The Clash of Civilizations: a Summary of Samuel Huntington’s Controversial Political Analysis and Its Critics

Some argue that globalization will, on the long term, bring all cultures as a unique Western, if not Americanized, culture, while others argue that some cultures will persist in order to keep their own essence and therefore avoid the homogenization of all cultures. Alongside pure tradition, global conflicts, contradictory political regimes and the diversity of economic systems, some cultures are bound to face issues when trying to fully fit in a global western culture, and that is why cultures are adaptable to one another, but with some limits that we will express in this essay.

The word "identity" inspired many writers in our contemporary world, toarticulate their ideas and state their suggestions in a way to find a precise definition for such a word, especially where the globalization has become a fact which produces with it many effectual consequences. Some writers had linked Identity with the original culture to which a person may belong, others dealt with it as a changing factor transformed according to every ones status,however a third category characterized the Identity from another angel in view of religious or ideological background. Huntington being one of the leading writers in this sphere has imagined a future world witnesses a clash of civilizations.According to his categorizationfrom a cultural perspective however; the world shall be divided into eight civilizations. This essay shall shed a light into the different understandings of theidentity and culture as in relation to Islam and the West having reference to different arguments and visions presented in the following scholarly sources.

In fact, while the distinctive ideologies and religious groups still exist, the clear boundaries of different civilizations characterized by Huntington have blurred. When this dichotomy to recognize the world as direct confrontations between ideology and culture groups becomes no longer valid, the theory of the inevitability of the clash of civilization, thus, are now flawed, because it is realistically unreasonable, ethically wrong, conceptually biased and historically inaccurate. These problems regarding the clash of civilizations embody a misleading western supremacy shown in Bush’s speech as well as the war on terror on a larger

The civilizations, as identified by Huntington are Sinic [Chinese or Confusious], Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox [Russian], Western [Europe, North American, Australia, New Zealand], Latin American and possibly African. And it is among these groups that share a “common interest and common values” and have a “common culture or civilization” that will lead to more interdependence on members of the same civilization and less dependent on the West. Huntington’s theory is that the West has had [at one time or another] a negative impact on every other civilization, and this has led to a decline of power and influence around the world, especially the Islam civilization. Therefore he predicts, “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

Very few states today are so similar culturally that the culture is shared with the state. Europe’s prominent nation-states have developed into diverse societies, their nations defined more by a “national spirit” and emotional commitment than by cultural or ethnic homogeneity.

Critics believe that if more countries held the same cultural beliefs (American ones) that there would be less violence and fewer arguments between countries. Galeota wholeheartedly rallies again the idea of a one-culture world. She argues that even if all the countries in the world were to hold the same cultural beliefs, it certainly doesn’t guarantee there won’t be fighting. Plus, in her opinion, who would want a world without a variety of unique cultures? She elaborates, “The complex fabric of diverse cultures around the world is a fundamental and indispensable basis of humanity”

The argument Huntington is giving is that there will not be near as many fights over politics and economic values but more of culture and religious values. Throughout the article he talks a lot about what he believes will happen but one thing that we can be sure is he believes that there will be war over culture. “As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an “us” versus “them” relation existing between themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion.” This quote from the article shows us that he does believe people will fight because they see it as it is their culture against everyone else’s. It is hard to talk things out with people who believe the complete different things you believe.

In the argument “Clash of Civilians” written by Samuel Huntington, he states that Western conflicts arose between nation states and ideologies. During the cold war the First, Second, and Third Worlds were divided by their status. Post Cold War it no longer mattered. International policies shift from Western being the main focus to focusing on the West and non-Western civilizations. The differences in civilization when it comes to their culture, customs, religion, ethnicity, have been there for centuries and after the Cold War the politics among states is much less fundamental. Civilization is far more fundamental today and throughout time, civilization identity will continue to be a major component.

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

He begins to live for himself and his own. He begins to crave for an identity and he does his best to carve it out. Man’s identity is strongly influenced by his surroundings. In order to preserve this identity, Man begins to take measures to safeguard it. To protect all that he has learned and accumulated over the past centuries. A strong nation is indeed built by strong borders and a strong army. Good fences make good neighbours. That is true. But one has to begin questioning the limits of such culture preservation. Would culture preservation be culture intrusion to the other communities? For Man, has since time immemorial adopted the belief that the best form of defence is offense. In order to preserve and propagate his culture, Man has set out on a quest to annihilate any other existing culture. The theory of ‘The survival of the fittest’ determined the setting of borders in the medieval times. Civilisation has come a long way since then. But only the ways and strategies of remapping the world has changed; not the intent behind it. Man’s allegiance to his nation can be described as an innate quality. His ability to identify himself with certain cultural, religious or

Reacting to the theory of Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington resumed the expression "Clash of civilizations" in 1993 and speculates that it is mainly cultural and religious identities

In the article Huntington describes civilizations as a “cultural entity” comprised of many different nationalities, ethnic groups’ religious groups and regions. We could use and example as those that live on the east coast of the United States differ from those on the west coast. Here we could talk about the difference between their politics their lifestyles and maybe their economies regional and state. However, both may be different in some form most will identify as American, which will distinguish them from Mexico or Canada. This makes civilizations. “A civilization is thus the highest cultural group of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It’s defined

Lately there has been a thought that the difference in Civilizations is another issue that may cause a conflict. Starting from World War I the arguments raised by nations were over an ideology: fascism vs. communism, communism vs. democracy. Some people believe that the next step would be a war based on a cultural sense and religion. Such war would unite people with similar beliefs, views on the world, language, tradition and history. They believe the conflict of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating civilizations [1].

Samuel Huntington, the author of the clash of the civilisations believes that the World will eventually divide in accordance with cultural lines, and not political lines. According to Huntington, “the thriving East Asian and Muslim societies will soon challenge Western dominance, and the United States being the World leader will need to reevaluate its policies on foreign invention and domestic immigration to remain a major player.” During the Cold War, the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Huntington views these ties as insignificant now and states that the remaking of the World order will be based upon cultural similarity. The different thriving civilisations according to him today are the Western civilisation comprising of North America and Western Europe, the Muslim civilisation, the Orthodox Civilisation led by Russia, the Chinese civilisation, the Hindu civilisation, the Japanese civilisation, the Latin American civilisation and the African civilisation. Huntington’s proposition of the division of the World according to cultural lines has been backed by the use of various examples by him; examples of events that have taken place in the past.