The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is an influential and controversial book on grand strategy and world futures, by the late political scientist Samuel Huntington. He does not rigorously define an abstraction of a civilization, but uses examples, although he did so in a Foreign Affairs article that called a civilization "the highest cultural grouping and the broadest level of cultural identity short of that which distinguishes humans from other species."

In the book, the chief premise is

that culture and cultural identifies, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration and culture in the post-Cold War world.

It takes a darker view than some alternative models, such as that of Thomas P.M. Barnett in The Pentagon's New Map, suggesting that major conflict is likely; "avoidance of a global war of civilization depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics." He bases this on five corollaries to the central theme:

1. Global politics is multipolar and multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization
2. "The balance of power among civilizations is shifting; the West is declining in relative influence"
3. "A civilization-based world order is emerging; societies sharing cultural affinities cooperate with each other; efforts to shift societies from one civilization to another are unsuccessful
4. "The West's universalist pretentions increasingly bring it into conflict with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China"
5. "The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal"

He rejects globalization as being either necessary and desirable. He specifically rejects the "end of history" model of his student, Francis Fukuyama:

we may be witnessing..the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Note that Fukuyama has sometimes been strongly identified with neoconservatism, which has this ideal of liberal democracy, although his position keeps evolving.

Paradigms

He cites several paradigms that came from the Cold War, none of which he finds accurate although the latter two are closest.

1. One world: euphoria and harmony: This is most often expressed in Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis
2. Two worlds: Us and Them: There are, however, several binary systems. From the Islamic perspective, there is the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. Thomas P. M. Barnett speaks of the "connected core" and everyone else. Orient versus Occident is a classic, if not terribly useful division
3. 184 States, More or Less He sees this as the "realist" model, based on state interest. Perhaps not for 184 states, but there is some of this in Henry Kissinger's balance of power models.
4. Sheer chaos The advent of weakened and failed states supports this model, for which he cites Zbigniew Brzezinski and Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Instead, he proposes that a workable model groups into seven or eight civilizations takes the best of the models and builds from them. Its assumptions are:

• "The forces of integration in the world are real and are precisely what are generating counterforces of cultural assertion and civilizational consciousness
• "The world is is in some sense two, but the central distinction is between the West as the hitherto dominant civilization and all the others, which, however, have little if anything in common among them. The world, in short, is divided between a Western one and a non-Western many.
• "Nation states are and will remain the most important actors in world affairs, but their interests, associations, and conflicts are increasingly shaped by cultural and civilizational factors.
• "The world is indeed anarchical, rife with tribal and nationality conflicts, but the conflicts that pose the greatest danger for stability are those between states or groups from different civilizations."

The test of a model is that it:

1. Generalizes, rationally, about reality
2. Helps understand causality
3. Anticipates, and sometimes predicts
4. Separates the important from the unimportant
5. Shows the roads to be taken to goals

Not all models are useful for all purposes, as he points out the differences between a road map for driving and a chart for air navigation.

Cultures and civilizations

Huntington's basic premise is that a number of great cultures are in unavoidable conflict:

1. Western: Beginning in AD 700, Huntington says it still has three subcomponents: European, North American, and Latin American. It also includes European-settled countries such as Australia and New Zealand
2. Latin American: While the civilization has European and North American roots, it has a distinct identity. Huntington's rationale for separating it is its political interactions more than its cultural ones
3. Islamic: Clearly beginning in the seventh century, while it has an inherent concept of unity (i.e., Dar al Hab and Dar al Islam), there is still strong factionalization into Arab, Turkic, Persian, Malay and other subcivilizations
4. Sinic (or Confucian): dating back at least to 1500 BC and perhaps a millenium earlier, Huntington referred to this as Confucian in earlier works but considers Sinic more accurate, to include Vietnamese and Korean civilizations — although Vietnamese and Koreans might have hearty objections
5. Hindu
6. Orthodox
7. Japanese: an offshoot of Sinic, which was recognizable somewhere between 100 and 400 AD.

A pan-African civilization does not now exist, but may form.

Some of his lists include a Buddhist civilization, but he argues that it is largely extinct in India and has been absorbed in China and Japan. The places where the strongest arguments can be made are Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka and Thailand (Therevada Buddhist subcivilization); Bhutan, Mongolia and Tibet (Lamaist Mahayana Buddhist). He does not include Vietnamese culture as Buddhist.

The nature of dominance

Huntington cites a list from Jeffery Barnett, writing in the U.S. Army War College journal, as explaining how the West establishes its dominance. Barnett described a policy of "exclusion" as replacing containment: when the West wants to influence, it excludes the offending actor from exclude the challenger from "sources of trade, capital, and aid". This is usually in the form of sanctions but could include armed intervention, or sanctions with armed backup.

According to Harrington, the West can do this through:

• Control of international economics
  • World's largest buyer
  • Control hard currencies
  • Provide the bulk of manufactured goods
• Have massive military capability, including power projection and sea control
• Conduct advanced research and education
• Exert moral influence in certain civilizations and cultures
• Control space and international communications

Obviously, countries such as China are developing some of these capabilities; Japan is important and part of multiple civilizations.

Economic remaking

In the realignment of civilizations, economic effects are significant.

National

Huntington speaks of "The Asian Affirmation", where Japan was first thought an anomaly, perhaps a case of Western economics in a non-Western society, the Four Tigers of Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore demonstrated it was not unique. A third wave of economic growth took place in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, followed by a fourth wave in India, the Phillipines, and Vietnam. China and Vietnam produced unique mixtures of market economies under Communist governments.

Development was accelerated. While it took the US and UK 58 and 47 years, respectively, to double their per capita output, Japan did so in 33, Korea in 11, and China in 10.

Groupings

Within the overall formation of broader civilization groups, economic integration is fastest when there is some cultural commonality, the European Union being most dramatic, but also Latin American groupings such as MERCOSUR and the Central American Common Market.

There are four levels of such integration:

1. Free trade area (e.g., NAFTA, ASEAN)
2. Customs union (e.g., MERCOSUR, Andean Pact)
3. Common market (e.g., early European Union)
4. Economic union (e.g., European Union in part)

Military

At least the realist model encourages proliferation. He cites the Sinic-Islamic spread of weapons as especially significant. Conflicts such as India-Pakistan and Iran-Israel have produced WMD arms races.

Core state and fault line conflicts

Conflict among civilizations take place at multiple levels. Fault line conflicts are micro-level clashes between groups from different civilizations within the same state, such as the former Yugoslavia. Core state conflicts are between the major states of different civilizations, such as the Cold War.

Fault line wars

Fault line wars tend to intensify, and moderates, who perhaps would be satisfied with autonomy, are supplanted by radicals for whom nothing short of total independence is enough. In Palestine, Hamas challenged the Palestinian Authority, but in Israel, Kach challenged Likud. In Tajikistan, groups that were initially nationalist-democratic were replaced by jihadists.

It is often the more extreme factions that receive support from the worldwide diaspora. Armenian communities in the United States are politically influential, leading to prohibition of aid to Azerbaijan; Cuban-Americans have blocked any lessening of tension with Castro.