The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order [Hardcover]

Samuel P. Huntington (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0684811642 | ISBN-13: 978-0684811642 | Publication Date: November 19, 1996 | Edition: First Edition

As people increasingly define themselves by ethnicity or religion, the West will find itself more and more at odds with non-western civilizations that reject its ideals of democracy, human rights, liberty, the rule of law, and the separation of the church and the state. Huntington feels that the fundamental source of conflict in the post-Cold War period will not be primarily ideological or economic, but cultural. Picturing a future of accelerated conflict and increasingly "de-westernized" international relations, he argues for greater understanding of non-western civilizations and offers strategies for maximizing western influence, by promoting co-operative relations with Russia and Japan, by exploiting differences between Confucian and Islamic states, and by maintaining military superiority in East and South-West Asia.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The thesis of this provocative and potentially important book is the increasing threat of violence arising from renewed conflicts between countries and cultures that base their traditions on religious faith and dogma. This argument moves past the notion of ethnicity to examine the growing influence of a handful of major cultures--Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin American, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and African--in current struggles across the globe. Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University and foreign policy aide to President Clinton, argues that policymakers should be mindful of this development when they interfere in other nations' affairs.

From Publishers Weekly

Huntington here extends the provocative thesis he laid out in a recent (and influential) Foreign Affairs essay: we should view the world not as bipolar, or as a collection of states, but as a set of seven or eight cultural "civilizations"?one in the West, several outside it?fated to link and conflict in terms of that civilizational identity. Thus, in sweeping but dry style, he makes several vital points: modernization does not mean Westernization; economic progress has come with a revival of religion; post-Cold War politics emphasize ethnic nationalism over ideology; the lack of leading "core states" hampers the growth of Latin America and the world of Islam. Most controversial will be Huntington's tough-minded view of Islam. Not only does he point out that Muslim countries are involved in far more intergroup violence than others, he argues that the West should worry not about Islamic fundamentalism but about Islam itself, "a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." While Huntington notes that the war in Bosnia hardened into an ethno-religious clash, he downplays the possibility that such splintering could have been avoided. Also, his fear of multiculturalism as a source of American weakness seems unconvincing and alarmist. Huntington directs the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (November 19, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684811642
• ISBN-13: 978-0684811642
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #361,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > International

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

131 of 165 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The West IS declining. Deal with it., March 21, 2004

By 

C. Ryan (Winthrop, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Hardcover)

Huntington articulates how the economic and demographic decline of Western Civilization relative to several of the world's other major civilizations, especially the Sinic (Chinese) and Islamic, is remaking the so-called world order. Cold War alliances were a passing phenomenon in which inter-civilization alliances temporarily formed to repel a common ideological foe, and U.S. attempts to maintain those alliances against other American foes, e.g., Islamic fundamentalism, are doomed to failure. Western countries, including the U.S., need to accept and deal with the relative independence of formerly subservient nations.

The truly amazing thing about Huntington's thesis and examples is that he published it eight years ago, based on data and events through 1995. He almost perfectly profiles (if PC types will forgive me the term) the backgrounds of the 9-11 terrorists and their cohorts. And he describes how East Asian states will turn away from the U.S. and toward China as the Chinese recover their three thousand year old traditional hegemony over the region. He also predicts that Russia, the core state of Orthodox civilization, will, after flirting with Westernization, return to attempting to establish its own traditional hegemony over Orthodox allies and neighboring states.

Huntington points out that it was European population explosion, as well as technological superiority, that propelled Western Civilization to colonize other continents (North America and Australia) and dominate virtually all other civilizations. Now the tide has turned as relative population growth drives non-Western immigrants to Europe, North America and Australia. The spread of Western, especially U.S. commercialism, should not be equated, as many American elites naively assume, with acceptance of liberal Western political and social norms. Huntington points out that just the opposite is occurring. As non-Western civilizations prosper from adoption of Western technology they create wealth and independence that allows them to celebrate and assert THEIR traditional values.

A particularly interesting point Huntington makes is how U.S. and Western obsession with containing other civilizations' nuclear weapons is failing. Countries seeking such weapons do so not with the intent of necessarily using them on neighbors but having them to prevent military domination by the U.S. Huntington reminds us that during the Cold War the U.S-lead West insisted it needed to maintain tactical nuclear weapons to offset the perceived conventional force superiority of the USSR-lead Warsaw Pact nations. Now that the U.S. has demonstrated dominant conventional military power that nobody else can hope to match, everyone thinks they need nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed allies to protect their independence. Huntington points out that South Koreans seems a lot less concerned with North Korean nuclear arms than Americans or Japanese are.

Finally, this book makes one think that the so-called War on Terrorism is somewhat misguided. The tactic is terror but the real conflict is inter-civilizational rivalry. An interesting schematic on page 245 illustrates Huntington predictions of emerging civilizational alignments. For example, the West will align more closely with Latin American and African civilizations and to some extent with the Orthodox (Russia). He postulates that Islam will be in greater conflict with virtually ALL other civilizations with which it has regular contact EXCEPT Sinic (China plus the other East Asian countries excluding Japan). And it's happening. The UN structure created by the U.S. and Western Europe at the end of WWII IS a forum for containing and frustrating U.S. and Western interests. And let's face the truth. A senior Canadian politician's recent characterization of his country's embrace of homosexual marriage and legalization of marijuana as "wellsprings of national pride" provides ample evidence that Western civilization IS in decline. Start studying Mandarin...

The book is illustrated with some useful generalized maps and numerous statistical charts to support Huntington's thesis. HIGHLY recommended to anyone trying to figure out what's happening in the world and why "winning the war on terrorism" (whatever that means) will not solve all problems.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An important primer for the 21st century., March 14, 1999

By 

Glenn Jackson (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Hardcover)

Here is another must read for the 21st Century. Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" puts an end to the Cold War and the clash of ideologies and brings the conversation back to a more normal and historic setting. This may not be the most important book that will be written on the subject of civilizational clashes, but it certainly gives an early preview of the main topic for the early decades of the 21st century.

This books strengths are in the statistical evidences that the author cites for his discussion about the fault lines of civilizational conflict, and other areas that are generally used to support his contentions. Not to mention of course the volumes of research required to generate a serious book on a subject that most Western liberals would not want addressed. Not addressed because of the doubt cast upon the viability of Globalism and the "can't we all just get along" feel goodism that is modern Western liberalism. Such liberal thinking as evidenced by the Clinton administrations ongoing meddling in "fault line" conflicts in Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, and the muddled handling of the United State's Russian and China policies.

The weakness of this book is the lack of conclusions drawn as to the current state of the West. A good companion reading would be Michael Kelley's "The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization". Huntington correctly identifies the power of religion in the rise and fall of civilizations, but fails to analyze the West's decline in relation to Western liberalism's intense hatred of the West's main religion - Christianity. In that same regard Huntington failed to make as strong an argument as he could for the singular most important contribution of the West, that being the concept of individual liberty.

Huntington does however make a good argument against the multiculturalism of the Western liberal. Pointing out quite rightly the danger of creating a weak cleft culture that would be unable to face the onslaught of some of the world's resurgent civilizations. This argument is however all the more critical when coupled with the central contribution of the West, i.e. Liberty, and the lacking thereof in the characteristics of the other resurgent civilizations. In any event this book is a good primer for what stands to be an important topic in the years ahead.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It helps to clarify a very complex world., December 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Hardcover)

I travel worldwide as part of my job. It never ceases to amaze me how similar individuals seem to be but how different the groups we belong to behave. This book goes a long way in explaining the differences between cultures and gives Western thinkers a basis for understanding the world. The West has continued to harbour illusions about the rest of the world and has a collective guilt regarding our success's militarily and economically. In order to make sense of others, it is clear that we must first accept ourselves and understand how we are viewed by others. This book clearly explains the reality of shifting geopolitcal alliances. We had better pay heed to his warnings. China and Islam are both prepared to take our dominant place in the world. As our Eastern friends tells me all the time "You are like children, too busy making money and too selfish to see anything beyond your own needs". This book is excellent.