The Clash Of Civilizations And The Remaking Of World Order (1998) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a masterpiece of scare mongering, not recommended for the faint of heart. Sage Huntington can make you groan inside: omg, tomorrow there will be a massive conspiracy between the democracy-hating Sinic and Islamic civilizations (whatever that means) to destroy our democracy, civilized society and freedom and push us back to the Dark Ages. Don’t you see how they’ve already started infiltrating the US government with an African Muslim communist called Obama? And hapless America will heroically fight that struggle against evil and oppression until the end of time and come out gloriously victorious. But before that, we need to fight terror, terror, terror and build more aircrafts, missiles, military bases and bomb the shit out of them if necessary. I’m sorry I can’t pass this test of valor and courage, before this apocalypse happens, I’d rather drive to Mars. A rather depressing thought. So much for the ranting. Now the serious stuff. Samuel Huntington laid out his analysis of conflicts in the Post Cold War world in his article in 1993: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 He divides the world into 8 major “civilizations”: sinic, western, orthodox Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Japanese, Latin American, African, and basically says that in the future, when the age of ideology is over, the cultural and civilizational rifts will be the main cause of conflicts. The only way the West can survive is to get stronger both militarily and economically and ally with civilizations sympathetic to itself to fight against the rise of Islamic and Confucian countries (i.e China). This line of argument has some major flaws. First, it defines civilization as an all-encompassing and monolithic concept and ignores all the interaction and diversity within one culture. How would you define Islamic civilization? Islam of Saudi Arabia? Indonesia? Iran? Dubai? Similarly for all the rest. But more importantly, often I find this kind of confrontational mind-set rather dangerous. It takes conflicts out of context and strips them of their much wider and more complex socio-political backdrop and reduces them to over simplistic terms of “us vs. them”, “cultural differences” or “civilizational faultlines”. But I never believe in such things, I never believe that people have enough time sitting on their ass and hating another group just because their culture and religion are different. If people fight, that must be for a reason, often one group are conquered or oppressed and resist, otherwise, economic reasons such as land, exploitation or resources. Invoking jealousy or ethnic hatred to explain conflict is a chauvinistic and foolish way of looking at it. The Vietnamese did not hate the Americans because the Americans drove cars and watched tv while the Vietnamese slogged behind buffalos. The Palestinians don’t hate the Israelis because the Israelis have swimming pools and have nuclear warheads. The Afghans hated the Russians not because the Russians rode tanks and had an empire. It’s never about jealousy, all about conquest, oppression, injustice and subjugation. Aren't these legitimate things to hate? Conflicts are always about the conqueror and the dominated, about power and oppression, never so much about ideology or ethnic hatred. And if there’s an element of ethnic hatred, it often has a lot to do with the way the power structure was distorted to favour a group to oppress another during the colonial period. Need I say any more about Algeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia? But then again, don’t take my word because I might be oversimplifying things as well. I find Huntington’s idea dangerous also because it represents a primordialistic world view, in which people are inherently and inevitably different, therefore, conflicts are unavoidable. Once you talk about something grand and presumably rigid and static in this case like civilization and culture as an innate part of human nature and as causes of war, you’re heading for a dead end. If people are inherently irrational, antagonistic, confrontational, aggressive, then what’s the point in preventing war and addressing political issues underlying them? That’s it, we’re doomed. So let’s put all this in context because it’s the last thing this book would ever do. After the end of the Cold War, America came out as the sole superpower. So people started asking: ok, now the Russians are gone, why don’t we reduce our military budget and invest more in education, healthcare, aid to the third world, technology, infrastructure? Why do we need this half a trillion dollar military budget when we have massive social problems at home in this most advanced industrialized country? So America needed to invent something to replace the Russians to justify all that. Shush, it can’t be about the humongous profits for the military industrial complex, it can’t be about defending our corporate interests overseas. So voila, that must be the clash of civilization. America is perpetually at war with other rival civilizations, especially Islam. The paradigm of the West vs. the Rest never changed. Gone with the Russians, in with the Muslims. That’s why we need $500b in military spending (6 times the second largest, China, and the Pentagon squeaks) and 700 military bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Djibouti, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the list goes on. After 9/11, this book rocketed in influence because now obviously, the Islamic world is waging war against America. The real civilization clash IS happening. How scary indeed. Huntington even declared: "It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power” and hate people “who are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world." But the attack led by a group with a couple of thousand members (or say, even a million, still 0.1% of total Muslim population) against a country with a population of 1/4 of the “West” is defined as a civilizational war. Very representative huh? Some of them are Saudi, er but let’s forget that for a moment because that’s our closest friend in the region, although rather nasty bastards… So yes, Huntington would easily dust off his hands and say this has nothing to do with US foreign policies in the Middle East at all. They hate us because we love freedom, democracy and we’re more civilized than them. Because this pre-renaissance backward fanatical people hate progress and are jealous of us living in our first world luxury. This rhetoric has been parroted again and again and again by Emperor Bush and his friends to justify his increasingly militant approach in the ME. Oh, there’s no limit to chauvinism and ignorance in this world. Truly, I’d be rather upset if Americans buy this lie. The idea of CoC obscures the real grievances and frustration of people in the Middle East at many decades of American dominance in the region. Let’s remind ourselves that America is great friends with the despots of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel, the PLO (rather a rocky friendship), the mujahedeen (who gives a shit about Islamic fundamentalism if all we cared about was to kick ass the Russians out of Afghanistan), Jordan and a long time ago, Iran and Iraq. And many other friends that torture its citizens under US auspices (politics jargon: extraordinary rendition). Could anyone still say it has nothing to do with politics at all? Finally, is it just me or anyone else that finds the idea of a respected professor writing such provocative arguments seemingly not to mitigate the problem but to aggravate it, to defend “our” superiority at all cost, rather disturbing? Is this honest and balanced historical analysis or is there a hidden agenda behind? I’m not good at conspiracy theory, but mind you, this guy’s book in the 1960s advocating stable dictatorships to achieve economic development over troublesome democracies also had great influence on US foreign policy in Africa and Asia. No wonder why America loved some dictators and overthrew a couple of trouble makers. Expert on democracy and civilization indeed. (if you’re interested listen to this brilliantly eloquent critique by Edward Said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBzrq... )
I found this book seminal in its content and coverage for three key reasons:- The book is based on an essay written in 1993, post which various editions were published 1996 through 1998 in the first go. The applicability of the ideas and the constructs of the author are valid 20 years later. In fact many of the civilizational fault lines the author covers are manifesting as is 2 decades hence. It is easy to rate or berate anthropology / sociology texts based on their analysis of historical events. Very rarely however it is possible to rate a text based on its brilliant standing to future scrutiny.- The book offers a kind of a play book to analyze global alliances, conflicts and soft and hard foreign policy positioning outside of the usually accepted political and economic impulses. Although not every global foreign event can be explained in the context of civilizations, this book helps create a good mind map of loosely and closely connected states.- Finally, the book offers the chilling possibility that modern state as a unit of organization and governance may someday be challenged and even replaced by broad groupings deriving common cause from civilizational issues. This is already playing out in the Middle East in the form of ISIS conquests and one can almost apply the arguments mentioned in the book in their entirety to this conflict.The author has put in great stress in explaining how the Islamic civilization is different from and at loggerheads with all other historical civilizations. The detailing offered covers areas like victimhood narrative, primacy of violence inherent to the religion in this case and an expansionist tendency matching with universality concept is brilliant. Several of these issues keep getting swept under the carpet in the name of political correctness in modern literature and contemporary societies. Other than calling this caliphate-sultanate duality and overlap, the author also talks about subjects like Balkanization, emergence of South Sudan, the division of Ukraine and the likely Crimean affinity to Russia triggering conflicts - all of them have played out in the last few years.The emerging alignments among the civilizations that the author describes is a great summary for the book. One can already see global political developments along those lines.There are a few disappointments too - the author has overly stressed routine events of the 90s as those which are fundamental to civilizational alignments. These are events like political statements, tactical war aids, government formations in democracies and so on. The concept of the world order being remade per civilizational lines is far broader and far reaching than these events represent. Forcing or explaining its applicability in the limited context of a few years or even a decade seems stretched. This or related points have been highlighted in the several negative reviews - though many of them came before the current Ukrainian and ISIS crises. Another area was the way the book is summarized - the author takes a Western view and analyses what Western civilization means and needs to do to survive over a period of time. This analysis in itself is fine, but the author misses the chance to end the book on a high - by describing a broader world order - possibilities and probabilities. Overall, this is a fascinating piece of work which may become increasingly relevant as the world grapples with the rise of Islamic hegemony and as the economics of the world continues to becomes increasingly Sinic. Some books, classified as great when written, lose steam over a period of time. This one seems to be traversing the reverse path.
What do You think about The Clash Of Civilizations And The Remaking Of World Order (1998)?
A pretty decent book. I enjoyed it and his thesis was intriguing though a little simplistic and not entirely original. We as westerners sure do have an obsession with breaking everything down into nice little neat packages so they can be better classified and studied. That is both the strength and weakness of this book. If only cultures and civilizations were so easy to just lump people together under one stereotype wow that would make the world much more predictable than it is. Alas the world is full of cultures, sub-cultures and counter-cultures within each civilization and so it is a little more complex. This also has deep implications when it comes to foreign policy, if you treat every culture as homogeneous I believe you are making a grave mistake, especially if those sub-cultures or counter-cultures could be possible allies or enemies. There are so many examples of this: Saudi Arabia - Wahhabis vs. House of Saud, both Muslim one ally other enemy. Iran: Religious right vs. Moderate to secular Iran, one hates us the other likes western culture. Iraq: Kurds -like us, Sunnis-mixed between hate and like, Shiite - Mix between like and hate. I give these examples since Huntington's thesis argues that Muslim culture is the most prone to violence and thus the most dangerous. But the list goes on and on including even the US with the basic division of conservative and liberal which is even blurry at times. I guess I don't like that Huntington is basically creating a similar myopic world view that the US had during the cold war when the world was easily divided into three camps and all the disastrous foreign policy that followed as a result. The world is not black and white. It is not meant to be so easily divided and doing so I believe is creating a dangerously false paradigm of the world.
—Hans
This book changed some of my views on what's going around us in the world and it maybe clarify some political relations in the modern crisis.It's a very important book, gives a new perspective on global political relations between different countries, nations and civilizations.Although it's a bit old nowadays, but some of his theory were proven to be right, in case on the war of the US on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, the harsh words against China's political and economical situation begun to surface, the rise of Islamist after the Arab Spring...I don't entirely agree with his suggestion in many cases but he puts a fair arguments in each case.Huntington covers many issues over different chapters of the book but I think it was all based on one factor that drove everything, I don't think that's a 100% accurate, in every case there a punch of factor in play and many variables that can change the entire situation from one end to another.I agree, Culture is a very important thing in my region and I think most of the Middle east countries were more stronger and more independent from Western control back at the 90s than today, most of them were tamed by the US as many of concentric countries rely on the US loans and defense the only one that escaped and poses a big threat to the US policies is Iran.In spite other Middle eastern countries share the same religion and same-esh culture with Iran they don't consider it as a friend, in fact many of them see it as a threat to them just like the US see it as a threat.from the book:-There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven.The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, consists of the displacement of one paradigm, which has become increasingly incapable of explaining new or newly discovered facts, by a new paradigm, which does account for those facts in a more satisfactory fashion.International history, rightly documents the thesis that political systems are transient expedients on the surface of civilization, and that the destiny of each linguistically and morally unified community depends ultimately upon the survival of certain primary structuring ideas around which successive generations have coalesced and which thus symbolize the society’s continuity.Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.By the mid-1990s explicitly Islamist governments had come to power only in Iran and Sudan. A small number of Muslim countries, such as Turkey and Pakistan, had regimes with some claim to democratic legitimacy. The governments in the two score other Muslim countries were overwhelmingly nondemocratic: monarchies, one-party systems, military regimes, personal dictatorships, or some combination of these, usually resting on a limited family, clan, or tribal base and in some cases highly dependent on foreign support. Two regimes, in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, attempted to invoke some form of Islamic legitimacy. Most of these governments, however, lacked any basis for justifying their rule in terms of Islamic, democratic, or nationalist values. They were “bunker regimes,” to use Clement Henry Moore’s phrase, repressive, corrupt, divorced from the needs and aspirations of their societies. Such regimes may sustain themselves for long periods of time; they need not fail. In the modern world, however, the probability that they will change or collapse is high. In the mid-1990s, consequently, a central issue concerned the likely alternatives: Who or what would be their successors? In almost every country in the mid-1990s the most likely successor regime was an Islamist one. Democracy is promoted but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue with China but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.
—M. Ashraf
There is no doubt that this is a must-read if you are interested in global politics. That does not mean that I think the book is right. Quite the contrary, I think the book is dangerously oversimplifying the current situation in world politics and trying to shoe-horn world events into a seductively simple-looking world view that, although advertised as a new paradigm, looks suspiciously like the cold-war paradigm on steroids. Since the human mind often prefers such simple explanations over more complicated ones, and because they also tend to be rather convenient for power-hungry leaders and institutions, these ideas should be very critically examined.As a whole the book seems well argued and an honest attempt at analysis. However, as soon as you start talking to people that are from and/or know more about particular regions and worlds such as the Islamic world, South America or Eastern Europe, I consistently find that they confirm that Huntington severely oversimplifies or even misrepresents the situation in that particular part of the world. I don't think that is a coincidence. So I would advice everybody who plans to pick up this book, to also make sure that you read afterwards some work that critically examines this book. For an idea of what the critique consists of, you might take a quick look on YouTube for a lecture by the late Edward Said under the title "The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations".
—Jan Hidders
