Huntington's clash of civilizations: comparative analysis and response

In Huntington’s (1993) essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” the political scientist posited that whereas nation states had been aligned previously on cultural terms in the past, in the coming years of the modern world these terms would become disjointed as various cultures emerged or re-asserted themselves. Along these cultural lines, the discourse of modern politics would be situated. In other words, Huntington (1993) viewed the cultures of various civilizations serving as the source of conflict in the coming era. Conflict would not be driven by economics or geopolitical aims but rather by the cultures of the world’s civilizations. This paper will compare and contrast Huntington’s thesis with thesis by Inglehart and Norris (2003) who, in the wake of 9/11, re-assessed Huntington’s idea and found it be half-right; it will argue that Huntington’s thesis remains the correct one and that Inglehart and Norris (2003) are too focused on the minutiae and therefore miss the main point of Huntington’s thesis.
Inglehart and Norris (2003) concede that culture plays a part in the differences between the Western world and the Muslim world, but they pinpoint a precise issue that serves as the ultimate wedge between the two: sex. The researchers state that “according to a new survey, Muslims and their Western counterparts want democracy, yet they are worlds apart when it comes to attitudes toward divorce, abortion, gender equality, and gay rights—which many not bode well for democracy’s future in the Middle East” (p. 63). This argument by Inglehart and Norris (2003) is patently absurd because the West for many years was considered to embrace democratic principles yet it never held the views and attitudes it currently holds towards sex, divorce, abortion or gender equality and gay rights that it holds today. If these are the bulwark of democracy, the Founding Fathers certainly did not view it so. This over-emphasis on sex as the wedge between two warring cultures—the West and the Muslim Middle East—is telling in the sense that it represents the Western obsession with liberal ideas or rather with a liberalized culture that drives the political discourse of the nations’ leaders. This discourse is rejected by nations who do not share the same liberalized culture or liberal ideals—and that is the underlying point of Huntington’s thesis: the wars of tomorrow will be fought upon cultural grounds. Attitudes towards sex are but one manifestation of this culture and the cultural beliefs of nation states.
As Huntington (1993) states, “conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world” that essentially got underway with the Peace of Westphalia, which erected a truce of sorts among warring European nations in the 17th century based on a political live-and-let-live approach. This approach was impermanent in essence because it did not address the underlying cultural tensions that had led Europe to war in the first place—and these tensions were at root religious. Europe had split in half—one half embracing Protestantism, the other remaining Catholic. A united Catholic Europe had opposed the Muslim world in the Middle Ages, but now in the modern world, this oppositional force was itself breaking apart and fragmenting. Different cultures were emerging in the East, Middle East and the West. Sex attitudes were a byproduct that emerged relatively late in this evolution.
In conclusion, Huntington (1993) correctly identifies the main issue underlying the world’s conflicts—a cultural war. Inglehart and Norris (2003) merely identify one aspect of cultural differences and mistakenly take it as the heart of the problem. They are looking through the wrong end of history, however.
References
Huntington, S. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72(3), 22-49.
Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2003). The true clash of civilizations. Foreign Policy, 135,
63-70.