Customer Reviews

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Huntington's thesis is a must read of any serious student of modern international relations. He provides excellent insight into the changing balance of power.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall many writers have been trying to shed some light on the future prospects of international politics after the end of bipolarity. Huntington, as well as Francis Fukuyama in the early stages of the transitional period, presents a compelling, but rather incomplete thesis to explain these changes. The appeal of the clash of civilizatios is great, and helps us to reduce conflict to its most basic nature, the cultural and religious one. However, today the world is more complex and this clash is one of many that may happen among states. In a way, it is very hard to disagree with Huntington, civilizations certainly do count but they are not the answers for every step of the way. The clash is part of the question and part of the answers for today's world but it does not fulfill all our explanatory needs. Besides, it is a bit pessimistic, we have gone to so far but we are still chained to our old prejudices and fears. All in all, a pleasant reader, an intriguing one, but lacking a more gut wrenching view of the pos-Cold War scenario. Our New World Order is not here yet, but we may be sure that this is not Huntington's last try in explaining it

Huntington (Weatherhead) develops a compelling arguement on the order and importance of civilizations after the Cold war. Unfortunately, though, his biases are as easy to read as his text. While there are highly learned insights of political science, there lacks a deeper sociological consideration over the subject matter. The most damning point finds itself towards the end of the book when Huntington writes about the clash in the former Yugoslavia, "The peace process was also helped by the ethnic cleansing which occured"(p.298). Any common sense will tell you that ethnic cleansing only leaves festering wounds and never "helps". At best the book is a focused analysis. At worst the book becomes too focused and suffers from the kind of instrumental rationality one expects from Harvard. It has its ups and it has its downs.

You might challenge page after page of detail and argument that Huntington uses to make his points (I did), but on the overall conclusions it's hard to disagree. This is an insightful work on the geopolitical changes we can expect to shape the next 50 years. And if you find yourself writing hundreds of counter arguments in the margins, well that's half the fun. A worthwhile read anytime

Huntington 's book is scholarly, well researched and well written. Huntington 's paradigm is written from the perspective of Western Foriegn policy interests. Since this is the case one wonders why he does not make specific short term, long term policy recommendations. Huntington speaks eloquently (with statistical validity) about cultural trends in other civilizations - Islam, Hindu and Confucian. But says very little about cutural trends in his civilization, the West - The domestic violence, the gradual destruction of the family as the central institution of society, the racial divisions etc. Aren't these civilizational issues.Huntington worries about the "East coming into its own". His central concern seems to be the cultural assertiveness of Eastern peoples. He concedes the East has taken modernity from the west. But does not explore what the west can take (besides oil, yoga and kamasutra) from the east.

Although Huntington presents a sweeping alternative to the recently antiquated bipolar paradigm of international relations and politics, his new unit of analysis does not address many of the issues at hand. He overlooks possible explanations of the current world political situation because of the new lenses of civilization-based analysis. He also minimizes the forces of economic development in the formation of post-Cold War blocs. The conclusions and policies that follow the paradigm presented in The Clash, are domestically xenophobic and internationally isolationist. The portrait of global politics presented by Huntington is neither true for the present nor desirable for the future.

Huntington, the perennial handmaid of the power elite, apparently tries to advance cross-cultural understanding in this work. In fact, he sets it back considerably, or could if the book is taken seriously by powerful people. The major flaw is his persistent refusal to consider evidence & hypotheses which would undermine his thesis about recurrent clashes between core civilizations, notably the abundant data showing that different cultures CAN understand each other, and that cooperation IS possible. His analysis of relations between Christendom & Islam is especially wrongheaded, ignoring the institutional contacts & personal choices of medieval & early modern times which moderated conflicts. Instead, we get a stereotypical Orientalism made worse by Huntington's blissful unawareness. But then one should not look for the deeper insights into cultural encounters by relying on the journal "International Security." I give it 2 stars rather than 1 because of its scope & ambition. But ultimately, this book mostly proves that there is an important difference between "thought-provoking" and "provocative."