Fukyama V huntington Essay

History is a never-ending story that explains the five W’s: Who, what, when, where, and why. However, an important question is missing from what history is stereotyped to be. What shapes history? Whether it is from a societal, national, or civil aspect, history is developed by the ideals and beliefs that man hold to be true-as in deism, theism, and even atheism, self-interest, and the want for power

Samuel Huntington’s controversial article “The Clash of Civilizations?” was first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and was subsequently turned into a book in 1996 titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. As this paper will show Huntington’s work can be seen as a product of the post-Cold War context it was written in. Huntington’s article takes a new perspective on the new world order and outlines a different way a thinking about how future world conflicts will unfold. Since the initial journal article was published in 1993 there has been a great deal of response from academics and also from Huntington himself. A majority of the responses come in the form of critiques, with the authors offering their own insight into how the post-Cold War World will operate. Although the validity of Huntington’s arguments have been questioned, it did create a great deal of controversy in the academic world. As Huntington explained in the preface of his 1996 book, the original article published in Foreign Affairs created more discussion in three years than any other article published in the journal since the 1940s.

Both authors, Samuel P. Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, don’t have any conflicting views but have different perceptions as to how they see the world after the revolution and the cold war. Samuel believes that the west is dominating the world, changing cultures and customs of other countries. However, Francis analyzes the positive aspects of how the liberal democracy in the west is more powerful than all other democratic nations and he portrays how western dominance is effective and healthy for most of the nations.

More so than that, Huntington was writing during a time when the United States was the world’s only military superpower which lead to the idea that America should take the lead in establishing the “new world order”, one which would be dominated by the United States and their allies. Because of this, American diplomats and officials were faced with regional, religious and ethnic conflicts that, as Huntington argues, could not be easily solved. During this time the United States were making major decisions about the layout and status of the new world order. It becomes clear that Huntington would believe future conflicts would arise from cultural differences due to previous cultural clashes and that the most powerful country in the world, the United States, was also unable to create solutions for conflicts fueled by cultural differences.

Huntington that hypothesised a new post-Cold War world order. Prior to the end of the Cold War, societies were divided by ideological differences such as the struggle between democracy and communism. Huntington’s primary thesis argues, “The most important distinctions among peoples are [no longer] ideological, political or economic. They are cultural.” Huntington makes a very persuasive argument as to how new patterns of conflict will occur along the boundaries of different cultures and patterns of cohesion will be found within the cultural boundaries. The book goes into extensive detail of how world systems between civilizations, which he divides by culture into 7 main global civilizations, are impacted on an international relations scale by this changing nature of conflict. He focuses a great deal on the West’s ability to maintain military superiority through the nonproliferation of emerging powers. In particular relation to 9/11 he focuses on the emerging influence of Islamic culture (which he classifies as it’s own civilization) being quintessential in the emerging new global conflict arisen out of hundreds of years of conflict, military and cultural, between Western civilization and Islamic civilization. The clear limitation of this work is that it is based on his own perception of history and is purely a hypothesis, however it clearly has a great degree of validity to it as we have already seen through the last decade in the rise of terrorism as the new global conflict. This book will assist my essay writing particularly in analysing how 9/11 marked the beginning of a new era of global conflict between powers larger than nation states alone, and thus how this has created increasingly complex paradigms of unprecedented effects on international

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”.

Its author, Peter Stearns, writes “mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory (Stearns 2). History provides guidance to people in modern times. By looking to it, men and women in today’s society can gain an understanding of everything from organizing religious events to conducting foreign policy. While the past is not identical to the present, it provides a wealth of data, and this can help people understand the world and shape the future.

Huntington goes on to suggest that along with this umbrella idea of conflict between civilizations; through economic, social, and cultural separations; there will be a divide in which countries with similar beliefs or ‘civilizations’ will stick together in war and conflict against other civilizations. Another key point to highlight is that he believed that in the post-cold war world, religion would become something that separates civilizations. In connection to Krauthamer’s viewpoint, Huntington’s explores the idea that with the West viewed as an enemy due to economic, military, and political strength, many civilizations who don't want to or cant join the west will compete with it. Huntington then suggests that the west learn to co-exist with other civilizations in order for it to remain the strongest and that it needs to accept religious and philysophical differences of other

The past, present, and the future are all inter-related with one another. How history is told comes down to the “ideology” you are exposed to and I believe that is is important to seek the truth in the story so that you would not be locked into one ideal perspective. Zinn, McNeil, and Marchak demonstrate that history is written in favour of the historians and as a result, society is tied down to one-sided information and a partial truth. We as a society should not be overthrown by dominant ideology, which is a set of false

‘Civilization,’ a term defined as ‘the state of human society that is very developed and organized,’ has frequently carried immense weight in American official rhetoric. Historically speaking, however, since its emergence as a concept in the late-eighteenth century in Western Europe, acts of extraordinary violence and brutality have been committed in the name of civilization. In his critique on Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations thesis, Edward Said asserts

On the streets of Jerusalem, in the rubble of Ramallah, in synagogues, in mosques, in the hearts and minds of millions in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the remainder of Israel, Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a clash of civilizations. In his masterful work, The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel L. Huntington outlines a theory which approaches international politics on the scale of civilizations. However, he circumvents discussion about Israel. Huntington cautiously describes Israel as a “non-Western” (Huntington 90) country, but identifies the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as one along a fault line between civilizations (267). Though he chooses to avoid the issue, Huntington’s theory provides a groundwork for analyzing the

Over the years, the world has seen many wars, out of which a lot took place when there was shift in power balance. World War l was thought to be the end of all wars, and then a few years later, World War ll took place. The question that rises today is whether hegemonic war is likely to happen again with the rise of new global powers. Jack Levy describes hegemonic war as one in which the decisive victory of at least one side is both a reasonable possibility and one that would be likely to result in the leadership of dominance by a single state over the system, or at least in the overthrow of an existing leadership of hegemony.” (364-365)The two most probable actors that could get involved in a hegemonic war today are China and the USA. We shall use the realist lens to analyze the likelihood of another hegemonic war

The aim of Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” was to provide an academic framework to understand almost all of the conflicts that had broken out since the end of the twentieth century, to include predicting the appearance of future conflicts. According to Huntington, there will be a clash of civilizations since the world has been in an unreasonable era since the end of the Cold War and the position of the nation-state has not been of any significance. Far more than the political objectives of territorial take-overs, it is the religious element of culture that has become the main cause of conflict. It should be acknowledged that Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” is a relatively simple theory which focuses on

Is it possible for there to ever be an 'End of History'? While it certainly isn’t impossible it’s very unlikely. But to assess the likelihood of it occurring first, we must ascertain exactly what that entails. There are several theories, the first of which comes from a French philosopher named Antoine-Augustin Cournot. His definition being "to refer to the end of the historical dynamic with the perfection of civil society" (Mike Featherstone, "Global and Local Cultures", in John Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (1993)) His definition is by far the broadest. Marx, however, theorised that the evolution

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2006 led many to believe that it was the start of clash of civilizations, which Said argued as one not seeing the whole picture. The Egyptian revolution, of thousands pouring onto Cairo’s Tahrir Square demanding the self-determination they were denied, shows that the clash of civilization was a myth. The world is filled with clashes and significant conflicts, through the perspective of Huntington’s thesis, one will understand the main cause will be rooted in cultural differences. Through the perspective of Said’s thesis, one will understand that any conflicts in the beginning of the twenty-first century must be thoroughly understood rather than viewing it through the lenses of an outdated concept.