly portrayed Turkey as a civilizational state rooted in the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. This neo-Ottoman narrative presents Turkey as the heir to a centuries-old Islamic and imperial tradition while emphasizing the country’s historical responsibility for territories that once formed part of the Ottoman realm. As in Russia, civilization functions not merely as a description of history but also as a source of political legitimacy.
At the same time, another narrative exists alongside the neo-Ottoman one. Pan-Turkic identity is based not primarily on religion but on language, common ancestry, and cultural affinity among Turkic peoples stretching from Anatolia through the Caucasus and Central Asia to western China. For many Turkish nationalists, this identity is at least as important as the Ottoman legacy. The two narratives overlap in part, yet they rest on different principles. The neo-Ottoman narrative is civilizational, drawing its legitimacy from the history of the Ottoman Empire and the wider Muslim community. The Pan-Turkic narrative, by contrast, is fundamentally linguistic and ethnocultural.
It is no coincidence that this Pan-Turkic dimension attracts particular attention in Moscow. A large proportion of the Turkic-speaking peoples live either in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia or within the present-day Russian Federation. Consequently, Pan-Turkic identity constitutes, at least potentially, an alternative identity project within the very geopolitical space that Dugin’s Eurasian civilization also claims. One narrative is rooted primarily in language, ethnicity, and cultural affinity; the other in the idea of a shared civilization.
If Turkey’s Pan-Turkic orientation looks eastward toward the Turkic peoples of Eurasia, Dugin’s Eurasian vision lays claim to the same geographical space, albeit according to an opposing civilizational logic. Where one narrative is founded on language and Turkic ancestry, the other rests on the historical mission of Russian Orthodox civilization. It is within this competition over Eurasia’s historical and cultural center that Ukraine assumes particular importance.
From the perspective of a civilizational state, a large population becomes an important strategic resource. One challenge to Russia’s ambitions is that the ethnic Russian share of the population is declining both in absolute and relative terms, while Turkic and other Muslim peoples have significantly higher birth rates. If Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are regarded as members of the same civilizational community, a much larger East Slavic demographic base emerges.
The Russian Civilizational Project
In the summer of 2021, six months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—what the Kremlin called the “special military operation”—Vladimir Putin published the essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. In it, he locates the civilizational homeland of Russkiy mir in Kyivan Rus’, the medieval polity from which Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are all said to originate. Rather than portraying them as three separate nations, the essay presents them as three branches of a single historical and civilizational community. Their separation is described as the result of external historical interventions, ranging from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to Lenin’s creation of artificial Soviet republics. Putin further argues that the West has not merely separated Ukraine from Russia but has actively supported a project to transform Ukraine into an “Anti-Russia.” From a civilizational perspective, this is portrayed as the theft of part of Russia’s own civilizational body and its transformation into a hostile bridgehead.
Putin’s essay does not employ Huntington’s terminology, yet it rests on a remarkably similar conception of civilizations as historical communities with their own core states. Whereas Huntington presented this model as an analysis of world politics, Dugin transformed it into a geopolitical program. In Putin’s hands, the civilizational idea becomes not merely an interpretation of history but an argument that Ukraine has no legitimate claim to its own historical development.
The civilizational idea legitimizes territorial claims because the state is no longer presented primarily as the representative of a territory or a nation, but of a civilization. If the historical heartland of that civilization lies beyond the state’s present borders, territorial expansion can be portrayed as reunification rather than conquest.
The civilizational idea is intended not only to legitimize the war and incorporate Ukraine into the envisioned “triune Russian nation” (Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians), but also to legitimize the regime itself. Within this narrative, Vladimir Putin appears not merely as a head of state but as the guardian and historical restorer of Russian civilization. Civilization thus becomes more than a historical community; it becomes an instrument of political legitimacy. It simultaneously justifies territorial expansion abroad and the concentration of power at home.
The “special military operation,” which according to the original plan was expected to bring about the collapse of the Ukrainian state within a matter of days, famously failed. At the same time, the project of “reuniting” Ukraine with Russkiy mir collapsed. The Kremlin was therefore gradually compelled to replace its offensive civilizational narrative of restoring Russkiy mir with a defensive narrative centered on protecting the Russian homeland and the sacred Russian civilization against the West. Although Russia has not abandoned its territorial ambitions, its official narrative is no longer one of expansion but of existential defense. In practice, the official narrative no longer seeks to legitimize the restoration of a historical order; instead, it seeks to legitimize the defense of Russia against an external enemy.
From Reunification to Defense
This shift from an offensive civilizational narrative to a defensive one also exposes an important contradiction. Between 2014 and 2021, the Kremlin justified the annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine by arguing that the Russian-speaking population constituted a distinct ethnic group whose rights had to be protected from the Ukrainian state. In Putin’s 2021 essay, however, this distinction all but disappears. Instead, Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are presented as parts of a single people. The population that had previously been described as a Russian minority in need of protection is now portrayed as an integral part of Russian civilization.
The invasion produced the opposite effect from the one presupposed by the civilizational narrative. Instead of bringing Ukraine back into Russkiy mir, it strengthened Ukrainian national identity. The use of the Ukrainian language increased, the rejection of Russian culture and history became more pronounced, and growing numbers of Ukrainians came to define their national identity in explicit contrast to Russia.
Once the “special military operation” had failed to achieve the rapid conquest of Ukraine and instead came, at least temporarily, to focus on incorporating only those regions with Russian-speaking majorities into the Russian Federation, the Kremlin partially reverted to the narrative it had employed in 2014, particularly in its communication with international audiences. This illustrates how narrative legitimation changes as political objectives change. Narratives are not fixed interpretations of history but strategic instruments that are continually adapted to political goals.
After 2014, the narrative of protecting the Russian-speaking population in Donbas served a concrete political function. It provided an internationally intelligible justification for Russia’s actions and could draw upon well-established norms concerning the protection of national minorities. From the perspective of the Russian civilizational state, however, Donbas was never the ultimate objective. The narrative of Donbas functioned as an operational narrative, whereas the restoration of Russkiy mir constituted the strategic narrative.
The Changing Function of Narratives
If Ukraine was fundamentally regarded as part of the same historical and civilizational community, the objective extended far beyond control of Donbas. The aim was to reintegrate Ukraine into the triune Russian nation or into the Union State that Russia and Belarus had already begun to construct. From this perspective, the referendum on constitutional amendments in Belarus on 27 February 2022—three days after the invasion, while Russian troops were still stationed in Belarus—may also be interpreted as an institutional preparation for Ukraine’s eventual accession to the Union State. These plans, however, were never realized.
When the attempt to subjugate Ukraine swiftly failed, this strategic project collapsed. The civilizational idea itself, however, was not abandoned. Instead, it acquired a new function. Rather than legitimizing the reintegration of Russkiy mir, it came to legitimize the defense of Russian civilization against a decadent West.
Although Putin’s 2021 essay clearly articulated Russia’s ambition to reunite the Russian World, the narrative of defending the rights of the Russian-speaking minority appears to have been more readily accepted in the West. At the same time, this operational narrative of protecting the Russian-speaking population may have diverted attention from the broader ambitions expressed in Putin’s 2021 essay. If that essay is read as an expression of the Russian civilizational state’s long-term self-understanding, the protection of Russian speakers appears not as the ultimate objective but as an operational justification serving a more far-reaching strategic project.
In the West, the civilizational idea has found its greatest resonance within alternative right-wing media and among the so-called civilizational right, where the notion of a decadent West has long occupied a central place. In some of these circles, Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas have also attracted attention, and Dugin has appeared on American alt-right podcasts. These media environments have simultaneously served as arenas in which Russian narratives—and at times outright disinformation about Ukraine—have circulated and gained traction, occasionally extending beyond the core alternative right. This became particularly evident after internet personality Laura Loomer dramatically reversed her position on Ukraine and visited the country in July 2026. Loomer has herself emphasized her connections to President Donald Trump, and her change of position has therefore been interpreted by some as a sign of a broader reassessment within parts of the American right.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s own position on the war appears to have evolved gradually. While the Russian civilizational narrative gained only limited resonance outside the alternative right, the operational wartime narrative of Russia holding the strategic advantage spread much more widely. The belief that Ukraine would eventually be forced to surrender shaped parts of the American debate for a considerable period, but has become increasingly difficult to sustain as Ukrainian resistance has continued.
The Collapse of the Civilizational Project
The Russian civilizational project failed within the first days of the war. Regardless of how the war ultimately ends on the battlefield, the invasion has made Ukraine politically, culturally, and psychologically ever more difficult to reintegrate into Russkiy mir.
In Sid Meier's Civilization, civilizations expand by extending their borders across the map. In the real world, people do not follow the same logic. Russia's leaders could move front lines, but they could not restore the civilizational community upon which Russkiy mir depended.
Territories can be conquered by force. A sense of civilizational belonging cannot.