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The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Paperback)
by Samuel P. Huntington
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Current affairs, Social-economics, Nonfiction |
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A scholarly, rigorously researched masterwork of political science and sociology with incredible insights on global politics. |
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Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Touchstone Ed edition
Pub. in: January, 1998
ISBN: 0684844419
Pages: 368
Measurements: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.0 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00509
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- Awards & Credential -
The New York Times Bestseller |
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- MSL Picks -
This is a stimulating book that offers an important and controversial view of the global dynamics of human societies. It author is Samuel P. Huntington is a widely respected political scientist and internationalist.
Huntington suggests that the world can be best described in terms of unique "civilizations" that is human societies having bundles of shared cultural characteristics the most obvious of which are a unique written language and a dominant religion. For example the Islamic civilization is distinguished by its Arabic Alphabet and by its adherence to Islam. He postulates that where these civilizations meet there are fault lines that are regions where tensions and stresses occur due to the differences between civilizations. Such fault lines can be found in South East Asia, for example, where Islamic, Hindu, and Sinic Civilizations converge in an often uneasy mixture. His theory of history is cyclical rather than progressive and it opposes Hegel's concept of dialectical progression. Huntington holds the theory that civilizations rise and fall in regular cycles which can be anticipated.
His most interesting insight is that globalization, including economic integration, in the long run does not alter the basic characteristics of civilizations. Huntington maintains that a civilization can adopt the external trappings of Western Civilization such as democratic government and a free market economy, yet still retain its unique cultural features which in the end will provide the greatest influence on its behavior. This means that over time, civilizations will not only endure intact, but will clash.
Not all students of global trends would agree with Huntington, but I am sure all would take him seriously. Indeed, I would suggest this book be read in tandem with the The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama which postulates human societies as locked into a dialectical progression ending in western style free market economies and democratic governments. Interestingly, Huntington mentions Fukuyama in passing, but clearly does not believe that the theory of history advanced by Fukuyama is really relevant over the long haul. Still I think it is quite interesting to read about the contrasting theories of two learned and thoughtful writers each of whom has unique insights on how the world works.
(From quoting a Canidian reader)
Target readers:
General readers
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Samuel P. Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University, where he is also the director of the John M. Olin Institute for Stategic Studies and the chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was the director of security planning for the National Security Council in the Carter administration, the founder and coeditor of Foreign Policy, and the president of the American Political Science Association. He is the author of many books and scholarly articles. Huntington lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
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From the Publisher:
Based on the author's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism. In this incisive work, the renowned political scientist explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.
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Chapter 1: The New Era in World Politics
Introduction: Flags and Cultural Identity
On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. After this was pointed out to the Russian hosts, they quickly and quietly corrected the error during the first intermission.
The years after the Cold War witnessed the beginnings of dramatic changes in peoples' identities and the symbols of those identities. Global politics began to be reconfigured along cultural lines. Upside-down flags were a sign of the transition, but more and more the flags are flying high and true, and Russians and other peoples are mobilizing and marching behind these and other symbols of their new cultural identities.
On April 18, 1994, two thousand people rallied in Sarajevo waving the flags of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. By flying those banners, instead of U.N., NATO, or American flags, these Sarajevans identified themselves with their fellow Muslims and told the world who were their real and not-so-real friends.
On October 16, 1994, in Los Angeles 70,000 people marched beneath "a sea of Mexican flags" protesting Proposition 187, a referendum measure which would deny many state benefits to illegal immigrants and their children. Why are they "walking down the street with a Mexican flag and demanding that this country give them a free education?" observers asked. "They should be waving the American flag." Two weeks later more protectors did march down the street carrying an American flag-upside down. These flag displays ensured victory for Proposition 187, which was approved by 59 percent of California voters.
In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people. People are discovering new but often old identities and marching under new but often old flags which lead to wars with new but often old enemies.
One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin's novel, Dead Lagoon: "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 unfortunate truth in these old truths cannot be ignored by statesmen and scholars. For peoples seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential, and the potentially most dangerous enmities occur across the fault lines between the world's major civilizations.
The central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world. The five parts of this book elaborate corollaries to this main proposition.
Part I: For the first time in history global politics is both multipolar and multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization and is producing neither a universal civilization in any meaningful sense nor the Westernization of non-Western societies.
Part II: The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their economic, military, and political strength; Islam is exploding demo- graphically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming the value of their own cultures.
Part III: A civilization-based world order is emerging: societies sharing cultural affinities cooperate with each other; efforts to shift societies from one civilization to another are unsuccessful; and countries group themselves around the lead or core states of their civilization.
Part IV: The West's universalist pretensions increasingly bring it into conflict with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China; at the local level fault line wars, largely between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate "kin-country rallying," the threat of broader escalation, and hence efforts by core states to halt these wars.
Part V: The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies. Avoidance of a global war of civilizations depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics.
A Multipolar, Multicivilizational World
In the post-Cold War world, for the first time in history, global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational. During most of human existence, contacts between civilizations were intermittent or nonexistent. Then, with the beginning of the modern era, about A.D. 1500, global politics assumed two dimensions. For over four hundred years, the nation states of the West - Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Germany, the United States, and others - constituted a multipolar international system within Western civilization and interacted, competed, and fought wars with each other. At the same time, Western nations also expanded, conquered, colonized, or decisively influenced every other civilization (Map 1.1). During the Cold War global politics became bipolar and the world was divided into three parts. A group of mostly wealthy and democratic societies, led by the United States, was engaged in a pervasive ideological, political, economic, and, at times, military competition with a group of somewhat poorer communist societies associated with and led by the Soviet Union. Much of this conflict occurred in the Third World outside these two camps, composed of countries which often were poor, lacked political stability, were recently independent, and claimed to be nonaligned (Map 1.2).
In the late 1980s the communist world collapsed, and the Cold War international system became history. In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face: Who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.
Nation states remain the principal actors in world affairs. Their behavior is shaped as in the past by the pursuit of power and wealth, but it is also shaped by cultural preferences, commonalities, and differences. The most important groupings of states are no longer the three blocs of the Cold War but rather the world's seven or eight major civilizations (Map 1.3). Non- Western societies, particularly in East Asia, are developing their economic wealth and creating the basis for enhanced military power and political influence. As their power and self-confidence increase, non-Western societies increasingly assert their
own cultural values and reject those "imposed" on them by the West.
The "international system of the twenty-first century," Henry Kissinger has noted, "… will contain at least six major powers - the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Russia, and probably India - as well as a multiplicity of mediumsized and smaller countries." Kissinger's six major powers belong to five very different civilizations, and in addition there are important Islamic states whose strategic locations, large populations, and/or oil resources make them influential in world affairs. In this new world, local politics is the politics of ethnicity; global politics is the politics of civilizations. The rivalry of the superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations.
In this new world the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations. Violence between states and groups from different civilizations, however, carries with it the potential for escalation as other states and groups from these civilizations rally to the support of their "kin countries." The bloody clash of clans in Somalia poses no threat of broader conflict. The bloody clash of tribes in Rwanda has consequences for Uganda, Zaire, and Burundi but not much further. The bloody clashes of civilizations in Bosnia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, or Kashmir could become bigger wars. In the Yugoslav conflicts, Russia provided diplomatic support to the Serbs, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Libya provided funds and arms to the Bosnians, not for reasons of ideology or power politics or economic interest but because of cultural kinship.
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| View all 16 comments |
Henry (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
Sam Huntington, one of the West's most eminent political scentists, presents a challenging framework for understanding the realitites of global politics in the next century. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the most important books to have emerged since the end of the Cold War. |
Zbigniew Brzezinski (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
An intellectual tour de force: bold, imaginative, and provocative. A seminal work that will revolutionize our understanding of international affairs. |
Richard Bernstein (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
A benchmark for informed speculation on those always fascinating questions: Just where are we in history? What hidden hand is controlling our destiny? A searching reflection on our global state. |
Francis Fukyama (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-10 00:00>
The book is dazzling in its scope and grasp of the intricacies of contemporary global politics. |
View all 16 comments |
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