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The clash of civilizations is a controversial theory in international relations. It was originally formulated in an article by Samuel P. Huntington entitled "The Clash of Civilizations?" published in the academic journal Foreign Affairs in 1993. The term itself was first used by Bernard Lewis 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 thinking 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 or, specifically in the case of Francis Fukuyama, 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 the article, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the 21st century would be along cultural and religious lines. As an extension, he posited that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest ranking of cultural identity, would increasingly become useful in analyzing the potential for conflict. In the 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.

Using various studies of history, but of course making certain decision, Huntington divided the civilizations 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, South Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia
• The Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India, Nepal, and adhered by the global Non-resident Indian and Person of Indian Origin
• The Sinic civilization of China, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• The Buddhist areas of Northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Buryatia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Tibet.
• Japan, considered an independent civilization

Huntington argued that the trends of global conflict were 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 argued that the Western belief that the West's values and political systems were universal was naive and that continued insistence towards democratization and universal norms would only further antagonize other civilizations. Huntington saw 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 identified the Sinic civilization, with its rapid economic growth and distinct cultural values, to be the most powerful long-term threat to the West. He saw Islamic civilization as a potential ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing conflicts with other civilizations. He also believed 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 unify and even a decadent society, risked significant dangers.

Huntingon labelled 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 argued that an "Islamic-Confucian 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"

Clash of Civilizations critics often target traditional culture and internal reformers who do not wish to Westernize whilst modernizing. They sometimes claim that to modernize is to necessarily become Westernized to a very large extent. Those who consider the Clash of Civilizations thesis accurate often offer in refutation of its argument the example of Japan, claiming that is not a Western state at its core. They argue that it adopted much Western technology (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 cited by some as a rising non-Western economy.

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 an infusion of Classical culture through Rome rather than 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

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 very fractured with little 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.

It has been pointed out 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. Supporters, however, have noted that tensions have often emerged between democratic states and that emerging (or future) democracies in civilizations could very well remain hostile to states belonging to civilizations which are viewed as hostile. Furthermore, they point out that the countries of different civilizations place greatly different amount of emphasis on the nature of the internal governments of countries with which they trade and support in international issues (as with India, Russia, and Japan).

Some also see Huntington's thesis as creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and reasserting differences between civilizations. However, Huntington's argument may often be caricaturized, creating false assumptions about its content.

Huntington's predictions: analysis and retrospect

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Huntington appeared prescient to many, and the subsequent attacks by Western states upon Afghanistan and Iraq 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 and 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 were less important than historical and social aspects.

See also

• Religious Pluralism
• Robert D. Kaplan, an American journalist.
• Francis Fukuyama, an American political economist and The End of History and the Last Man, one of his books.

External links

• "The Clash of Civilizations?", text of the original essay
• "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.
• The "Clash of Civilizations", by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, June 4, 2004.

• 1996 books
• Controversial books
• International relations
• Journal articles
• Political books