Clash of Civilizations

“Clash of Civilizations”
by: Samuel Huntington
PS 163 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR,

PROCESSES AND MOVEMENTS
In World Politics Today:
“ The source of conflict will neither be
ideological or economic. It will be cultural.”
Civilization – the highest cultural grouping
of people
Western Civilization has two major variants
◦ European and North American
◦ Islam – Arab, Turkey, Malay subdivisions
Civilization identity will be increasingly
important and the world will be shaped in
large measure by the interactions among
seven or eight major civilizations:
◦ Western -Hindu
◦ Confucian -Slavic-Orthodox
◦ Japanese -Latin American
◦ Islamic -African
Emerging alignment of
civilization
Battle Lines of the Future – Between Civilizations
Differences among civilizations are basic,
involving history, language, culture, tradition,
and religion.
The world is becoming smaller – interaction
between people of different civilizations,
intensify civilization consciousness:
awareness of differences
Economic and social changes separate
people from longstanding local identities.
A Rising Trends….
A return-to-the-roots phenomenon is
occurring among non-western civilizations –
the “Asianization” in Japan, “Hinduization” of
India, Re-Islamization of the Middle East. The
central axis of world politics is likely to be the
conflict between “the West and the rest”.
Islamic and Confucian states are challenging
the western values and power.
Battle Lines of the Future – Between Civilizations
Cultural characteristic and differences are less
mutable and less easily compromised and resolved
than political and economic ones.
Economic regionalism is increasing – succeed only
when it is rooted in common civilization.
Cultural Divisions - Historical Clash
Ideological division of Europe have disappeared but
cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity
and Orthodox Christianity and Islam has re-emerged.
Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic
civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years.
Historically, antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic
civilization with the pagan, animist, and now Christian
black peoples to the South.
Cultural Divisions - Historical Clash
On the northern border of Islam – conflict increasingly
erupted between Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including
the carnage in Bosnia and Sarajevo, violence between
Serbs and Albanians, tenuous relations between Bulgarians
and Turkish minority, and the tense relations between
Russians and Muslims in Central Asia.
The Next World War will be a War

between Civilizations!
Implications for Western Policy – Short Term
Promote greater cooperation and unity in the West in its own

civilization, particularly between European and North
American components
Incorporate into the West those societies in Eastern Europe
and Latin America whose cultures are close to those of the
West
Maintain close relations with Russia and Japan
Support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western
values and interests
Strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate
Western interests and values.
Limit military expansion to potentially hostile civilizations such
as Confucian and Islamic civilization.
Implications – Long Term
Western civilization is modern. Non-western civilization have
attempted to become modern without becoming western. Only
Japan is non-western and modern.
The West will have to accommodate to these non-
western modern civilizations, whose power approaches
that of the West but whose values and interests differ
significantly from the West.
Develop a much more profound understanding of the basic religious
and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and
their interests.
The future – there will be no universal civilization, but a world of
different civilization, each of which will have to learn to co-exist with
others.
“The West’s Hidden Agenda”
by: Chandra Muzaffar
A RESPONSE TO HUNTINGTON’S
CLASH OF CIVILIZATION ARTICLE
Main Points:
Huntington’s thesis: The Clash of Civilization will
dominate global politics
Truth: Cultural, religious, or other civilizational differences
are only some of the many factors responsible for conflict.
Territory and resources, wealth and property, power and
status, and individual personalities and group interests are
others.
“Civilization Identity” are sometimes manipulated to
camouflage the naked pursuit of wealth and power – the
real source of many conflicts
The Serious and Real Problem
Huntington has ignored the creative,
constructive interaction and engagement
between civilizations.
Civilization embody many similar values and
ideals. Religions at least share certain
common perspectives on the relationship
between the human being and his environment,
the importance of family, the meaning and
purpose of life, forging common interest and
aspirations.
It is the US and Western dominance, not the
clash of civilization, that is at the root of global
conflict. Huntington tries to divert the attention
from Western dominance and control even as
he strives to preserve, protect, and perpetuate
that dominance.
The Confucian-Islamic Connection
Huntington: Western dominance is under threat from a
Confucian-Islamic connection to challenge Western power
The Confucian-Islamic military connection, designed to
promote acquisition by its members of the weapons and
weapons technologies needed to counter the military power
of the West.
The US should not be reducing its own military capabilities.
It is Islamic states that are buying weapons from China.
Serious Flaws of Huntington’s Argument
It is not true that the US has reduced its military
capability.
Though China is an important producer and exporter of
arms, it is the only major power whose military
expenditures consistently declined throughout the
1980s.
Most Muslim countries buy their weapons from the US.
China has failed to endorse the Muslim position on many
global issues.
ON Islamic Threat
The rise of Islamic movement has provoked a new,
powerful wave of negative emotion against the religion
and its practitioners.
ON ISLAMIC THREAT:
When Huntington says, “Islam has bloody
borders”, the implication is that Islam and
Muslims are responsible for the spilling
of blood.
Yet anyone who has an elementary
knowledge of many current conflicts will
readily admit that, more often than not, it
is the Muslims who have been bullied,
bludgeoned, and butchered.
“Jihad vs. McWorld”
by: Benjamin Barber
Two Axial Principles of our age – Tribalism and
Globalism – clash at every point except one: they
may both be threatening to democracy
Two Possible Figures
◦ Retribalization by war and bloodshed – culture pitted
against culture, people against people, tribe against
tribe – a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly
conceived faiths against every kind of
interdependence, every kind of artificial social
cooperation.
◦ McWorld – the world with fast music, fast computers,
and fast food-with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s,
pressing nations into one commercially homogenous
global network tied together by technology, ecology,
communications, and commerce.
Two Tendencies
Forces of Jihad and forces of McWorld operate with equal
strength in opposite directions.
The one driven by parochial hatreds, the other by
universalizing markets
The one by re-creating ancient subnational and ethnic
borders from within, the other making national borders from
without.
They have one thing in common: neither offers much hope
to citizens looking for practical ways to govern themselves
democratically. A bleak future for democracy.
McWorld, Or the Globalization of Politics
(Four Imperatives make up the dynamic of McWorld)
Market Imperative: All national economics are now vulnerable
to the inroads of larger transnational markets within which
trade is free
◦ Markets are eroding national sovereignty and give rise to
international entities – OPEC, CNN, BBC, etc...
◦ Market imperative has also reinforced the quest for international
peace and stability
◦ Markets are enemies of parochialism, isolation, fractiousness, war
◦ In the context of common markets, international law ceases to be a
vision of justice.
◦ Common markets demand a common language as well as common
currency, common behaviour; Religion, culture and nationality can
seem only marginal elements in a working identity.
◦ Shopping has a common signature throughout the world.
Resource Imperative – the rapid depletion of resources even
in a country like America where once seemed inexhaustible
and the maldistribution of arable soil and mineral resources
on the planet, leave even the wealthiest societies ever more
resource dependent.
Information-technology imperative – Scientific progress
embodies and depends an open communication, a common
discourse rooted in rationality, regular flow of exchange of
information. This makes science and globalization practical
allies. Technologies combined to create a vast interactive
communications and information network that can give every
person access to every other person and make every datum,
and byte available.
Ecological Imperative – Ecological consciousness

has meant not only greater awareness with the
affect of puncturing our global lungs but also
greater inequality, as modernized nations try to
slam the door behind them saying, “the world
cannot afford our modernization!”
Jihad Or the Lebanonization of the World
National States, subnational factions in permanent rebellion
against uniformity and integration
People without countries inhabiting nations not their own,
seeking smaller worlds within borders that will seal them off
from modernity.
Nationalism was once a force of integration and unification,
but nationalism has changed its strategy, it is more often
reactionary and divisive force, pulverizing every nation it once
helped cement together. Nationalism is nothing but a mania
The mood for Jihad: war not as an instrument of policy but as
an emblem of identity, an expression of community, an end in
itself. Jihad means struggle, struggle of the soul to avert evil
Jihad Or the Lebanonization of
the World
Rhetorical use of Jihad: Like new forms of hyper-
nationalism the new expression of religious
fundamentalism are fractious, pulverizing, never
integrating.
The atmospherics of Jihad have resulted in the
breakdown of civility in the name of identity.
The Darkening Future of Democracy
Neither McWorld nor Jihad is remotely democratic. Neither
needs democracy; Neither promotes democracy.
Neither McWorld nor Jihad has a natural politics. It has turned
out to be more of anti-politics.
For McWorld it is the antipolitics of globalism, bureaucratic,
technocratic, focused on the administration of things and
people. In its politico-economic imperatives McWorld has
been guided by laissez-faire market principles at the expense
of civil liberty and self-government.
For Jihad, the antipolitics of tribalization has been explicity
antidemocratic one-party dictatorship, government by military
junta, theocratic fundamentalism.
The Confederal Option
How can democracy be secured?
Globalization will eventually vanquish tribalization

Decentralized participatory democracy – If tribalization is
inhospitable to democracy, this form of democratic
government can accommodate parochialism and
communitarianism
Representative government, federal or confederal – If
McWorld is indifferent to democracy, this form of government
suits global markets passably well
The most attractive democratic deal in the face of the brutal
realities of Jihad and the dull realities of McWorld will be a
confederal union of semi-autonomous communities smaller
than nation-states tied together into regional economies and
markets larger than nation-states.
Representative government, federal or confederal –
If McWorld is indifferent to democracy, this form of
government suits global markets passibly well
The most attractive democratic deal in the face of

the brutal realities of Jihad and the dull realities of
McWorld will be a confederal union of semi-
autonomous communities smaller than nation-states
tied together into regional economies and markets
larger than nation-states.

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“Clash of Civilizations”

by: Samuel Huntington

PS 163 POLITICAL BEHAVIOR,

The Next World War will be a War

Promote greater cooperation and unity in the West in its own

Ecological Imperative – Ecological consciousness

Globalization will eventually vanquish tribalization

The most attractive democratic deal in the face of

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