New Political Theory

Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington Huntington wrote a paper in 1992 that set the stage for a new era in political discourse. In this article, Huntington makes the argument that the end of the cold war has entered in a new period in which ideological or economic clashes will not be the focus rather cultural conflict will set the stage for later generations.

Huntington points specifically eight civilizations that are potentially at the risk of clashing; they are the Western, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin America, Islamic, African, Hindus, Buddhist, Confucians and Japanese civilizations. He states (Huntington, 1993) World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be -- the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others.

Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the coming years. Whereas the conflicts previous to this point in history were based on princes, nation states and ideologies, the emerging conflicts will take on a different form. With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its centerpiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations (Huntington, 1993).

Furthermore, the identification of countries as in the first, the second, and third world is no longer a relevant classification. Rather, societies must be looked in terms of their cultures and the civilization in general. "First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic" noted Huntington referring to the differences in language and culture (Huntington, 1993). However, there are other trends that work to drive the conflicts among cultures. These include trends such as globalization, economic modernization, and economic regionalism.

These factors also work to make the cultural differences more apparent because they are less mutable than not easily resolved by economic and political influences as many of the second and third world countries have become more powerful and less dependent on the first world. One fault line that was noted was between Western and Islamic cultures and these tensions have been building for over thirteen hundred years. At the same time, military conflict among Western states in unimaginable given the level of technology that has developed.

A modern war between developed nation would be unthinkable because of the level of devastation that could occur. However, from the perspective of culture, there are two main points of conflict (Huntington,.