Samuel Huntington

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Samuel Huntington

• The Clash of Civilizations

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The context

• Who is Samuel Huntington?
• What prompted him to write Clash of
  Civilizations
• What has he done since?

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The Hypothesis

• World politics is entering a new phase in the
  wake of the end of the Cold War
• 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.

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Conflict in Modern History

• Conflict in the modern era, for Huntington, has
  been largely a sequence of
• conflicts between princes (what we will study as
  the Westphalian system), then
• conflicts between nation-states (after the French
  revolution), then
• conflicts between ideologies (during the Cold
  War)

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Underlying Assumptions

• Huntington is reproducing what we might call a
  neo-Hegelian view of history (history as
  unfolding through conflict)
• Assumes that the end of the Cold War is a
  defining moment in history, a tipping point
• Assumes that civilizations are fairly fixed over
  time

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The Contemporary Era

• For Huntington, this means that international
  politics, hitherto, was in a western phase
  non-western civilizations were the objects of
  history, the targets of western colonialism. In
  the post-Cold War, they join the West as the
  movers and shapers of history.

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Civilizations and History

• In this view, contemporary civilizations
  represent the product of a long process of
  identity formation
• It is the incompatability between these core
  values that will produce inevitable conflict
  between different civilizations
• While from a contemporary perspective this may
  seem like a new phenomenon, it is actually a
  reversion to a previous period of history
• Read in this fashion, the clash of
  civilizations represents the closing of a
  parenthesis in world history.

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What is a Civilization?

• Three attributes objective, subjective, and
  dynamic.
• Objective elements include language, history,
  religion, customs, institutions
• Subjective elements include variable levels of
  self-identification
• Civilizations are dynamic they rise and fall,
  divide and merge

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Why will civilizations clash?

• Differences between civilizations are more
  fundamental and enduring than ideological or
  political differences.
• Interactions between civilizations are
  increasing.
• Economic modernization and social change are
  separating people from longstanding identities
  they weaken the nation-state as a source of
  identity.
• The rest of the world is increasingly willing to
  define itself in non-Western ways.

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(continued)

• Cultural characteristics are less mutable and
  less easily compromised than political and
  economic ones.
• Economic regionalism is increasing, which will
  increase civilization consciousness. Common
  culture, Huntington argues, may be a prerequisite
  for economic integration.

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The Two Levels of the Clash

• At the micro level, groups clash along the fault
  lines of adjacent civilizations
• At the macro level, states from different
  civilizations compete for political and economic
  power.

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The kin-country syndrome

• Groups or states becoming involved in a war with
  groups or states from another civilization will
  attempt to rally other groups or states from
  their own civilization behind their cause.
• Examples may be, the Gulf War, the former Soviet
  Union in the Caucasus, and Yugoslavia.

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The West versus the Rest?

• Talk of the world community and the free
  world is, according to Huntington, a thin veneer
  for the domination of global affairs by western
  interests.
• The West sees its values as universalist (meaning
  that they are applicable to everyone,
  irrespective of civilization). International
  institutions based on these values are merely
  tools for maintaining and promoting western
  values and domination.

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Torn countries?

• Some countries are torn over which civilization
  their country belongs to (Russia, Mexico,
  Turkey). They can redefine their identity on
  three conditions
• A supportive elite
• Acquiescent masses
• Willingness from the dominant civilization

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The Biggest Challenge to the West?

• The biggest challenge to the West will come from
  an emerging Confucian-Islamic connection,
  primarily concentrated around the asserted right
  to develop and deploy NBC weapons (counter to the
  western value of non-proliferation).

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Implications

• Nation-states may not disappear, singular
  civilizations will not become the norm. But
• civilization-consciousness is increasing and will
  become the dominant source of conflict
• The west will need to strengthen its own
  civilization to meet the challenge
• The West will need to better understand other
  civilizations and seek to define areas of
  potential co-existence

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