The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington is an extremely well written and insightful book. Samuel P. Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University, director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, the chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the president of the American Political Science Association. During the Carter administration, Huntington was the director of security planning for the National Security Council. He is also the founder and coeditor of the highly regarded international affairs publication, Foreign Policy.
In 1993 Samuel P. Huntington wrote an article for the respected journal Foreign Affairs titled “The Clash of Civilizations?”. This article was very controversial and stirred up much debate among scholars, politicians, and anyone interested in the future of international affairs. His book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is a more detailed exploration of the ideas and predictions put forth in his article.
Huntington believes that with the end of the Cold War, the world is divided along the borders of civilizations and religion rather than the boundaries of countries. He identifies eight clearly distinct civilizations: Western (the United States and western Europe), Islamic, Sinic (primarily China), Orthodox (primarily Russia), Japanese, Hindu, Latin American, and African. A pervasive presumption in the Western world is that with the fall of communism, the West has “won” and that the rest of the world will now embrace democracy and Western culture. Huntington disagrees with this presumption. In his book, Huntington shows us how civilizations and cultural identities are shaping the post-Cold War world.
In the first part of the book, Huntington describes how the world has gone from being bipolar during the Cold War, to being multipolar in the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War the world was basically divided along the lines of the “democracy vs. communism” conflict. Now that the Cold War is over, lines are being drawn along various ethnic and religious lines. Huntington uses many diverse examples such as the fighting between tribes and clans in Rwanda and Somalia, the clash of ethnic groups in Bosnia, and the conflicts in Sri Lanka, India, and Sudan. Throughout his book, for each ...
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... also build on the cultural commonality between European countries and the United States. Huntington also suggests that Western countries must develop economic and political ties to match their collaborated dedication to security issues. He states that an increased political and economic unity among Western nations will offset the relative decline in their share of the world’s population and economic influence.
In summary, Huntington believes that the future of the world depends on understanding and cooperation between the leaders of the world’s civilizations. He is a realist and believes that clashes between civilizations will be the greatest threat to world peace and stability. Throughout “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” Huntington gives numerous persuasive arguments to convince his audience that he is correct. Huntington has a writing style that is precise and direct. His mastery of the subject is obvious and his use of facts and examples to prove his point is very convincing. This book is a very important text and is recommended to anyone who is involved in the study of international relations or is interested in the current state of world politics.
...taken the form of universalization of those same structures across the world through reforming measures or through discourses in the Muslim world, thus creating conflicts as noted by Majid. The main weapon of this power relationship is observing and differentiating between good and bad, thus ingraining binary oppositions with the western values at the superior end. Thus, the western hegemony is like a beauty myth which is an unattainable western standard which is not only undesirable but harmful for the non-west. Still, they are coerced to adopt this standard due to a constant gaze and pressure from the West. Therefore, there is a need to revert this gaze and dismantle the western hegemony and power structures through the proliferation of ideas; ideas that take root not merely from the power elite or existing structures but stem from individual and provincial needs.
In no field other than politics does the justification for action often come from a noteworthy event and the true cause stays hidden behind the headlines. The United States’ transformation from a new state to a global superpower has been a methodical journey molded by international conditions (the global terrain for statecraft), the role of institutions and their programmed actions, and ultimately, the interests of actors (the protection of participants in making policy’s items and i...
In the years since the early 90’s, Huntington’s premise has not been proven wrong. Along the years, various conflicts occurred around the world which can be identified as the examples of the clash of civilizations. Certainly, other factors such as politics, economics and military also contribute to many conflicts, yet the most catastrophic and chaotic ones inevitably occur in the dispute between civilizations. Between Orthodoxy and Islam there was wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Caucuses, between Islam and Africa there was Boko Haram, between Islam and the Hindu civilization there was perpetual terrorism, between Orthodoxy and the West there was wars in Croatia and Slovenia and the current crisis in Ukraine, and of course, between the West and Islam, there was the phenomenon of Charlie Hebdo, not to mention the widely-known 9/11 tragedy.
I share the view of Edward Said who responded to Huntington’s thesis in his 2001 article, “ The Clash of Ignorance”. He argued that Huntington’s categorization of the world’s fixed “civilizations” omits the dynamic interdependency and interaction of culture. Said (2004) also argues that the clash of civilizations thesis is an example of “ the purest individious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science
Candice G, Charles L, and Linda W, 2004. In the Balance: Themes in Global History .Boston: ,McGraw-Hill. pp 912–17.
Advances in technology and the expansion of trade have, without a doubt, improved the standard of living dramatically for peoples around the world. Globalization brings respect for law and human rights and the democratization of politics, education, and finance to developing societies, but is usually slow in doing so. It is no easy transition or permanent solution to conflict, as some overly zealous proponents would argue. In The Great Illusion, Norman Angell sees globalization as a force which results from and feeds back into the progressive change of human behavior from using physical force toward using rational, peaceful methods in order to achieve economic security and prosperity. He believes that nations will no longer wage war against one another because trade, not force, yields profit in the new global economy, and he argues that “military power is socially and economically futile” because “political and military power can in reality do nothing for trade.” While the economic interdependence of nations should prove to be a deterrent from warfare, globalization is not now, and was not a century ago, a prescription for world peace. At the turn of the twentieth century, formal colonialism was still profitable in some regions, universal free trade was not a reality, nationalism was not completely defunct, military force was necessary to protect economic investments in developing locations, and the arms race of the previous century had created the potential for an explosive war if any small spark should set the major powers off against one another. The major flaw in Angell’s argument is his refusal to acknowledge the economic advantages that colonizing powers, even after globalization has started to take shape, can actuall...
The Soviet Union’s collapse at the end of the Cold War left the United States without its major global rival. Now alone at the top, the United States’ strategic imperatives have shifted remarkably. The shift has been significant enough to prompt fundamental questions about the international order and whether this new “unipolar moment” will last. Indeed, since 1989, political scientists have clamored to define the United States’ status relative to the rest of the world. Indispensable nation? Sole super...
Frieden, Jeffry A., David A. Lake, and Kenneth A. Schultz. World Politics. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2013. Print.
Analysing The West: Unique, Not Universal. Throughout history, Western civilization has been an emerging force behind change in foreign societies. This is the concept that is discussed in the article, the West Unique, Not Universal, written by Samuel Huntington. The author makes a very clear thesis statement and uses a variety of evidence to support it. This article has a very convincing point.
The Western culture has evolved over a span of several years with various civilizations specializing in specific aspects of life or nature. In essence, Western civilization dates back to the BCE periods when Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Rome reigned. Each of the Western civilizations came with a clear lineage that portrayed such attributes as property rights, free market economy, competition, personal freedoms, and innovation (Perry, 2013). Besides, the western civilizations came at different periods with some of the attributes evolving or remaining unchanged throughout the lineage. However, the non-western civilizations contributed towards such attributes to a given extent, primarily because of the interactions among
Perry, Marvin, Myrna Chase, James R. Jacob, Margaret C. Jacob and Theodore H. Von Laue. Western Civilization: Ideas Politics and Society: Volume II, Sixth Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Doyle, Michael W. and G. John Ikenberry, eds. (1997) New Thinking in International Relations Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview Pres.
...arly lead to the rivalry of superpowers being replaced by the clash of civilizations. Conversely it then makes it evident that in this particular new world global politics then become the politics of civilizations whereas local politics become the politics of ethnicity (Huntington, 1996).
Ross, Mark Howard. “The Relevance of Culture for the Study of Political Psychology and Ethnic Conflict”. Political Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 2, Special Issue: Culture and Cross-Cultural
Baylis, Smith and Patricia Owens. 2014. The globalization of World Politics: An introduction to international relations. London. Oxford University Press.