Clash of Civilizations - Samuel

Clash of Civilizations - Samuel Huntington

In his book the Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington explains that the end of the cold war also brought to a conclusion the way wars are fought based on ideology. Huntington asserts that the absence of the international image of two superpowers dominating world politics has opened the door to regional cultural and religious wars. He makes his points by combining statistics to prove his oversimplified theory of world demographics as an "indispensable guide to international politics." His arguments in that regard seem valid, lucid and convincing, but there are those who take issue with his positions. In fact much of what Huntington asserts can be objectively (based on history and the world today) challenged and indeed morally challenged as well. This paper will review Huntington's points and theories, and provide alternative viewpoints as well.

One reason in particular that Huntington's book was so widely discussed post-9/11 is because of Huntington's pre-9/11 contention (page 28) that the wars of the future (as mentioned above) will not be "between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities." Further, he wrote, "In the post-Cold War world, culture is both a divisive and a unifying force. People separated by ideology but united by culture come together..."

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Looking at his argument in more specific terms is helpful when examining Huntington's book and trying to be objective about his positions. On page 35 for example, Huntington alludes to the fact that while there are threats emerging from societies that are quite different in terms of their cultures, those and other states are increasingly losing their "sovereignty and power" because increasingly "international institutions" are pushing their power and their right to judge on states. Huntington presses forward with the notion that especially in Europe individual states have given up some of their important functions; he doesn't say specifically what entity has taken away individual state powers but it can be assumed he is talking about the European Union.

The borders of individual states are becoming "increasingly permeable," Huntington explains (p. 35). He believes that state governments no longer have the power to control the flow of money in and out of their states, nor the flow of "ideas, technology, goods, and people." He alludes to the ongoing weakening of states as "failed states" in a section of page 35 he calls "Sheer Chaos." And with this breakdown of states' authority, Huntington sees the "intensification of tribal, ethnic, and religious conflict" along with the growth of organized crime on an international basis. It would be hard to imagine a world in as much chaos as Huntington insists there was in 1996, when he published this book, so a reader has to wonder if the author was using exaggeration for emphasis and to get the attention of scholars and critics.

Still, he goes on to say that the end of the Cold War has opened the door to all this chaos, including the growth (by tens of millions) of refugees, the "proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, the explosive growth of terrorism, and the hideous specter of "ethnic cleansing" and massacres. He tries to give data in almost every case to back up his contentions; for example, he writes (p. 35) that since the end of the Cold War there have been "...an estimated 48 ethnic wars" and "164 'territorial-ethnic claims and conflicts concerning borders'...in the former Soviet Union..." (and thirty of those conflicts had become armed conflict of some degree, according to the author).

A few pages earlier, page 32, Huntington builds a case for "two worlds" ("us and them") which he claims has been the case throughout "human history." That two worlds concept fits the picture that Huntington is painting of the good guys and bad guys - but then he brings in the Muslim concepts, who have "traditionally divided the world into 'Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb' (the "abode of peace and the abode of war"). He doesn't say where that Muslim division of worlds will lead, but he adds that after the Cold War, the abode of peace and the abode of war were "reversed" by American scholars. The new division was said to be "zones of peace" (including the West and Japan, about 15% of the world's population) and "zones of turmoil" (everywhere and everyone else; 85% of the world's population).

What Huntington is getting at with his post-Cold War two worlds idea is that traditional definitions of "us and them" have changed; no longer is it a conflict on the international stage with rich nations bullying and colonizing poor, developing nations. Rather, the author posits, rich states may well battle over trade issues and poorer states may fight bloody wars with each other (as is commonplace in Africa, for example). But an international war like WWI or WWII is unlikely - "almost as far from reality as one happy harmonious world," he writes on page 33.

By pointing to the new battle lines that are drawn in this post-Cold War world Huntington is setting the stage for the most controversial thesis in his book, which is that Muslim cultures are more involved in wars and conflict than any other culture. As mentioned earlier, this book was published five years prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and at that time it stirred the wrath of Islamic scholars as well as firing up the radical islamists like bin laden, who were already in a full-court press of hatred toward Americans and the West.

Indeed, the various sub-cultures that make up the "culture" of Islam receive viciously condemning criticism in his book. Notably, on pages 256-258, Huntington asserts "...wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors." He goes on: "The question naturally rises as to whether this pattern of late-twentieth-century conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim groups is equally true of relations between groups from other civilizations. In fact, it is not."

Huntington continues: "Muslims make up one-fifth of the world's population but in the 1990s they have far more involved in intergroup violence than the people of any other civilization. The evidence is overwhelming."

He cites facts and dates; of the fifty "ethno-political conflicts in 1993-1994," Muslims participated in "twenty-six." He uses New York Times' figures when he points out that of the "forty-eight locations in which some fifty-nine ethnic conflicts" occurred in 1993, "...half [of] these places Muslims were clashing with other Muslims or with non-Muslims." And he cites data from Ruth Leger Sivard: in 1992, nine of twelve intracivilizational conflicts "were between Muslims and non-Muslims..." On page 258, he wrote: "Muslim states also have had a high propensity to resort to violence in international crises, employing it to resolve 76 crises out of a total of 142 in which they were involved between 1928 and 1979."

The book by Huntington was preceded by an article in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs; responding to that article and to Huntington's book, Edward W. Said calls Huntington's approach "...a belligerent kind of thought" (Said, 2001). In an article (the Nation, October 22, 2001) published six weeks after the terrorist attacks on the United States Said insists that Huntington's greatly oversimplifies the issue.

By boiling things down to "the West" and "Islam" - which is "reckless" in Said's opinion - Huntington is taking "hugely complicated matters like identity and culture" and placing them in a "cartoon-like world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly." And in that cartoon world of make-believe violence one of the two challengers is "...always more virtuous" than the other, and hence gets the upper hand.

Moreover, by boiling this cultural clash down to "the West" and "Islam" (or "Muslims" as Huntington uses often) Huntington is showing his ignorance of the fact that within every civilization there are "internal dynamics and plurality" - according to Said. Going a step or two farther in his attack on Huntington, Said asserts that by defining the two cultures the way he has done - basically by presuming to speak for a "whole region or civilization" - Huntington is using "a great deal of demagogy and downright ignorance."

And a big part of Huntington's wrong-headed theme throughout his book, Said continues, is that the West must continue to get stronger to "fend off" Islam. If Huntington believes his perspective is the correct one - which he clearly does or he wouldn't have gone to the trouble to publish articles and write a book on the topic - then, Said writes, his view is as though he is surveying the whole world "from a perch outside all ordinary attachments and hidden loyalties." Huntington's view is taken (Said offers) "...as if everyone else were scurrying around looking for answers that he has already found."

Those "civilizations" and "cultures" that Huntington takes liberties with in terms of his oversimplifications are not, Said adds, "shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history." The book argues that the reality of history is a "ludicrously compressed and constricted warfare," Said continues; but indeed Huntington cannot grasp the notion that there are no strictly defined Muslim cultures but to make his book work he has to build a case that there is such a stereotypical, predictable Muslim culture.

Said goes so far as to say that Huntington's book attempted to give his original article a bit more "subtlety" along with "many, many more footnotes." But alas, Said believes that all Huntington did by putting out a whole book on the topic was to "confuse himself and demonstrate what a clumsy writer and inelegant thinker he was." Said has plenty more to say, albeit there is not space in this paper for all of his views; but several more of his themes will be presented. For example, Said compares the likes of Osama bin Laden and his band of violent Muslim extremists with the Rev. Jim Jones and the Branch Dividians, as opposed to seeing bin Laden as the cultural figurehead of Islam. But getting down to basics, Said complains that by using labels like "West" and "Islam" Huntington is simply confusing people's minds while people are honestly and earnestly seeking a way to understand "a disorderly reality."

Said ends his essay - after having blasted Huntington and other authors who take similar oversimplified positions vis-a-vis Islam - with the metaphorical thought that all members of the world's community are "swimming in the waters" of tradition and modernity. And since the waters he has alluded to are "part of the ocean of history," to attempt to plow or divide them "with barriers is futile." It is far better, Said concludes, for bright alert people to think "...in terms of powerful and powerless communities" and the "secular politics of reason and ignorance" along with the "universal principles of justice and injustice" rather than drifting off in search of "vast abstractions." And though those "vast abstractions" - this is clearly aimed at Huntington and his views - may provide "momentary satisfaction" but it offers very little "self-knowledge or informed analysis."

Indeed, Huntington's book is a "gimmick" not unlike "War of the Worlds," Said writes in his last paragraph. The Clash of Civilizations is better for "reinforcing defensive self-pride" than for actually, critically trying to grasp an understanding "of the bewildering interdependence of our time."

Meanwhile, in Chapter 9, the Huntington delves into what he calls "fault line conflicts" - again building the case that the Muslim culture (he doesn't say "Islam" as often as he uses "Muslim" which has perhaps a grittier tone) is prone to violence. "Fault line conflicts are particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims," he writes, promising to explain the "dynamics of these conflicts" in later chapters.

Huntington says that there are six issues that tend to give launch to fault line conflicts. One is the "relative influence" of the UN, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank (earlier he wrote about international organizations taking power away from states). The second of six reasons these fault line conflicts is "relative military power" which manifests itself in arms-race-related controversies; the third issue that foments these conflicts is "...economic power and welfare," which comes into play when trade deals and investments go sour; the fourth issue people from one civilization discriminating against people from another civilization; the fifth issues "values and culture" (when one state tries to impose its values on another); and the sixth issue is when states dispute who owns territory (differences over ownership of land).

Okay, Huntington is quick to admit, all of these sources of conflict can be traced way back into human history; he's not saying these are new following the Cold War, or to be blamed necessarily on Muslims. But he is saying that with the new emphasis on culture vs. culture, when states bordering one another have different cultures and civilizations and one is ready to challenge the other, that challenger rallies "their civilization cohorts." Why is this any different than past conflicts? Huntington on page 208 suggests that the fault line conflicts reflect certain strategies that are relatively new.

For example, for the sake of discussion one can put forth the possibility that a conflict has begun between a Muslim state and a non-Muslim state. The Muslim state, under Huntington's formula, will then get all the support it can from other Muslim states or individuals of Islamic heritage; he doesn't use this example, but it is clear that is what happened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 when Muslim fighters came from around the world to join the fight against aggression by the Soviets. After rallying fellow Muslims and others from "third civilizations" (Huntington 208), the Muslim state in question then attempts to "promote division within and defections from opposing civilizations." Along with this effort the Muslim state would typically also use "an appropriate mix of diplomatic, political, economic and covert actions and propaganda inducements and coercions" to reach their objectives.

As to movements for "religious revival," on page 100 Huntington offers a brief history lesson; he claims that during the 19th Century "non-Western elites imbibed Western liberal values" and as a result these nations became nationalists with liberal values as a way of showing opposition to the West. But in the 20th Century, Huntington continues on page 100, Russian, Asian, Arab, African, and Latin American elites "...imported socialist and Marxist ideologies and combined them with nationalism," again, to oppose Western capitalism and "Western imperialism."

That having been said, when communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and it became "modified" in China from what it was during Mao's reign, and when other socialist economies failed to deliver what they had promised, there was as a result of these events a "ideological vacuum." And so the groups rushing to fill this supposed vacuum, Huntington continues, were the likes of the IMF and the World Bank, those institutions he mentioned earlier as having usurped power from individual states. And the "doctrines" that the IMF and World Bank have offered in the meantime (those doctrines include "neo-orthodox economies" and "democratic politics") have, in Huntington's view, not amounted to anything of great substance within the people searching for an ideology (doctrine).

But religion, in the author's view, has provided a solid substitute for ideology; and "religious nationalism replaces secular nationalism." These religious replacements for ideology are "anti-Western" and of course this is another place in his book where Huntington sets readers up for the inevitable attack on the Muslim culture. On page 101, the author states that religion is used by Islamic fundamentalists have established strong followings in Iran, Algeria, Lebanon and Tunisia.

This religious revivalism among Muslims appeals to the young, urban sons and daughters of secular parents; and according to William McNeill (quoted by Huntington on page 101) the "reaffirmation of Islam, whatever its specific sectarian form, means the repudiation of European and American influence on local society, politics, and morals." With that, Huntington launches into another of his positions that all roads in Islam lead to a place to hate America and the West. The revival of "non-Western religions is the most powerful manifestation of anti-Westernism in non-Western societies," he insists.

And the revival does not just reject an approach to modernism, but rather it is a rejection of the West and the "secular, relativistic, degenerate culture associated with the West," according to Huntington. He goes on to emphasize that this religious revival he sees is a "declaration of cultural independence from the West" and a "proud statement" that "We will be modern but we won't be you.'"

Still on the subject of religion and Islam, the author on page 210 relates world history in his favor, quoting Bernard Lewis, who said that for "a thousand years...from the first Moorish landing in Spain to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under constant threat from Islam." And he alludes to Christians having pushed the Moors out of Iberia by 1492, and the rest of the conquered territory being taken back from Islam in due time. But Western colonialism - which had put a number of Arab nations (Iran, India, et al.) under the thumb of greedy imperialists - retreated in the 1920s and 1930s from Arab lands that had been exploited. In fact Huntington (p. 210), who likes using numbers to illustrate his points, claims that between 1757 and 1919 "some ninety-two" Muslim territories were seized by "non-Muslim governments."

But by 1995, he continues, sixty-nine of those ninety-two territories had been reclaimed by Muslims. And these "shifting relationships" between colonizing nations and the colonized - described by Huntington as having a "violent nature" - can be remembered through the fact that "50% of wars involving pairs of states of different religions between 1820 and 1929 were wars between Muslims and Christians."

As to the reasons for the conflict in recent years between Christian nations and Muslim societies (p. 211), Huntington's views are pretty much in line with historical and political reality. He points out that the population of the Muslim community "has generated large numbers of unemployed and disaffected young people." And those young people are often recruited to Islamic causes; Huntington's book isn't contemporary enough to relate to the news reports of al Qaeda's recruiters in the early and mid-2000s pulling disaffected Muslim young people out of France, Germany, and other European countries to become suicide bombers or just fighters in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Controversy in itself does not make a book weak; but a publication with so many important cultural and political issues covered like Huntington's book should have verifiable back up to justify wild assertions like the kind the author expresses on page 310. Huntington states that in this world of ethnic conflict and "civilizational clash" that he has spent over 300 pages describing the belief of Western culture - that it should become a universal value and ethic - "suffers from three problems." Those three are, "it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous," he insists. This first of the three problems is not an agreeable phrase in this paper but why does Huntington believe it false? He quotes from Michael Howard whose view - as to the "it is false" remark - is confusing and circular.

There is nothing false about the belief of Western cultures that democracy and fairness, justice and freedom of speech and religion are wrong. Certainly it is wrong to push Western values on cultures that are getting along fine with what they have and are not attempting to pillage neighboring peoples. But there is nothing false about true Western values of equality, the rights of citizens to redress their grievances and fairness in democratic institutions.