Commentary and Analysis of Samuel Huntington’s paper “The clash of civilizations

Huntington’s initial article argued that in the post-Cold War era the fundamental source of conflict would not be ideological or economic, but cultural. He continues by arguing that nation states will continue to be the most powerful actors in global affairs, but the conflicts of global politics that are to occur in the future will happen between

The term “culture war” means a conflict between societies with different ideas, philosophies, beliefs, and behaviors. This culture war debate is spreading all over the country at a rampant rate, making people question what they know about history and how they know the information they have. Peter Charles Hoffer, the author of the book “Past Imperfect” talks a lot about culture wars and the impact it has on historians and the public. He states “that the leading

Throughout history, the rise of cultures led to the rise of cultural difference, and those differences both separated people and brought people together. Every culture must choose whether they will allow their differences from other cultures to cause political unrest and war or collaboration and growth. While most people within almost every culture strives for peace, political and religious radicals cry out that deaths of infidels will lead to the greater good. But the sons and daughters of the mothers and fathers, and the brothers of the sisters and the husbands of the wives, taken from them fail to feel justified.

Each one of the claims will go onto support the overall issue that culture will cause the clash of civilizations. A great support Huntington uses is that no matter what we think of cultures each one is different in many ways. If its religion, language, or different historical backgrounds these will cause conflict to arise. With each civilization being different it can be hard to get along with other people because of how different their views might be. Another issue that arises is that not all, but many civilizations are influenced by the west. This is where the idea of westernization comes into play. Each community is trying to improve and be bigger and better themselves, they are trying to be better than their neighbors. If one civilization improves the surrounding groups will want to be the same. This means they will compete to be the same or even better than the civilization that already made it. This can lead to conflict and death between civilizations. Another reason is that when conflicts arise between civilizations it is a lot harder to resolve than a political or economical one. Like stated before it is very difficult to change someone’s beliefs, that means there is very little wiggle room for negotiation. The final example that Huntington writes about is that the economic regionalism is increasing. This means that more cultures and civilization are trading between themselves, but

The conflict between the United States and the Middle East is of great concern in the world today because of the heightened tensions in Syria, which is being terrorized by the radical Islamic group called ISIS. ISIS is not only creating conflict in the Middle East, they are also a homeland security threat to the United States because of the fear of terrorist attacks. Scholars and Theorists like Samuel Huntington have addressed the question of why states are experiencing heightened tension and have concluded that conflict in states or between states is the result of ethnic differences, namely religion and culture. Samuel Huntington’s essay, Clash of Civilizations, is extremely interesting because I always questioned what would have happened if every race were to stay in the territories they inhabited, like North America where Aboriginals settled, and the Middle East where the Arabians settled. Samuel Huntington’s essay invites you to ponder the idea that each civilization has different cultural and religious differences and that these differences clash and result in conflict between civilizations. Although Samuel Huntington’s essay is intriguing, there are misconceptions about his ideas regarding Muslims. This essay will analyze the historical misconceptions that Samuel Huntington portrays, which are his view of Muslims and Christians always being at war, his lack of knowledge of the Crusades, and his idea of “the West is the best”.

Throughout history, the rise of cultures caused the rise of cultural difference, and those differences separated and brought people together. Every person in every culture must choose to either allow their differences from people in other cultures to cause political unrest and war or collaboration and growth. While most people within almost every culture strives for peace, political and religious radicals cry out that the deaths of infidels will lead to the greater good. But the Sons and Daughters of the Mothers and Fathers and the brothers of the sisters and the husbands of the wives taken from them, fail to feel justified.

Culture and ideologies shape relationships and define who one associates with. In international relations the question of what has more influence is often discussed. It could be cultural factors such as customs, language or societal norms or political polices and philosophy. In 1996, Samuel P.Huntington published “The Clash of Civilizations” in which the author gave a geo-political theory that cultural differences between civilizations rather than ideological differences would be the primary source of global conflict in the post-Cold War world. This essay will focus on the argument in Huntington’s book about how it presents the world, the problem and the proposal for a solution.

The core claim of “The Clash of Civilizations” is that the greatest threat to world peace in the post-cold war world is not political, ideological or economic, but cultural. A civilization according to Huntington (1996) is the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity that helps people distinguish themselves from who they are not and who they are against (21). This is also evident on page 20 when Huntington (1996) states, “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 understanding of the self in one culture is totally different in another civilizations context and this leads to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Other factors than the culture of civilizations better help explain and understand military conflicts and the “Clash of Civilizations.” In fact, Huntington’s claims are nothing more than recycled Cold War realism updated to replace the Green Scare for the Red Scare.

When two cultures collide, the outcomes are various, beneficiary or negative, and even unpredictable. History displays countless times of when multiple cultures have clashed and intertwined with each other. For example, there have been many ancient wars dating back to 2334-2279 BCE, when conflict arose in the land of Mesopotamia. Frictions between two cultures have always existed even to this day. Modern events such as disputes in Ukraine, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan show that dissension is always present throughout the world. However, differences between opposing cultures is not always a negative issue. For instance, the United States of America is a physical definition of multiple cultures thrown together into a mixing pot. Basically the concept of two cultures clashing is a double edged sword. The result of two cultures encountering each other can produce an effect that makes the world a better place, shifts the way the way society functions, or it can completely set the world ablaze.

On the other hand, defenders of Huntington might argue that his thesis predicted the instability leading to the uprisings, and that his analysis of the Muslim Arab societies provided information of some important aspects of the Arab Spring, such as causes and driving forces: search for identity; Muslim political culture; affection and rejection towards the West; and Islam’s central role.

More than two decades have passed since Samuel Huntington published his influential article, “the Clash of Civilizations?” (1993). The article presented a new paradigm for describing global politics in the post-Cold War world. Huntington’s framework divided the world into several major civilizations, and argued that civilization’s cultural identity and religions will become the most important driving forces. Civilizations and states’ behaviors, and mostly participation in conflicts, will no longer be driven from ideological or economic forces as they were during in the time of the cold war era. Moreover, he argued that for the first time the world has become multipolar and multi-civilizational. This (the argument?) shapes geopolitics at the

Samuel P. Huntington, who was an American political scientist and adviser, wrote The Clash of Civilizations. The Clash of Civilizations focused on the claim that people’s cultural differences and religious identities is the primary source of conflict during the post-Cold War era in the 1990’s. Huntington believes that in the future the only reason conflict will arise will be because of the differences in cultural identities. Furthermore, Huntington divided the world into what he calls, “major civilizations”, that consisted nine civilizations: Western, Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, African, Latin American, Sinic, and Japanese. He believes that conflict is created because of these differences between the major civilizations. Then, in his work, he suggested six different reasons on why these civilizations causes conflict with each other. These suggestions stretches from increasing interactions across the world to having the differences in language, tradition, and religion from one civilization to another. Additionally, Huntington does believe that there are nine major civilizations in the world; however, he believes that the major conflict will be within the “West versus the Rest” concept. The main conflict will arise from Westernized civilizations against Non-Westernized civilizations and because of this I agree with Huntington that cultural differences around the world separate each everyone into different civilizations. I believe that Huntington’s observations about

Samuel Philips Huntington, an American political scientist brought an idea stated that the conflict in this world will not merely about ideology or economy, yet, it is about cultural and religious identity as the clash of civilization. Civilization itself meaning the highest cultural grouping of people and it is defined by common objective elements such as language, history and religion. The strong bond among one culture and religion create a strong kin at the same time. Even though coming from different region and country, the kin is influencing across the own nationality.

In the history of the world, times of war have always outnumbered times of peace. Numerous causes, both known and unknown, have fueled this need for war between groups of people. As ‘civilizations’ or religions, there is no inherent ethic reason to declare full, complete, and unwavering wars on one another. Instead, non-religious or cultural reasons such as the gathering or growth of wealth and land lead to wars. Statements suggesting otherwise, such as Samuel Huntington’s article "The Clash of Civilizations?” should be treated as at best, a large misunderstanding, and at worse deliberate fearmongering. As stated by Edward W. Said on the article, The Clash of Ignorance, “In fact, Huntington is an ideologist, someone who wants to make "civilizations" and "identities" into what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history, and that over centuries have made it possible for that history not only to contain wars of religion and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing.”. Clearly put, the concept of a “Clash of Civilizations” does nothing to explain the historical times of war and peace between Islam and Christianity.

In Amartya Sen's book, Identity and Violence, he discusses an article that was written by Samuel Huntington, called Clash of civilizations. The article Clash of Civilizations is Huntington's take on how violence will be caused post Cold War. . He argues that the cause of violence after the Cold War will be due to differences within cultural and religious identities. However, this article was written in 1993, and surely times have changed from then. There's been quite a few articles written critiquing Huntington's, Clash of Civilization since it was written. Of those critiques, I will be using Edward Said's article “The Clash of Ignorance,” and of course Sen’s discussion of the Clash of Civilizations in Identity and Violence.