ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the wars of status and recognition are at the center of the contemporary conflicts between the United States and China and between the United States and Russia, in most intra-societal disputes. It suggests some ways of alleviating the struggles for recognition between great civilizations and states and between many warring communities, highlighting the importance of symmetrical recognition as a method to prevent the escalation of violence at local and global conflicts. The chapter outlines that mutual recognition, as understood by Clausewitz, could be a political tool to resolve disputes between the diverging identities and interests of great civilizations and states. It draws on Hegel's struggle for recognition by contrasting and combining it with Clausewitz's concept of symmetrical recognition and provides a way to differentiate and harmonize between symmetrical and asymmetrical forms of recognition. For Clausewitz the concept of politics and war's instrumental nature, mutual recognition is an essential condition for restraining war's escalation into absolute violence.
