Why Do People Fight?

¶ … John Bowen in "The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict" and Samuel Huntington in "The Clash of Civilizations," indicates that there are points of both commonalities and differences between these authors. Interestingly enough, one can hypothesize that the differences between these writings will be aligned with the nature of the publications in which they were presented: Bowen's was published in the more egalitarian "Journal of Democracy" while Huntington's appeared in the more traditional "Foreign Affairs." The principle point of similarity between the authors exists in their conception of the role of the nation state in global conflict; the author's widely differ as to the reason for those conflicts and for their future ramifications.

Bowens states clearly and often that the initial source for many of the inter-ethnic conflicts that take place within a particular nation state or between neighboring nation states has to do with the emergence of those regions as nation states. The notion of nation states initially emerged in the middle of the 17th century with the solidification of the Treaty of Westphalia. According to Bowen, this conception was induced into peoples who previously did not distinguish themselves along the lines of a nation state in order to divide them and cause conflict between them. In many instances, the author argues that treaties between different ethnicities, such as the Tutsis and the Hutu's in Rwanda, are remnants from colonialism (Bowen 1996, 6). This example is one of the many in which European colonists came into a region that previously had peaceful relations between peoples of different (yet related ethnicities), favored one over the other (usually due to an aptitude for speaking English, in the case of British colonialism) and made certain social and political changes to that region that was the actual source of conflict. Such conflict, then, was not originally ethnic in nature, but due to colonial divisions and favoritism that resulted in individual identities along the lines which nation states were then reared and grounds for contestation with one another.

This relationship between nation states and armed conflict within the past couple of centuries was agreed upon by Huntington in his essay. Yet in reaching this point of agreement with Bowen, Huntington ultimately creates a key facet of distinction with the former author. Huntington admits that nations were the primary source of conflict in the past, which the author states they "have been…for only a few centuries" (Huntington 1993, 24). What he terms as the "traditional rivalries" (Huntington 1993, 22) is something that he believes will belong solely to the past, and will not affect the future. Instead, the author believes that the principle source of conflict in the 21st century -- both articles were written in the final decade of the 20th century -- will be what he terms civilizations. His definition of this term is crucial to understanding the principle difference between his essay and Bowen. The author claims that civilization is "a cultural entity," and that "Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities" all possess "distinct cultures" (Huntington 1993, 23). The author goes on to posit that the civilizations that these cultures are based upon will become the primary reason for conflict in the future.

This point, however, is diametrically opposed to the majority of Bowen's essay, and is the primary point of divergence between these two essays. Bowen provides several examples of the fact that culture does not become a reason for divisions, much less for combat, until the concept of nationalism, descended from nation states, is introduced. Once this tenet takes hold of groups of respective cultures, combat occurs between them either to "expand outward to encompass other peoples" (Bowen 1993, 4) -- and their land -- or to "exclude" (Bowen 1993, 5) the presence of other peoples. The author demonstrates this point most efficaciously by bringing up the conflict of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, three different cultures with different religions that lived peacefully and intermarried for many years until nationalism took root in the 1800s. Such nationalism is unequivocally related to attempts to live in "states…composed of one nationality," (Bowen 1996, 3, and demonstrates the author's opinions that it is only nationalism, and not cultural or ethnic differences, that account for armed conflicts between groups.