Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Studio: Charlie Rose
• DVD Release Date: September 28, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000IU35UE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,906 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

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4.0 out of 5 stars A review of the Samuel P. Huntington 'Clash of Civilizations' section, November 1, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Charlie Rose with Samuel Huntington; John Cleese; Lauren Bacall (January 30, 1997) (DVD)

The most an interview of this kind can do when dealing with a long and complex book is provide a general outline, touch upon major points, and bring some idiosyncratic comment, here or there. Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' provided a new perspective to the way we see the ongoing development of the way we understand world- civilization.
As Huntington explains it with the fall of the Soviet Union there did not emerge what some expected, a new worldorder in which Democracy and Capitalism were triumphant everywhere. Instead of the two- superpower bloc confrontation there came a break-up of the world on new fault- lines, civilizational and cultural. As he sees it Western Civilization is now confronted with a growing Sinic civilization, an Islamic civilization divided against itself and against the outside world , a Hindic civilization, a Japanese civilization, a Latin- American civilization, an Eastern Orthodox civilization ( Russia at the head). Huntington does not mention a Hebrew civilization as it apparently too small for a place in a TV interview but he does mention its possibility in a footnote of the book). In any case as Huntington sees it the West and with it the United States are in relative decline simply because other civilizations are now gaining economic and eventually military power. In the book Huntington makes much of the 'arc of violence' which has Islam in confrontation in many different places all over the globe. Here his focus is more on the rise of China which it is true will probably prove to be an even more formidable rival of the West.
Huntington also advocates greater control and limitation of immigration in the United States a subject which will be at the center of his next book, "Who We Are" and which will not make a lot of friends for him.
Watching this interview ten years after it was initially made it can be fairly said that Huntington's thesis holds up quite well.
As a person he is in the interview a bit dry and humorless, but he has a wonderful New York accent somewhat out of keeping with his image as old- line elitist Harvard professor.
Rose does his usual good job.
Interesting stuff.