Clash of Civilizations

The Clash of Civilizations is a controversial theory in international relations popularized by Samuel P. Huntington. The basis of Huntington's thesis is that people's cultural/religious identity will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world.

Huntington's thesis was originally formulated in an article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations?" published in the academic journal Foreign Affairs in 1993. The term itself was first used by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage." Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations

Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that liberal democracy and Western values had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.

Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future would be along cultural and religious lines. As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict.

In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington writes:

"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."

Due to an enormous response and the solidification of his views, Huntington later expanded the thesis in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Huntington's civilizations

The definition, nomenclature, and even the number of civilizations are somewhat ambiguous in Huntington's works. Predominant religion seems to be the main criterion of his classification, but in some cases geographical proximity and linguistic similarity are important as well. Using various studies of history, Huntington divides the civilizations in his thesis as such:

Western Christendom, centered on Europe and North America but also including Australia and New Zealand. Whether Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union are included, or are instead their own separate civilizations, will be an important future consideration for those regions, according to Huntington.
The Orthodox world of Orthodox and/or Slavic Eastern Europe and Russia.
Latin America
The Muslim world of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the northwest of South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of India), Malaysia, Indonesia
Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India, Nepal, and culturally adhered to by the global diaspora
The Sinic civilization of China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore which includes the Chinese diaspora, especially in relation to Southeast Asia.
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Buddhist areas of Northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Kalmykia, Siberia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos.
Japan, considered an derivation of Chinese civilization.
Instead of belonging to one of "major" civilizations, Ethiopia and Haiti are labeled as "lone" countries. Former British colonies in the Caribbean are supposed to constitute an independent civilization. Israel is identified as a non-Western state having rather its own civilization. Turkey is similarly described.

Huntington's theories for civilizational clash

Huntington argues that the trends of global conflict after the end of the Cold War are increasingly appearing at these civilizational divisions. Wars such as those following the break up of Yugoslavia, in Chechnya, and between India and Pakistan were cited as evidence of intercivilizational conflict.

Huntington also argues that the widespread Western belief in the universality of the West's values and political systems is naïve and that continued insistence on democratization and such "universal" norms will only further antagonize other civilizations. Huntington sees the West as reluctant to accept this because it built the international system, wrote its laws, and gave it substance in the form of the United Nations.

Huntington identifies the Sinic civilization, with its rapid economic growth and distinct cultural values, as the most powerful long-term threat to the West. He sees Islamic civilization as a potential ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing common conflicts with other civilizations. Huntington also believes that the demographic and economic growth of other civilizations will result in a much more multipolar civilizational system. The demographic decline of the West, combined with its inability to present a united front, and its perceived decadence means the West will face significant dangers.

Huntington also argues that civilizational conflicts are "particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims", identifying the "bloody borders" between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations.

Huntingon labels the Orthodox, Hindu, and Japanese civilizations as "swing" civilizations, with the potential to move in different directions vis-a-vis the West, perhaps mostly tied to the progress in their relations with the Sinic and Islamic groupings. Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position.

Modernization, westernization, and "torn countries"

Critics of Huntington's ideas often extend their criticisms to traditional cultures and internal reformers who wish to modernize without adopting the values and attitudes of Western culture. These critics sometimes claim that to modernize is necessarily to become Westernized to a very large extent. In reply, those who consider the Clash of Civilizations thesis accurate often point to the example of Japan, claiming that it is not a Western state at its core. They argue that it adopted much Western technology (also inventing some technology of its own in recent times), parliamentary democracy, and free enterprise, but has remained culturally very distinct from the West. China is also cited by some as a rising non-Western economy. Many also point out the East Asian Tigers or neighboring states as having adapted western economics, while maintaining traditional or totalitarian social government.

Perhaps the ultimate example of non-Western modernization is Russia, the core state of the Orthodox civilization. The variant of this argument that uses Russia as an example relies on the acceptance of a unique non-Western civilization headed by an Orthodox state such as Russia or perhaps an Eastern European country. Huntington argues that Russia is primarily a non-Western state although he seems to agree that it shares a considerable amount of cultural ancestry with the modern West. Russia was one of the great powers during World War I. It also happened to be a non-Western power. According to Huntington, the West is distinguished from Orthodox Christian countries by the experience of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Enlightenment, overseas colonialism rather than contiguous expansion and colonialism, and a recent reinfusion of Classical culture through Rome rather than through the continuous trajectory of the Byzantine Empire. The differences among the modern Slavic states can still be seen today. This issue is also linked to the "universalizing factor" exhibited in some civilizations.

Huntington refers to countries that are seeking to affiliate with another civilization as "torn countries." Turkey, whose political leadership has systematically tried to Westernize the country since the 1920s, is his chief example. Turkey's history, culture, and traditions are derived from Islamic civilization, but Turkey's Western-oriented elite imposed western institutions and dress, embraced the Latin alphabet, joined NATO, and is seeking to join the European Union.

According to Huntington, a torn country must meet three requirements in order to redefine its civilizational identity. Its political and economic elite must support the move. Second, the public must be willing to accept the redefinition. Third, the elites of the civilization that the torn country is trying to join must accept the country.

Criticisms of Huntington's thesis

Huntington's piece in Foreign Affairs created more responses than almost any other essay ever published in that journal. There have been many criticisms of his thesis from wildly different paradigms. Some have argued that his identified civilizations are fractured and show little internal unity. Vietnam still keeps a massive army, mostly to guard against China. The Muslim world is severely fractured along ethnic lines with Kurds, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Pakistanis, and Indonesians all having very different world views. Moreover, the criteria of the proposed delineation are not clear. Some of his supporters also feel that Huntington seems to have drawn arbitrary civilizational fault lines through East Asian civilization by taking Japan out. One can argue that cultural differences between China and Japan are not more important than between China and South Korea. However, South Korea is put together with China under the label of the Sinic civilization while Japan is supposed to form a separate civilization. Whereas, Western civilization includes both Protestant and Catholic branches; and the Germanic and Romance cultural differences in Western Europe are also disregarded. The distinction between the Western and Orthodox civilizations excludes non-religious factors, such as the post-Communist legacy or the level of economic development.

In his book Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman proposes another criticism of the civilization clash hypothesis. According to Berman, distinct cultural boundaries do not exist in the present day. He argues there is no "Islamic civilization" nor a "Western civilization", and that the evidence for a civilization clash is not convincing, especially when considering relationships such as that between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In addition, he cites the fact that many Islamic extremists spent a significant amount of time living and/or studying in the western world. According to Berman conflict arises because of philosophical beliefs between groups, regardless of cultural or religious identity.

In his book, Huntington relies mostly on anecdotal evidence. On the contrary, more rigorous empirical studies show no particular increase in the frequency of intercivilizational conflicts in the post-Cold War period.Tusicisny, Andrej (2004). "Civilizational Conflicts: More Frequent, Longer, and Bloodier?". Journal of Peace Research 41 (4), 485–498.

It has been claimed that values are more easily transmitted and altered than Huntington proposes. Nations such as India and Japan have become successful democracies, and the West itself was rife with despotism and fundamentalism for most of its history. Some also see Huntington's thesis as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and reasserting differences between civilizations. Edward Said issued a response to Huntington's thesis in his own essay entitled "The Clash of Ignorance." Said argues that Huntington's categorization of the world's fixed "civilizations" omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture. According to Said, it is an example of an imagined geography, where the presentation of the world in a certain way legitimates certain politics.

Related Concepts

Also, in recent years the theory of Dialogue Among Civilizations, a response to Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, has become the center of some international attention. The concept, which was introduced by Mohammad Khatami, was the basis for United Nation's resolution to name the year 2001 as the Year of Dialogue among Civilizations. [http://www.dialoguecentre.org/about.html In 2005 Secretary General Kofi Annan launched an initiative called Alliance of Civilizations.

Huntington's predictions: analysis and retrospect

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Huntington was increasingly regarded as having been prescient as the United States invasion of Afghanistan, 2003 Invasion of Iraq, and the 2006 cartoon crisis fueled the perception that Huntington's Clash was well underway.

Some maintained that the 1995 and 2004 enlargements of the European Union brought the EU's eastern border up to the boundary between Huntington's Western and Orthodox civilizations; most of Europe's historically Protestant and Roman Catholic countries (with the exception of Croatia and countries like Switzerland and Norway who voluntarily opted out of EU membership) were now EU members, while a number of Europe's historically orthodox countries (with exceptions such as longtime EU member Greece and newly accepted Cyprus) were outside the EU. As others have noted, however, the strong EU candidacies of Bulgaria, Romania as well as the overwhelming ascendancy of pro-Western powers in Ukraine's 2004 presidential elections, and the NATO membership of Romania and Bulgaria (since 2004) present a challenge to some of Huntington's analysis.

German geographers have pointed out that Huntington's regions of "civilizations" are affected by the concept of the "Kulturerdteile" (culture-continents) of the geographer Albert Kolb - a deprecated theory from 1962. In this theory, the effect of religious aspects was less important than historical and social aspects.

Recent issues

The following recent conflictual issues are possibly defined by civilizational cleavages.

Bibliography

Blankley, Tony, The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005 ISBN 0895260158
Harris, Lee, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History, New York, The Free Press, 2004 ISBN 0743257499
Harrison, Lawrence E. and Samuel P. Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, New York, Basic Books, 2001 ISBN 0465031765
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations?, in "Foreign Affairs", vol. 72, n. 3, Summer 1993, pp. 22-49
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1996 ISBN 0684844419
Huntington, Samuel P. (ed.), The Clash of Civilizations?: The Debate, New York, Foreign Affairs, 1996 ISBN 0876091648
Pera, Marcello and Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Senza radici: Europa, Relativismo, Cristianesimo, Islam Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, Philadelphia, PA, Perseus Books Group, 2006 ISBN 0465006345, Milano, Mondadori, 2004 ISBN 8804544740
Peters, Ralph, Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?, Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 1999 ISBN 0811706516
Toft, Monica Duffy, The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2003 ISBN 0691113548
Tusicisny, Andrej, Civilizational Conflicts: More Frequent, Longer, and Bloodier?, in "Journal of Peace Research", vol. 41, no. 4, 2004, pp. 485–498
Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War, New York & London, The Free Press, 1991 ISBN 0029331552

External links

"www.clashofcivilisations.com Clash of Civilisations and information on other civilisations ", Discussion and news surrounding the clash and concepts such as dialogue, equality, acceptance etc between civilisations.
"The Clash of Civilizations?", text of the original essay
"The 'Clash of Civilizations': Revisited after September 11", a critical article on Huntington's thesis
"The Clash of Civilizations?", Interview with Samuel Huntington, The Guardian, October 21, 2001.
"The True Clash of Civilizations", by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Foreign Policy 2003. This article discusses recent surveys of opinions in predominantly Islamic nations and claims that the real rift between civilizations does not concern the question of democracy (which is generally approved) but rather the attitudes towards sexuality and gender equality. Those societies that do not tolerate self-expression, it argues, are unlikely to become stable democracies.
Dr wafa Sultan video interview to al Gazira- A rare arab public debate video about Muslim and western civilization clashes. (Transcript)
Islam and Europe: clash and mashKhaled Diab and Katleen Maes examine the myths driving anti-Islamic fervour in the EU and argue that, although the two civilisations have occasionally clashed, they have more often simply mashed. Published in the European Voice, 31 March-6 April 2005
Clash of Ignorance Edward Said's critical review of the "Clash of Civilizations"

References

1996 books | International relations | Journal articles | Political books | Ideological rivalry

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