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Thread: Clash of Civilizations

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    wilpuri's Avatar It Gets Worse.
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    As you may know, about a year ago I created a topic on this, but I was a bit disappointed how fast it was buried beneath the rubble.
    Anyway, I found this nice piece which sort of summarizes the main points of Samuel P. Huntington's book "The Clash of Civilizations", which is a most excellent book and I recommend it to everyone. It was written more than a decade ago, but that makes it all the more interesting. We can see the hypothesis has held so far, at least in my opinion it has.

    THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

    Samuel P. Huntington
    Foreign Affairs. Summer 1993, v72, n3, p22(28)
    from the Academic Index (database on UTCAT system)


    COPYRIGHT Council on Foreign Relations Inc. 1993




    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    THE NEXT PATTERN OF CONFLICT


    World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be--the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others. Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the coming years.


    It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.


    Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the modern world. For a century and a half after the emergence of the modern international system with the Peace of Westphalia, the conflicts of the Western world were largely among princes--emperors, absolute monarchs and constitutional monarchs attempting to expand their bureaucracies, their armies, their mercantilist economic strength and, most important, the territory they ruled. In the process they created nation states, and beginning with the French Revolution the principal lines of conflict were between nations rather than princes. In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it, "The wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenth- century pattern lasted until the end of World War 1. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this latter conflict became embodied in the struggle between the two superpowers, neither of which was a nation state in the classical European sense and each of which defined its identity in terms of its ideology.


    These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarily conflicts within Western civilization, "Western civil wars," as William Lind has labeled them. This was as true of the Cold War as it was of the world wars and the earlier wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its center- piece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.


    THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATIONS


    During the cold war the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Those divisions are no longer relevant. It is far more meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.


    What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change.


    Civilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("a civilization pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it), or a very small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A civilization may include several nation states, as is the case with Western, Latin American and Arab civilizations, or only one, as is the case with Japanese civilization. Civilizations obviously blend and overlap, and may include subcivilizations. Western civilization has two major variants, European and North American, and Islam has its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilizations are nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real. Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and fall; they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civilizations disappear and are buried in the sands of time.


    Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in global affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few centuries. The broader reaches of human history have been the history of civilizations. In A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee identified 21 major civilizations; only six of them exist in the contemporary world.


    WHY CIVILIZATIONS WILL CLASH


    Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian [Sometimes also known as 'Sinic'], Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.


    Why will this be the case?


    First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. The people of different civilizations have different views on the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy. These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies and political regimes. Differences do not necessarily mean conflict, and conflict does not necessarily, mean violence. Over the centuries, however, differences among civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent conflicts.


    Second, the world is becoming a smaller place. The interactions between peoples of different civilizations are increasing; these increasing interactions intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations. North African immigration to France generates hostility among Frenchmen and at the same time increased receptivity to immigration by "good" European Catholic Poles. Americans react far more negatively to Japanese investment than to larger investments from Canada and European countries. Similarly, as Donald Horowitz has pointed out, "An Ibo may be ... an Owerri Ibo or an Onitsha Ibo in what was the Eastern region of Nigeria. In Lagos, he is simply an Ibo. In London, he is a Nigerian. In New York, he is an African." The interactions among peoples of different civilizations enhance the civilization-consciousness of people that, in turn, invigorates differences and animosities stretching or thought to stretch back deep into history.


    Third, the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities. They also weaken the nation state as a source of identity. In much of the world religion has moved in to fill this gap, often in the form of movements that are labeled "fundamentalist." Such movements are found in Western Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam. In most countries and most religions the people active in fundamentalist movements are young, college-educated, middle- class technicians, professionals and business persons. The "unsecularization of the world," George Weigel has remarked, "is one of the dominant social facts of life in the late twentieth century." The revival of religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.


    Fourth, the growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations. Increasingly one hears references to trends toward a turning inward and "Asianization" in Japan, the end of the Nehru legacy and the "Hinduization" of India, the failure of Western ideas of socialism and nationalism and hence "re-Islamization" of the Middle East, and now a debate over Westernization versus Russianization in Boris Yeltsin's country. A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.


    In the past, the elites of non-Western societies were usually the people who were most involved with the West, had been educated at Oxford, the Sorbonne or Sandhurst, and had absorbed Western attitudes and values. At the same time, the populace in non-Western countries often remained deeply imbued with the indigenous culture. Now, however, these relationships are being reversed. A de-Westernization and indigenization of elites is occurring in many non-Western countries at the same time that Western, usually American, cultures, styles and habits become more popular among the mass of the people.


    Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor rich, but Russians cannot become Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you on?" and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question is "What are you?" That is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.


    Finally, economic regionalism is increasing. The proportions of total trade that were intraregional rose between 1980 and 1989 from 51 percent to 59 percent in Europe, 33 percent to 37 percent in East Asia, and 32 percent to 36 percent in North America. The importance of regional economic blocs is likely to continue to increase in the future. On the one hand, successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness. On the other hand, economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in a common civilization. The European Community rests on the shared foundation of European culture and Western Christianity. The success of the North American Free Trade Area depends on the convergence now underway of Mexican, Canadian and American cultures. Japan, in contrast, faces difficulties in creating a comparable economic entity in East Asia because Japan is a society and civilization unique to itself. However strong the trade and investment links Japan may develop with other East Asian countries, its cultural differences with those countries inhibit and perhaps preclude its promoting regional economic integration like that in Europe and North America.


    Common culture, in contrast, is clearly facilitating the rapid expansion of the economic relations between the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the overseas Chinese communities in other Asian countries. With the Cold War over, cultural commonalities increasingly overcome ideological differences, and mainland China and Taiwan move closer together. If cultural commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration, the principal East Asian economic bloc of the future is likely to be centered on China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into existence. As Murray Weidenbaum has observed,


    "Despite the current Japanese dominance of the region, the Chinese-based economy of Asia is rapidly emerging as a new epicenter for industry, commerce and finance. This strategic area contains substantial amounts of technology and manufacturing capability (Taiwan), outstanding entrepreneurial, marketing and services acumen (Hong Kong), a fine communications network Singapore), a tremendous pool of financial capital (all three), and very large endowments of land, resources and labor (mainland China).... From Guangzhou to Singapore, from Kuala Lumpur to Manila, this influential network--often based on extensions of the traditional clans--has been described as the backbone of the East Asian economy."(1)


    Culture and religion also form the basis of the Economic Cooperation Organization, which brings together ten non-Arab Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. One impetus to the revival and expansion of this organization, founded originally in the 1960 by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the leaders of several of these countries that they had no chance of admission to the European Community. Similarly, Caricom, the Central American Common Market and Mercosur rest on common cultural foundations. Efforts to build a broader Caribbean-Central American economic entity bridging the Anglo-Latin divide, however, have to date failed.


    As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an "us" versus "them" relation existing between themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion. The end of ideologically defined states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union permits traditional ethnic identities and animosities to come to the fore. Differences in culture and religion create differences over policy issues, ranging from human rights to immigration to trade and commerce to the environment. Geographical propinquity gives rise to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao. Most important, the efforts of the West to promote its values of democracy and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military predominance and to advance its economic interests engender countering responses from other civilizations. Decreasingly able to mobilize support and form coalitions on the basis of ideology, governments and groups will increasingly attempt to mobilize support by appealing to common religion and civilization identity.


    The clash of civilizations thus occurs at two levels. At the micro- level, adjacent groups along the fault lines between civilizations struggle, often violently, over the control of territory and each other. At the macro-level, states from different civilizations compete for relative military and economic power, struggle over the control of international institutions and third parties, and competitively promote their particular political and religious values.


    THE FAULT LINES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS


    The fault lines between civilizations are replacing the political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis and bloodshed. The Cold War began when the Iron Curtain divided Europe politically and ideologically. The Cold War ended with the end of the Iron Curtain. As the ideological division of Europe has disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity and Islam, on the other, has reemerged. The most significant dividing line in Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line, of course, coincides with the historic boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or Catholic; they shared the common experiences of European history--feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution; they are generally economically better off than the peoples to the east; and they may now look forward to increasing involvement in a common European economy and to the consolidation of democratic political systems. The peoples to the east and south of this line are Orthodox or Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist empires and were only lightly touched by the shaping events in the rest of Europe; they are generally less advanced economically; they seem much less likely to develop stable democratic political systems. The Velvet Curtain of culture has replaced the Iron Curtain of ideology as the most significant dividing line in Europe. As the events in Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line of difference; it is also at times a line of bloody conflict.


    Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and north only ended at Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary success to bring Christianity and Christian rule to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended their sway over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Ottoman power declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western control over most of North Africa and the Middle East.


    After World War II, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested themselves; the West became heavily dependent on the Persian Gulf countries for its energy; the oil-rich Muslim countries became money-rich and, when they wished to, weapons-rich. Several wars occurred between Arabs and Israel (created by the West). France fought a bloody and ruthless war in Algeria for most of the 1950s; British and French forces invaded Egypt in 1956; American forces went into Lebanon in 1958; subsequently American forces returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various military encounters with Iran; Arab and Islamic terrorists, supported by at least three Middle Eastern governments, employed the weapon of the weak and bombed Western planes and installations and seized Western hostages. This warfare between Arabs and the West culminated in 1990, when the United States sent a massive army to the Persian Gulf to defend some Arab countries against aggression by another. In its aftermath NATO planning is increasingly directed to potential threats and instability along its "southern tier."


    This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left some Arabs feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and stood up to the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and resentful of the West's military presence in the Persian Gulf, the West's overwhelming military dominance, and their apparent inability to shape their own destiny. Many Arab countries, in addition to the oil exporters, are reaching levels of economic and social development where autocratic forms of government become inappropriate and efforts to introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab political systems have already occurred. The principal beneficiaries of these openings have been Islamist movements. In the Arab world, in short, Western democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces. This may be a passing phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations between Islamic countries and the West.


    Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular population growth in Arab countries, particularly in North Africa, has led to increased migration to Western Europe. The movement within Western Europe toward minimizing internal boundaries has sharpened political sensitivities with respect to this development. In Italy, France and Germany, racism is increasingly open, and political reactions and violence against Arab and Turkish migrants have become more intense and more widespread since 1990.


    On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash of civilizations. The West's "next confrontation," observes M. J. Akbar, an Indian Muslim author, "is definitely going to come from the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Maghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will begin." Bernard Lewis comes to a similar conclusion:


    We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations--the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.(2)


    Historically, the other great antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic civilization has been with the pagan, animist, and now increasingly Christian black peoples to the south. In the past, this antagonism was epitomized in the image of Arab slave dealers and black slaves. It has been reflected in the on-going civil war in the Sudan between Arabs and blacks, the fighting in Chad between Libyan-supported insurgents and the government, the tensions between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the Horn of Africa, and the political conflicts, recurring riots and communal violence between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The modernization of Africa and the spread of Christianity are likely to enhance the probability of violence along this fault line. Symptomatic of the intensification of this conflict was the Pope John Paul II's speech in Khartoum in February I993 attacking the actions of the Sudan's Islamist government against the Christian minority there.


    On the northern border of Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted between Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including the carnage of Bosnia and Sarajevo, the simmering violence between Serb and Albanian, the tenuous relations between Bulgarians and their Turkish minority, the violence between Ossetians and Ingush, the unremitting slaughter of each other by Armenians and Azeris, the tense relations between Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, and the deployment of Russian troops to protect Russian interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Religion reinforces the revital of ethnic identities and restimulates Russian fears about the security of their southern borders. This concern is well captured by Archie Roosevelt:


    Much of Russian history concerns the struggle between the Slavs and the Turkic peoples on their borders, which dates back to the foundation of the Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In the Slavs' millennium-long confrontation with their eastern neighbors lies the key to an understanding not only of Russian history, but Russian character. To understand Russian realities today one has to have a concept of the great Turkic ethnic group that has preoccupied Russians through the centuries.(3)


    The conflict of civilizations is deeply rooted elsewhere in Asia. The historic clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests itself now not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India but also in intensifying religious strife within India between increasingly militant Hindu groups and India's substantial Muslim minority. The destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992 brought to the fore the issue of whether India will remain a secular democratic state or become a Hindu one. In East Asia, China has outstanding territorial disputes with most of its neighbors. It has pursued a ruthless policy toward the Buddhist people of Tibet, and it is pursuing an increasingly ruthless policy toward its Turkic-Muslim minority. With the Cold War over, the underlying differences between China and the United States have reasserted themselves in areas such as human rights, trade and weapons proliferation. These differences are unlikely to moderate. A "new cold war," Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991, is under way between China and America.


    The same phrase has been applied to the increasingly difficult relations between Japan and the United States. Here cultural difference exacerbates economic conflict. People on each side allege racism on the other, but at least on the American side the antipathies are not racial but cultural. The basic values, attitudes, behavioral patterns of the two societies could hardly be more different. The economic issues between the United States and Europe are no less serious than those between the United States and Japan, but they do not have the same political salience and emotional intensity because the differences between American culture and European culture are so much less than those between American civilization and Japanese civilization.


    The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to which they are likely to be characterized by violence. Economic competition clearly predominates between the American and European subcivilizations of the West and between both of them and Japan. On the Eurasian continent, however, the proliferation of ethnic conflict, epitomized at the extreme in "ethnic cleansing," has not been totally random. It has been most frequent and most violent between groups belonging to different civilizations. In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders.


    CIVILIZATION RALLYING: THE KIN-COUNTRY SYNDROME


    Groups or states belonging to one civilization that become involved in war with people from a different civilization naturally try to rally support from other members of their own civilization. As the post-Cold War world evolves, civilization commonality, what H. D. S. Greenway has termed the "kin-country" syndrome, is replacing political ideology and traditional balance of power considerations as the principal basis for cooperation and coalitions. It can be seen gradually emerging in the post-Cold War conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia. None of these was a full-scale war between civilizations, but each involved some elements of civilizational rallying, which seemed to become more important as the conflict continued and which may provide a foretaste of the future.


    First, in the Gulf War one Arab state invaded another and then fought a coalition of Arab, Western and other states. While only a few Muslim governments overtly supported Saddam Hussein, many Arab elites privately cheered him on, and he was highly popular among large sections of the Arab publics. Islamic fundamentalist movements universally supported Iraq rather than the Western-backed governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Forswearing Arab nationalism, Saddam Hussein explicitly invoked an Islamic appeal. He and his supporters attempted to define the war as a war between civilizations. "It is not the world against Iraq," as Safar Al-Hawali, dean of Islamic Studies at the Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, put it in a widely circulated tape. "It is the West against Islam." Ignoring the rivalry between Iran and Iraq, the chief Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for a holy war against the West: "The struggle against American aggression, greed, plans and policies will be counted as a jihad, and anybody who is killed on that path is a martyr." "This is a war," King Hussein of Jordan argued, "against all Arabs and all Muslims and not against Iraq alone."


    The rallying of substantial sections of Arab elites and publics behind Saddam Hussein caused those Arab governments in the anti-Iraq coalition to moderate their activities and temper their public statements. Arab governments opposed or distanced themselves from subsequent Western efforts to apply pressure on Iraq, including enforcement of a no-fly zone in the summer of 1992 and the bombing of Iraq in january I993. The Western- Soviet-Turkish-Arab anti-Iraq coalition of 1990 had by 1993 become a coalition of almost only the West and Kuwait against Iraq.


    Muslims contrasted Western actions against Iraq with the West's failure to protect Bosnians against Serbs and to impose sanctions on Israel for violating U.N. resolutions. The West, they alleged, was using a double standard. A world of clashing civilizations, however, is inevitably a world of double standards: people apply one standard to their kin- countries and a different standard to others.


    Second, the kin-country syndrome also appeared in conflicts in the former Soviet Union. Armenian military successes in 1992 and I993 stimulated Turkey to become increasingly supportive of its religious, ethnic and linguistic brethren in Azerbaijan. "We have a Turkish nation feeling the same sentiments as the Azerbaijanis," said one Turkish official in 1992. "We are under pressure. Our newspapers are full of the photos of atrocities and are asking us if we are still serious about pursuing our neutral policy. Maybe we should show Armenia that there's a big Turkey in the region." President Turgut Ozal agreed, remarking that Turkey should at least "scare the Armenians a little bit." Turkey, Ozal threatened again in 1993, would "show its fangs." Turkish Air Force jets flew reconnaissance flights along the Armenian border; Turkey suspended food shipments and air flights to Armenia; and Turkey and Iran announced they would not accept dismemberment of Azerbaijan. In the last years of its existence, the Soviet government supported Azerbaijan because its government was dominated by former communists. With the end of the Soviet Union, however, political considerations gave way to religious ones. Russian troops fought on the side of the Armenians, and Azerbaijan accused the "Russian government of turning 180 degrees" toward support for Christian Armenia.


    Third, with respect to the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, Western publics manifested sympathy and support for the Bosnian Muslims and the horrors they suffered at the hands of the Serbs. Relatively little concern was expressed, however, over Croatian attacks on Muslims and participation in the dismemberment of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the early stages of the Yugoslav breakup, Germany, in an unusual display of diplomatic initiative and muscle, induced the other II members of the European Community to follow its lead in recognizing Slovenia and Croatia. As a result of the pope's determination to provide strong backing to the two Catholic countries, the Vatican extended recognition even before the Community did. The United States followed the European lead. Thus the leading actors in Western civilization rallied behind their coreligionists. Subsequently Croatia was reported to be receiving substantial quantities of arms from Central European and other Western countries. Boris Yeltsin's government, on the other hand, attempted to pursue a middle course that would be sympathetic to the Orthodox Serbs but not alienate Russia from the West. Russian conservative and nationalist groups, however, including many legislators, attacked the government for not being more forthcoming in its support for the Serbs. By early 1993 several hundred Russians apparently were serving with the Serbian forces, and reports circulated of Russian arms being supplied to Serbia.


    Islamic governments and groups, on the other hand, castigated the West for not coming to the defense of the Bosnians. Iranian leaders urged Muslims from all countries to provide help to Bosnia; in violation of the U.N. arms embargo, Iran supplied weapons and men for the Bosnians; Iranian-supported Lebanese groups sent guerriuas to train and organize the Bosnian forces. In I993 uP to 4,000 Muslims from over two dozen Islamic countries were reported to be fighting in Bosnia. The governments of Saudi Arabia and other countries felt under increasing pressure from fundamentalist groups in their own societies to provide more vigorous support for the Bosnians. By the end of 1992, Saudi Arabia had reportedly supplied substantial funding for weapons and supplies for the Bosnians, which significantly increased their military capabilities vis-a-vis the Serbs.


    In the 1930s the Spanish Civil War provoked intervention from countries that politically were fascist, communist and democratic. In the 1990s the Yugoslav conflict is provoking intervention from countries that are Muslim, Orthodox and Western Christian. The parallel has not gone unnoticed. "The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has become the emotional equivalent of the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War," one Saudi editor observed. "Those who died there are regarded as martyrs who tried to save their fellow Muslims."


    Conflicts and violence will also occur between states and groups within the same civilization. Such conflicts, however, are likely to be less intense and less likely to expand than conflicts between civilizations. Common membership in a civilization reduces the probability of violence in situations where it might otherwise occur. In 1991 and 1992 many people were alarmed by the possibility of violent conflict between Russia and Ukraine over territory, particularly Crimea, the Black Sea fleet, nuclear weapons and economic issues. If civilization is what counts, however, the likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low. They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships with each other for centuries. As of early 1993, despite all the reasons for conflict, the leaders of the two countries were effectively negotiating and defusing the issues between the two countries. While there has been serious fighting between Muslims and Christians elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and much tension and some fighting between Western and Orthodox Christians in the Baltic states, there has been virtually no violence between Russians and Ukrainians.


    Civilization rallying to date has been limited, but it has been growing, and it clearly has the potential to spread much further. As the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia continued, the positions of nations and the cleavages between them increasingly were along civilizational lines. Populist politicians, religious leaders and the media have found it a potent means of arousing mass support and of pressuring hesitant governments. In the coming years, the local conflicts most likely to escalate into major wars will be those, as in Bosnia and the Caucasus, along the fault lines between civilizations. The next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations.


    THE WEST VERSUS THE REST


    The west in now at an extraordinary peak of power in relation to other civilizations. Its superpower opponent has disappeared from the map. Military conflict among Western states is unthinkable, and Western military power is unrivaled. Apart from Japan, the West faces no economic challenge. It dominates international political and security institutions and with Japan international economic institutions. Global political and security issues are effectively settled by a directorate of the United States, Britain and France, world economic issues by a directorate of the United States, Germany and Japan, all of which maintain extraordinarily close relations with each other to the exclusion of lesser and largely non-Western countries. Decisions made at the U.N. Security Council or in the International Monetary Fund that reflect the interests of the West are presented to the world as reflecting the desires of the world community. The very phrase "the world community" has become the euphemistic collective noun (replacing "the Free World") to give global legitimacy to actions reflecting the interests of the United States and other Western powers.(4) Through the IMF and other international economic institutions, the West promotes its economic interests and imposes on other nations the economic policies it thinks appropriate. In any poll of non-Western peoples, the IMF undoubtedly would win the support of finance ministers and a few others, but get an overwhelmingly unfavorable rating from just about everyone else, who would agree with Georgy Arbatov's characterization of IMF officials as "neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other people's money, imposing undemocratic and alien rules of economic and political conduct and stifling economic freedom."


    Western domination of the U.N. Security Council and its decisions, tempered only by occasional abstention by China, produced U.N. legitimation of the West's use of force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and its elimination of Iraq's sophisticated weapons and capacity to produce such weapons. It also produced the quite unprecedented action by the United States, Britain and France in getting the Security Council to demand that Libya hand over the Pan Am 103 bombing suspects and then to impose sanctions when Libya refused. After defeating the largest Arab army, the West did not hesitate to throw its weight around in the Arab world. The West in effect is using international institutions, military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that will maintain Western predominance, protect Western interests and promote Western political and economic values.


    That at least is the way in which non-Westerners see the new world, and there is a significant element of truth in their view. Differences in power and struggles for military, economic and institutional power are thus one source of conflict between the West and other civilizations. Differences in culture, that is basic values and beliefs, are a second source of conflict. V. S. Naipaul has argued that Western civilization is the "universal civilization" that "fits all men." At a superficial level much of Western culture has indeed permeated the rest of the world. At a more basic level, however, Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent in other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures. Western efforts to propagate such ideas produce instead a reaction against "human rights imperialism" and a reaffirmation of indigenous values, as can be seen in the support for religious fundamentalism by the younger generation in non-Western cultures. The very notion that there could be a "universal civilization" is a Western idea, directly at odds with the particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what distinguishes one people from another. Indeed, the author of a review of 100 comparative studies of values in different societies concluded that "the values that are most important in the West are least important worldwide."(5) In the political realm, of course, these differences are most manifest in the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to induce other peoples to adopt Western ideas concerning democracy and human rights. Modern democratic government originated in the West. When it has developed in non-Western societies it has usually been the product of Western colonialism or imposition.


    The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be, in Kishore Mahbubani's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest" and the responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values.(6) Those responses generally take one or a combination of three forms. At one extreme, non-Western states can, like Burma and North Korea, attempt to pursue a course of isolation, to insulate their societies from penetration or "corruption" by the West, and, in effect, to opt out of participation in the Western-dominated global community. The costs of this course, however, are high, and few states have pursued it exclusively. A second alternative, the equivalent of "band- wagoning" in international relations theory, is to attempt to join the West and accept its values and institutions. The third alternative is to attempt to "balance" the West by developing economic and military power and cooperating with other non-Western societies against the West, while preserving indigenous values and institutions; in short, to modernize but not to Westernize.


    THE TORN COUNTRIES


    In the future, as people differentiate themselves by civilization, countries with large numbers of peoples of different civilizations, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, are candidates for dismemberment. Some other countries have a fair degree of cultural homogeneity but are divided over whether their society belongs to one civilization or another. These are torn countries. Their leaders typically wish to pursue a bandwagoning strategy and to make their countries members of the West, but the history, culture and traditions of their countries are non-Western. The most obvious and prototypical torn country is Turkey. The late twentieth-century leaders of Turkey have followed in the Attaturk tradition and defined Turkey as a modern, secular, Western nation state. They allied Turkey with the West in NATO and in the Gulf War; they applied for membership in the European Community. At the same time, however, elements in Turkish society have supported an Islamic revival and have argued that Turkey is basically a Middle Eastern Muslim society. In addition, while the elite of Turkey has defined Turkey as a Western society, the elite of the West refuses to accept Turkey as such. Turkey will not become a member of the European Community, and the real reason, as President Ozal said, "is that we are Muslim and they are Christian and they don't say that." Having rejected Mecca, and then being rejected by Brussels, where does Turkey look? Tashkent may be the answer. The end of the Soviet Union gives Turkey the opportunity to become the leader of a revived Turkic civilization involving seven countries from the borders of Greece to those of China. Encouraged by the West, Turkey is making strenuous efforts to carve out this new identity for itself.


    During the past decade Mexico has assumed a position somewhat similar to that of Turkey. Just as Turkey abandoned its historic opposition to Europe and attempted to join Europe, Mexico has stopped defining itself by its opposition to the United States and is instead attempting to imitate the United States and to join it in the North American Free Trade Area. Mexican leaders are engaged in the great task of redefining Mexican identity and have introduced fundamental economic reforms that eventually will lead to fundamental political change. In 1991 a top adviser to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari described at length to me all the changes the Salinas government was making. When he finished, I remarked: "That's most impressive. It seems to me that basically you want to change Mexico from a Latin American country into a North American country." He looked at me with surprise and exclaimed: "Exactly! That's precisely what we are trying to do, but of course we could never say so publicly." As his remark indicates, in Mexico as in Turkey, significant elements in society resist the redefinition of their country's identity. In Turkey, European-oriented leaders have to make gestures to Islam (Ozal's pilgrimage to Mecca); so also Mexico's North American-oriented leaders have to make gestures to those who hold Mexico to be a Latin American country (Salinas' Ibero-American Guadalajara summit).


    Historically Turkey has been the most profoundly torn country. For the United States, Mexico is the most immediate torn country. Globally the most important torn country is Russia. The question of whether Russia is part of the West or the leader of a distinct Slavic-Orthodox civilization has been a recurring one in Russian history. That issue was obscured by the communist victory in Russia, which imported a Western ideology, adapted it to Russian conditions and then challenged the West in the name of that ideology. The dominance of communism shut off the historic debate over Westernization versus Russification. With communism discredited Russians once again face that question.


    President Yeltsin is adopting Western principles and goals and seeking to make Russia a "normal" country and a part of the West. Yet both the Russian elite and the Russian public are divided on this issue. Among the more moderate dissenters, Sergei Stankevich argues that Russia should reject the "Atlanticist" course, which would lead it "to become European, to become a part of the world economy in rapid and organized fashion, to become the eighth member of the Seven, and to put particular emphasis on Germany and the United States as the two dominant members of the Atlantic alliance." While also rejecting an exclusively Eurasian policy, Stankevich nonetheless argues that Russia should give priority to the protection of Russians in other countries, emphasize its Turkic and Muslim connections, and promote "an appreciable redistribution of our resources, our options, our ties, and our interests in favor of Asia, of the eastern direction." People of this persuasion criticize Yeltsin for subordinating Russia's interests to those of the West, for reducing Russian military strength, for failing to support traditional friends such as Serbia, and for pushing economic and political reform in ways injurious to the Russian people. Indicative of this trend is the new popularity of the ideas of Petr Savitsky, who in the 1920s argued that Russia was a unique Eurasian civilization.(7) More extreme dissidents voice much more blatantly nationalist, anti-Western and anti-Semitic views, and urge Russia to redevelop its military strength and to establish closer ties with China and Muslim countries. The people of Russia are as divided as the elite. An opinion survey in European Russia in the spring of 1992 revealed that 40 percent of the public had positive attitudes toward the West and 36 percent had negative attitudes. As it has been for much of its history, Russia in the early 1990s is truly a torn country.


    To redefine its civilization identity, a torn country must meet three requirements. First, its political and economic elite has to be generally supportive of and enthusiastic about this move. Second, its public has to be willing to acquiesce in the redefinition. Third, the dominant groups in the recipient civilization have to be willing to embrace the convert. All three requirements in large part exist with respect to Mexico. The first two in large part exist with respect to Turkey. It is not clear that any of them exist with respect to Russia's joining the West. The conflict between liberal democracy and Marxism- Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major differences, ostensibly shared ultimate goals of freedom, equality and prosperity. A traditional, authoritarian, nationalist Russia could have quite different goals. A Western democrat could carry on an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist. It would be virtually impossible for him to do that with a Russian traditionalist. If, as the Russians stop behaving like Marxists, they reject liberal democracy and begin behaving like Russians but not like Westerners, the relations between Russia and the West could again become distant and conflictual.(8)


    THE CONFUCIAN-ISLAMIC CONNECTION


    The obstacles to non-Western countries joining the West vary considerably. They are least for Latin American and East European countries. They are greater for the Orthodox countries of the former Soviet Union. They are still greater for Muslim, Confucian, Hindu and Buddhist societies. Japan has established a unique position for itself as an associate member of the West: it is in the West in some respects but clearly not of the West in important dimensions. Those countries that for reason of culture and power do not wish to, or cannot, join the West compete with the West by developing their own economic, military and political power. They do this by promoting their internal development and by cooperating with other non-Western countries. The most prominent form of this cooperation is the Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power.


    Almost without exception, Western countries are reducing their military power; under Yeltsin's leadership so also is Russia. China, North Korea and several Middle Eastern states, however, are significantly expanding their military capabilities. They are doing this by the import of arms from Western and non-Western sources and by the development of indigenous arms industries. One result is the emergence of what Charles Krauthammer has called "Weapon States," and the Weapon States are not Western states. Another result is the redefinition of arms control, which is a Western concept and a Western goal. During the Cold War the primary purpose of arms control was to establish a stable military balance between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. In the post-Cold War world the primary objective of arms control is to prevent the development by non-Western societies of military capabilities that could threaten Western interests. The West attempts to do this through international agreements, economic pressure and controls on the transfer of arms and weapons technologies.


    The conflict between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states focuses largely, although not exclusively, on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, ballistic missiles and other sophisticated means for delivering them, and the guidance, intelligence and other electronic capabilities for achieving that goal. The West promotes nonproliferation as a universal norm and nonproliferation treaties and inspections as means of realizing that norm. It also threatens a variety of sanctions against those who promote the spread of sophisticated weapons and proposes some benefits for those who do not. The attention of the West focuses, naturally, on nations that are actually or potentially hostile to the West.


    The non-Western nations, on the other hand, assert their right to acquire and to deploy whatever weapons they think necessary for their security. They also have absorbed, to the full, the truth of the response of the Indian defense minister when asked what lesson he learned from the Gulf War: "Don't fight the United States unless you have nuclear weapons." Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and missiles are viewed, probably erroneously, as the potential equalizer of superior Western conventional power. China, of course, already has nuclear weapons; Pakistan and India have the capability to deploy them. North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Algeria appear to be attempting to acquire them. A top Iranian official has declared that all Muslim states should acquire nuclear weapons, and in 1988 the president of Iran reportedly issued a directive calling for development of "offensive and defensive chemical, biological and radiological weapons."


    Centrally important to the development of counter-West military capabilities is the sustained expansion of China's military power and its means to create military power. Buoyed by spectacular economic development, China is rapidly increasing its military spending and vigorously moving forward with the modernization of its armed forces. It is purchasing weapons from the former Soviet states; it is developing long-range missiles; in 1992 it tested a one-megaton nuclear device. It is developing power-projection capabilities, acquiring aerial refueling technology, and trying to purchase an aircraft carrier. Its military buildup and assertion of sovereignty over the South China Sea are provoking a multilateral regional arms race in East Asia. China is also a major exporter of arms and weapons technology. It has exported materials to Libya and Iraq that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons and nerve gas. It has helped Algeria build a reactor suitable for nuclear weapons research and production. China has sold to Iran nuclear technology that American officials believe could only be used to create weapons and apparently has shipped components of 300-mile-range missiles to Pakistan. North Korea has had a nuclear weapons program under way for some while and has sold advanced missiles and missile technology to Syria and Iran. The flow of weapons and weapons technology is generally from East Asia to the Middle East. There is, however, some movement in the reverse direction; China has received Stinger missiles from Pakistan.


    A Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus come into being, designed to promote acquisition by its members of the weapons and weapons technologies needed to counter the military power of the West. It may or may not last. At present, however, it is, as Dave McCurdy has said, "a renegades' mutual support pact, run by the proliferators and their backers." A new form of arms competition is thus occurring between Islamic-Confucian states and the West. In an old-fashioned arms race, each side developed its own arms to balance or to achieve superiority against the other side. In this new form of arms competition, one side is developing its arms and the other side is attempting not to balance but to limit and prevent that arms build-up while at the same time reducing its own military capabilities.


    IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WEST


    This article does not argue that civilization identities will replace all other identities, that nation states will disappear, that each civilization will become a single coherent political entity, that groups within a civilization will not conflict with and even fight each other. This paper does set forth the hypotheses that differences between civilizations are real and important; civilization- consciousness is increasing; conflict between civilizations will supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as the dominant global form of conflict; international relations, historically a game played out within Western civilization, will increasingly be de-Westernized and become a game in which non-Western civilizations are actors and not simply objects; successful political, security and economic international institutions are more likely to develop within civilizations than across civilizations; conflicts between groups in different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained and more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization; violent conflicts between groups in different civilizations are the most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead to global wars; the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between "the West and the Rest"; the elites in some torn non-Western countries will try to make their countries part of the West, but in most cases face major obstacles to accomplishing this; a central focus of conflict for the immediate future will be between the West and several Islamic- Confucian states.


    This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypotheses as to what the future may be like. If these are plausible hypotheses, however, it is necessary to consider their implications for Western policy. These implications should be divided between short-term advantage and long- term accommodation. In the short term it is clearly in the interest of the West to promote greater cooperation and unity within its own civilization, particularly between its European and North American components; to incorporate into the West societies in Eastern Europe and Latin America whose cultures are close to those of the West; to promote and maintain cooperative relations with Russia and Japan; to prevent escalation of local inter-civilization conflicts into major inter-civilization wars; to limit the expansion of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states; to moderate the reduction of Western military capabilities and maintain military superiority in East and Southwest Asia; to exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states; to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests; to strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate Western interests and values and to promote the involvement of non-Western states in those institutions.


    In the longer term other measures would be called for. Western civilization is both Western and modern. Non-Western civilizations have attempted to become modern without becoming Western. To date only Japan has fully succeeded in this quest. Non-Western civilizations will continue to attempt to acquire the wealth, technology, skills, machines and weapons that are part of being modern. They will also attempt to reconcile this modernity with their traditional culture and values. Their economic and military strength relative to the West will increase. Hence the West will increasingly have to accommodate these non-Western modern civilizations whose power approaches that of the West but whose values and interests differ significantly from those of the West. This will require the West to maintain the economic and military power necessary to protect its interests in relation to these civilizations. It will also, however, require the West to develop a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests. It will require an effort to identify elements of commonality between Western and other civilizations. For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others.


    (1) Murray Weidenbaum, Greater China: The Next Economic Superpower?, St. Louis: Washington University Center for the Study of American Business, Contemporary Issues, Series 57, February 1993, pp. 2-3.


    (2) Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 266, September 1990, p. 6o; Time, June 15, 1992, pp. 24-28.


    (3) Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing, Boston: Little, Brown, i988, PP 332-333.


    (4) Almost invariably Western leaders claim they are acting on behalf of "the world community." One minor lapse occurred during the run-up to the Gulf War. In an interview on "Good Morning America," Dec. 21, 1990, British Prime Minister John Major referred to the actions "the West" was taking against Saddam Hussein. He quickly corrected himself and subsequently referred to "the world community." He was, however, right when he erred.


    (5) Harry C. Triandis, The New York Times, Dec. 2S, 1990, p. 41, and "Cross-Cultural Studies of Individualism and Collectivism," Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol. 37, 1989, pp. 41-133.


    (6) Kishore Mahbubani, "The West and the Rest," The National Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 3-13.


    (7) Sergei Stankevich, "Russia in Search of Itself," The National Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 47-51; Daniel Schneider, "A Russian Movement Rejects Western Tilt," Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 5, 1993, pp. 5-7.


    (8) Owen Harries has pointed out that Australia is trying (unwisely in his view) to become a torn country in reverse. Although it has been a full member not only of the West but also of the ABCA military and intelligence core of the West, its current leaders are in effect proposing that it defect from the West, redefine itself as an Asian country and cultivate dose ties with its neighbors. Australia's future, they argue, is with the dynamic economies of East Asia. But, as I have suggested, close economic cooperation normally requires a common cultural base. In addition, none of the three conditions necessary for a torn country to join another civilization is likely to exist in Australia's case.


    Samuel P. Huntington is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. This article is the product of the Olin Institute's project on "The Changing Security Environment and American National Interests."
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    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

    ROGER SCRUTON, Modern Culture

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    wilpuri's Avatar It Gets Worse.
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    Noo...my text disappeared :><

    Anyway, It would be interesting to hear if you have opinions, especially differing ones about the subject. I personally think Huntington&#39;s hypothesis has proven itself to be valid and sound. As someone interested in History, Global politics and Sociology, I find this a fascinating subject. I think, that by examining recent events we can see the validity of the theory. It clearly manifests itself in the European reluctance to allow Turkey into the EU, for example, and the current West vs. Islam conflict (which has been going on for centuries, hot and cold) can only be described as a &#39;fault line conflict&#39;. All across the board, the borders of Islam are rife with conflict, from southern Thailand to Central Asia to the Middle-east to the Balkans to Sub-Saharan Africa.

    I also believe, that the current so called &#39;rift&#39; between Europe and USA is very temporary, and will fade largely in the next 5 years. The (relative, proportional) decline of the Western Civilization at the moment should act as an incentive to both Europe and USA to strengthen relations and increase co-operation within the &#39;civilization&#39;.

    Discuss&#33;
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

    ROGER SCRUTON, Modern Culture

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    A big problem with what is proposed in the last paragraph is that unless you actually grow up within a culture you will never be able to fully understand it. You may have theories, you may be open to the ideas and values of others, but you will never fully inderstand the way someone from another culture thinks. It follows that you will never understand their actions. The only way for a real peace between cultures/civilisations is either elimination or assimilation (creating a blend). Look at the catholic religeon in south america as a more modern example. Roman Catholicism there would nearly be called idol worship and pagan in Italy because it has adapted so many ideas of the native culture into its rituals etc.

    A clash of civilisations in my mind implies a central controlling force opposed to another similar central opposition force, which of course the west is attempting to prevent from forming in other cultures. The west also has its own internal disputes (look at the history of anti-americanism thread). I think perhaps the idea of a clash of civilisations has been simplified a little too far, though the central idea of the article seems valid - that of stress between different civs or cultures. I am of the opinion that the future will bring something like a clash of subcultures that arise over internal disputes in civilisations. The subsequent conflicts will become more and more localised until ethnic boundaries are set and nations cease to exist. Basically, nations split and split again until they become completely localised, and ethnically &#39;pure&#39; (I know that sounds bad). Cultural and ethnic boundaries will never break down imo, the only thing that can be done is to ease the process of decentralisation as much as possible to avoid too much suffering. While a country has different ethnic groups within it there will always be the potential for conflict because one &#39;side&#39; will always be at a disadvantage (or think they are) whether it be politically, economically, population size or whatever.


    At the heart of the Asian values debate is cultural relativism: recognition that many of the so-called universal values derived from the West are no more intrinsically legitimate than alternative values dominant in parts of Asia or elsewhere. As Malaysia&#39;s Prime Minister Mahathir wrote, &#39;The possibility that different value systems could possibly be of equal worth and could coexist peacefully in the world, appears a difficult concept to grasp for opinion leaders and media of the West.&#39;11 Community and family-orientation, respect for authority, hierarchical society based on Confucian principles, a paternalistic, illiberal and strong state are some of the key characteristics of Asian values advanced by
    both Lee and Mahathir as well as other Asian leaders. Lee Kuan Yew is the best known proponent of these apparently &#39;Chinese Values&#39;, which find strong resonance in most Sinic and Sinicized East Asian societies. However, it is notable that Mahathir, a Malay nationalist, has also endorsed most of these values for Malaysia as well.12 Lee has also been a great supporter of &#39;illiberal democracy&#39; in various parts of the world
    link to an asian point of view: http://www.law.kobegakuin.ac.jp/~aprc/engl...ion/pdf/No3.pdf
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    wilpuri's Avatar It Gets Worse.
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    Well as I understand it, it was the substantial debate created by this article, which encouraged Huntington to further develope his theories and explore their validity in greater depth, which lead to his book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order". Yesterday I started to read the book again to refresh my memory.

    Also, it is not necessary in my opinion to fully understand a culture to realize that it is different, and profound understanding of a civilization and its mind set is not required to observe the trends in relation within civlizations and between civilizations.

    A clash of civilisations in my mind implies a central controlling force opposed to another similar central opposition force, which of course the west is attempting to prevent from forming in other cultures. The west also has its own internal disputes (look at the history of anti-americanism thread). I think perhaps the idea of a clash of civilisations has been simplified a little too far, though the central idea of the article seems valid - that of stress between different civs or cultures. I am of the opinion that the future will bring something like a clash of subcultures that arise over internal disputes in civilisations. The subsequent conflicts will become more and more localised until ethnic boundaries are set and nations cease to exist. Basically, nations split and split again until they become completely localised, and ethnically &#39;pure&#39; (I know that sounds bad). Cultural and ethnic boundaries will never break down imo, the only thing that can be done is to ease the process of decentralisation as much as possible to avoid too much suffering. While a country has different ethnic groups within it there will always be the potential for conflict because one &#39;side&#39; will always be at a disadvantage (or think they are) whether it be politically, economically, population size or whatever.
    You seem to adhere partially to Huntington&#39;s theory, and partially to the &#39;realist theory&#39;. The realist theory assumes, that the key actor in international politics is the sovereign state. While this, according to Huntington (and this is also my opinion), is good at explaining a great deal of global politics, it has its limitations. Intra-civilizational conflicts are bound to occur, but in general they are not as long-term as those between different civilizations. Remember, that Huntington&#39;s paradigm is not valid eternally, for example it is not very good at explaining cold war politics, which in general were far simpler, with the world divided between the West (or the Free World), the Communist Bloc and the third world, i.e unaligned nations. The global politics of that age were concentrated on political ideology rather than the relations within and between civilizations. Huntington attempts to establish a new paradigm, which would be viable for the present situation and the near future. It will not always be valid, but it explains how and why international politics is conducted in this day and age.

    As someone who adheres to Huntington&#39;s theory, I don&#39;t believe we will see significant intra-civilizational conflict within the next 50 years at least. I believe that the potential threat posed to the West by the rise of potent non-Western civilizations will unify the West from this current so called rift. So far the trend, especially in Europe, has not been one of secession and greater autonomy between states, rather the opposite. The West (as well as other civilizations) are coming together, rallying around their so-called &#39;core countries&#39;. As a result of this &#39;Clash&#39;, I believe that Europe will tighten their liberal policies and align herself closer to the USA. I would like to think of intra-civilizational disputes as arguments between siblings, but the siblings will unite if another family begins to pose a threat. Ethnic boundaries will always exist no doubt, and nations belonging to the same civilization will always have disputes, but they will not dominate the scene of global politics in my opinion.
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

    ROGER SCRUTON, Modern Culture

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    As someone who adheres to Huntington&#39;s theory, I don&#39;t believe we will see significant intra-civilizational conflict within the next 50 years at least. I believe that the potential threat posed to the West by the rise of potent non-Western civilizations will unify the West from this current so called rift. So far the trend, especially in Europe, has not been one of secession and greater autonomy between states, rather the opposite. The West (as well as other civilizations) are coming together, rallying around their so-called &#39;core countries&#39;. As a result of this &#39;Clash&#39;, I believe that Europe will tighten their liberal policies and align herself closer to the USA. I would like to think of intra-civilizational disputes as arguments between siblings, but the siblings will unite if another family begins to pose a threat. Ethnic boundaries will always exist no doubt, and nations belonging to the same civilization will always have disputes, but they will not dominate the scene of global politics in my opinion.
    I&#39;m not entirely convinced that we will see a true &#39;clash&#39; of civilisations, to my mind it seems that the current situation is generated more by the emergence of a single superpower and a unipolar world. That superpower becomes a &#39;target&#39; and scapegoat for nations and groups without close links to it; while at the same time nations sharing common aspects of culture will drift towards the superpower.

    To my mind, in the bipolar world of the cold war, some nations were attracted to one superpower, others were repelled and attracted to the other. Although some nations and cultures remained loose and seperate from either power, there were clearly defined centres of power. With the fall of the USSR, the nations and groups formerly attracted to it are now either attracted to the US or repelled from it, creating the impression of a divide in civilisations between western civilisation and the various sub groups which are repelled from it.

    However, I severely doubt that this can truly be defined as a clash of civilisations, and I imagine that as the world again becomes more multipolar, new groups and focuses will arise, and this illusion will dissapear.

    I apologise if the above analogy is indistinct and unclear, but I cannot help but have doubts as regards the progressive nature of the &#39;clash&#39; theory.
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    wilpuri's Avatar It Gets Worse.
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    Originally posted by Profler@Mar 4 2005, 01:41 PM

    I&#39;m not entirely convinced that we will see a true &#39;clash&#39; of civilisations, to my mind it seems that the current situation is generated more by the emergence of a single superpower and a unipolar world. That superpower becomes a &#39;target&#39; and scapegoat for nations and groups without close links to it; while at the same time nations sharing common aspects of culture will drift towards the superpower.

    To my mind, in the bipolar world of the cold war, some nations were attracted to one superpower, others were repelled and attracted to the other. Although some nations and cultures remained loose and seperate from either power, there were clearly defined centres of power. With the fall of the USSR, the nations and groups formerly attracted to it are now either attracted to the US or repelled from it, creating the impression of a divide in civilisations between western civilisation and the various sub groups which are repelled from it.

    However, I severely doubt that this can truly be defined as a clash of civilisations, and I imagine that as the world again becomes more multipolar, new groups and focuses will arise, and this illusion will dissapear.

    I apologise if the above analogy is indistinct and unclear, but I cannot help but have doubts as regards the progressive nature of the &#39;clash&#39; theory.
    Well, there is conflict in one form or another along most borders or fault lines of civilizations, especially Islam is a ring of fire. If we are to think that sovereign states act purely in self interest, and if one power grows too strong, they seek to grow stronger themselves or form alliances to counter the power of that one nation/coalition, then according to this theory western Europe would have aligned itself with the USSR after WW II, to balance the power of the USA.

    However, I severely doubt that this can truly be defined as a clash of civilisations, and I imagine that as the world again becomes more multipolar, new groups and focuses will arise, and this illusion will dissapear.
    The world will most likely become multi-polar, with civilizations becoming the &#39;poles&#39; and rallying around their core states.

    With the fall of the USSR, the nations and groups formerly attracted to it are now either attracted to the US or repelled from it, creating the impression of a divide in civilisations between western civilisation and the various sub groups which are repelled from it.
    How would you explain this re-alignment, sheer chaos, based on political ideology, balancing power, what? Why is it, that so few non-Western states are willing to align themselves with the West?

    Remember, Huntington does NOT claim that strife within civilization would be non-existant, nor does he claim that civilizations are or will be united political entities, he defines civlization as the broadest cultural concept an individual sees him or herself belonging to, and that this identification will lead to more positive attitudes towards states/people belonging to the same civilization, and that it is this which will dictate the alignment of nations in the present and the near future. Remember that this was written a decade ago, and I think this hypothesis has proved its validity. Huntington&#39;s theory allows for the current rift in Trans-Atlantic relations, it does not contradict his paradigm based on civilizations. Give me an example which contradicts Huntington&#39;s theory, or even better, tell me what you believe is the formula or paradigm present day global politics follow.
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    Remember, Huntington does NOT claim that strife within civilization would be non-existant, nor does he claim that civilizations are or will be united political entities, he defines civlization as the broadest cultural concept an individual sees him or herself belonging to, and that this identification will lead to more positive attitudes towards states/people belonging to the same civilization, and that it is this which will dictate the alignment of nations in the present and the near future. Remember that this was written a decade ago, and I think this hypothesis has proved its validity. Huntington&#39;s theory allows for the current rift in Trans-Atlantic relations, it does not contradict his paradigm based on civilizations. Give me an example which contradicts Huntington&#39;s theory, or even better, tell me what you believe is the formula or paradigm present day global politics follow.
    I can certainly appreciate that he is careful to define civilisations loosely, rather than as distinct entities, and I accept that up to now the theory has worked to a large degree. I am just uncertain whether or not it will continue to work on the level he has defined. However, I cannot help but feel that national and international organisational politics will again rise to prominence in the future.

    Well, there is conflict in one form or another along most borders or fault lines of civilizations, especially Islam is a ring of fire. If we are to think that sovereign states act purely in self interest, and if one power grows too strong, they seek to grow stronger themselves or form alliances to counter the power of that one nation/coalition, then according to this theory western Europe would have aligned itself with the USSR after WW II, to balance the power of the USA.
    What I was trying to say was that this alignment takes place due to a mixture of shared ideals and values (civilisation if you will) and national politics. I do not believe that it can be entirely defined by either, but each in my opinion shares an equal importance. After WWII, not only did western Europe percieve the US to be a lesser threat to their way of life than a potentially expansionist USSR, but they also shared aspects of civilisation and culture with the US that were alien to the USSR. The political alignment is in my opinion not so much a question of potential influence and power but of national self interest.




    With the fall of the USSR, the nations and groups formerly attracted to it are now either attracted to the US or repelled from it, creating the impression of a divide in civilisations between western civilisation and the various sub groups which are repelled from it.



    How would you explain this re-alignment, sheer chaos, based on political ideology, balancing power, what? Why is it, that so few non-Western states are willing to align themselves with the West?
    As I said above, I believe that although it depends very much on civilisation and culture, governmental ideology, economic factors and national self interest have all played a role in the post USSR world.

    I fully agree that for the wider picture and recent history, Huntington&#39;s theory has rung true. I cannot help however but feel that this is a sort of Newton/Einstein situation, where Huntington has got the rough principles, but is failing to account for the root causes.

    (Please note that I am not claiming to know the root causes, or to be comparable to Einstein)
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    As I said above, I believe that although it depends very much on civilisation and culture, governmental ideology, economic factors and national self interest have all played a role in the post USSR world.

    I fully agree that for the wider picture and recent history, Huntington&#39;s theory has rung true. I cannot help however but feel that this is a sort of Newton/Einstein situation, where Huntington has got the rough principles, but is failing to account for the root causes.
    Well, judging by that essay it can be easy to say so. If I were to explain his theory or paradigm with all its supporting examples and the reasoning behind it, I would be reciting the entire book for you :grin

    I was very skeptical when my father told me about Huntington&#39;s theories, but after reading the book, I cannot help but to agree with the man. I am planning to purchase his newest book that was published some years ago. Seriously READ IT. If nothing else, it will provide you with valuable insight and new perspectives into the world of international politics.

    can certainly appreciate that he is careful to define civilisations loosely, rather than as distinct entities, and I accept that up to now the theory has worked to a large degree. I am just uncertain whether or not it will continue to work on the level he has defined. However, I cannot help but feel that national and international organisational politics will again rise to prominence in the future.
    International organisational politics are still prominent, increasingly so, WITHIN civilizations. If you believe that multi-civilizational international organizations will rise to prominence, I think you are being something else than your usual self; an optimist *wink*
    However, it would be interesting to hear why you think so.

    What I was trying to say was that this alignment takes place due to a mixture of shared ideals and values (civilisation if you will) and national politics. I do not believe that it can be entirely defined by either, but each in my opinion shares an equal importance. After WWII, not only did western Europe percieve the US to be a lesser threat to their way of life than a potentially expansionist USSR, but they also shared aspects of civilisation and culture with the US that were alien to the USSR. The political alignment is in my opinion not so much a question of potential influence and power but of national self interest.
    Shared Ideals: Culture
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    The cold truth is that the Western European nations aligned themselves with the USA because USA was/is one of them. Russia belongs to the Orthodox civlization, and is therefor foreign to the West to some extent.
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

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    Well, judging by that essay it can be easy to say so. If I were to explain his theory or paradigm with all its supporting examples and the reasoning behind it, I would be reciting the entire book for you

    I was very skeptical when my father told me about Huntington&#39;s theories, but after reading the book, I cannot help but to agree with the man. I am planning to purchase his newest book that was published some years ago. Seriously READ IT. If nothing else, it will provide you with valuable insight and new perspectives into the world of international politics.
    Oh dear, yet another addition to an already overlong backlog of books to read. I&#39;m already struggling through a book defining the economic, cultural and political divides between the US and Europe, as well as a satirical comment on modern Britain (and George of course, since he dictates our foreign policy now) and on top of that I&#39;m trying to get through the Le Carre series. Just as well the Easter Hols are coming up really.

    International organisational politics are still prominent, increasingly so, WITHIN civilizations. If you believe that multi-civilizational international organizations will rise to prominence, I think you are being something else than your usual self; an optimist
    However, it would be interesting to hear why you think so.
    The only real reason I&#39;m beginniing to hold this opinion is the increasing degree of interventionism taking place on the international stage, which will inevitably construct greater political links (modern Imperialism if you will, but with a dollar bill instead of a bayonet). My other main reason lies in Europe. If the EU survives the current constitutional melting pot, it seems likely that Bulgaria (and possibly Ukraine), both from the Orthodox civilisation as Huntington describes it, will eventually be amalgamated into the EU. This would then open up the rest of the Balkans, and maybe even prepare the way for Turkish entry in future decades. However, this possibility is a still a very long way off, and I agree that there are an almost infinite number of potential pitfalls on the way.

    Shared Ideals: Culture
    Values: Culture (value consensus&#33;&#33
    National politics: dictated by intra-civilizational politics to a great degree

    The cold truth is that the Western European nations aligned themselves with the USA because USA was/is one of them. Russia belongs to the Orthodox civlization, and is therefor foreign to the West to some extent.
    I would argue that the percieved threat of communism was a greater factor, if western democracies were prepared to give Hitler and Mussolini lenient treatment early on to prevent the rise of Communism (as well as stand aside during the Spanish Civil War), I would put the case that ultimately national self interest was predominant.

    However, I will consent that as an extremely stubborn person, I may well be wrong - and simply trying to maintain that the Titanic is not sinking - when it comes to defending my theory.
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    Some good points you have there Profler. I&#39;m going to attempt to tackle them once I get home and have the time, I need to do some skimming through the book, since if my memory serves me correct, there was a bit about Ukraine. It might have been classified as a &#39;torn country&#39;, but I&#39;m not entirely sure.
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

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    Originally posted by Profler@Mar 4 2005, 02:54 PM
    I would argue that the percieved threat of communism was a greater factor, if western democracies were prepared to give Hitler and Mussolini lenient treatment early on to prevent the rise of Communism (as well as stand aside during the Spanish Civil War), I would put the case that ultimately national self interest was predominant.

    However, I will consent that as an extremely stubborn person, I may well be wrong - and simply trying to maintain that the Titanic is not sinking - when it comes to defending my theory.
    It most certainly played a factor, and as I said, the Cold War really was a different age, and the civilizational paradigm is perhaps not as valid in that instance.

    The only real reason I&#39;m beginniing to hold this opinion is the increasing degree of interventionism taking place on the international stage, which will inevitably construct greater political links (modern Imperialism if you will, but with a dollar bill instead of a bayonet). My other main reason lies in Europe. If the EU survives the current constitutional melting pot, it seems likely that Bulgaria (and possibly Ukraine), both from the Orthodox civilisation as Huntington describes it, will eventually be amalgamated into the EU. This would then open up the rest of the Balkans, and maybe even prepare the way for Turkish entry in future decades. However, this possibility is a still a very long way off, and I agree that there are an almost infinite number of potential pitfalls on the way.
    The &#39;imperialism&#39; by the dollar has been occuring for decades, rising sharply in the 1990&#39;s. As for increasing interventionism, I think it shows something, that the West intervenes where their civilizational &#39;brothers&#39; are in trouble (Balkan wars, Croats in particular), or where their interests are at stake (The Middle-East), but who intervenes in Africa? Not the West but nations with interests at stake there, i.e. France. Russia was/is involved in the Balkan for the same reason, they see as belonging to their spehere of influence, and also part of the Balkans belongs to the Orthodox civilization.

    Concerning Ukraine, quoting Huntington:

    "A statist paradigm, for instance, leads John Mearsheimer to predict &#39;the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. Great powers that share a long and unprotected common border, like that between Russia and Ukraine, often lapse into competition driven by security fears. Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do.&#39; A civilizational approach, on the other hand, emphasizes the close cultural, personal and historical links between Russia and Ukraine and the intermingling of Russians and Ukrainians in both countries, and focuses instead on the civilizational fault line that divides Orthodox eastern Ukraine from Uniate western Ukraine, a central historical fact of long standing which, in keeping with the &#39;realist&#39; concept of states as unified and self-identified entities, Mearsheimer totally ignores. While a statist approach highlights the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian war, a civilizational approach minimizes that and instead highlights the possibility of Ukraine splitting in half, a separation which cultural factors would lead one to predict might be more violent than that of Chechoslovakia but far less bloody than that of Yugoslavia."

    And what has been happening lately in Ukraine? The western half attempting align itself to the West, the eastern half trying to remain closer to Russia. A potentially messy situation.

    As for Bulgaria and possibly Turkey joining the EU, ok, possible. But I believe that such a move would require the redefintion of their civilizational identity, and documented cases of such attempts have pretty much without excpetion ended in failure. According to my buddy Samuel, three conditions must be met for the transformation to be successful

    a) The economic and governing elite has to support it.

    b) The public has to support it or at least be willing to accept it.

    c) The host civilization (the West in this case) must be willing to accept the convert nation.

    So, while they may get in, I doubt they would last. Also, their membership is possibly decades away, and if the current trends continue, the seeming harmony in which Turkey and Bulgaria are with the West might be interrupted by civilizational rifts and therefore terminate their chances of membership.
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

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    I think Huntington is extremely astute. (Meaning, as such statements usually do, that I fully agree with him :rolleyes ) This is basically how I see the world.

    [As an aside, I find Marsal Qin&#39;s assertion that one can never truly understand a different culture to be a little, well, odd, since my understanding is that he is a Westerner by birth, but married to a Chinese and living in China. As someone who has always had a penchant for women foreign to the US (my home country), I haven&#39;t found other cultures to be totally opaque to my comprehension. I suspect that Qin is not actually constantly flummoxed at every action by everyone around him, but can almost always make reasonable projections of expected behaviors and reponses to stimuli. Actually, I suspect that his post here was written on short notice, and not after years of contemplative retreat, honed by recursive editing, and so he did not truly mean to suggest that no comprehension can occur between humans on different sides of a cultural boundary. *wink*]

    I think Profler is looking from the viewpoint of the superficial anti-US threads found so often in these forums. However, I think those anti-US sentiments are ultimately of little long-term consequence and make even their promulgators uncomfortable. Witness the apparent relief and eagerness to patch things up exhibited by European leaders during "King" George&#39;s current Euro tour.

    The real difference between US and Euro sentiments is that the US has decided to aggressively expand Western hegemony into the Islamic world, while Europe is extremely hesitant to endorse such a forceful policy. Differences between US and EC will settle down as US naked aggression subsides, and naked force of arms will decrease as Iraq progresses toward a new national identity.

    Don&#39;t get me wrong here. Bush invaded Iraq because of a family feud, nothing more. The entire invasion justification was pure whitewash as far as he was concerned, and the conflict in his eyes is no different than that of an offended Medieval king seeking revenge through war.

    However, the neo-con policy plan for the Middle East, drawn up in the 90s, is definitely a plan to inject Western cultural values into the Islamic M.East and thereby destabilize and weaken a potential enemy/competitor of Western civilization.

    By Western standards, Saddam was nothing less than nearly pure evil. Basically, everything he stood for and everything he did is defined as evil by Western culture. The neo-con policy plan seeks to inject all the Western values that this civilzation holds most valuable and important right smack dab into the middle of an area profoundly apathetic or antipathetic to those ideals. The concepts of liberty and freedom et al are considered the highest and most favorable benefits of Western civ, and the drafters of the neo-con policy actually see their plan as the liberation of an oppressed region.

    (I should also note that the neo-con policy views itself in the most altruistic of lights, and it does truly seek to install what its own culture considers to be its highest and most valuable ideals in the Mid East. Within the judgement of Western culture, the policy plan is actually good, just, and giving of its most cherished possessions. In terms of realpolitik, it is cutting the hamstrings of a potential future enemy.)

    There is some good deep thinking to be done here on the issue of ultimate good and evil and the expressions of such across cultural boundaries. Both Christianity and Islam are extremely evangelical in their positions that their values are true and correct for all human beings, regardless of culture. These two memes are arguably the most virulent in the modern world. In fact, there is considerable overlap in their ideals. In practice, it&#39;s "my way...or death".

    Leaving aside the argument of what is ultimate Good and Evil, and who expresses it most closely, the invasion of Iraq is an attempt to inject Western memes into the heart of Islam. Naively (and typically), the neo-cons assumed that the typical Iraqi would be thrilled at this injection and would, in effect, rise en masse to proclaim "Thank God we are finally Westerners&#33;" Well, that didn&#39;t happen, and it ain&#39;t gonna happen.

    But the effect may still be long-lasting. What seems quite possible to occur is that Islam has been changed, in the way that African killer bees interbred with the more docile European honey bees and became more manageable and less virulently dangerous.

    Of course, Shiite leaders in both Iraq and Iran are struggling not to let this happen, but it is questionable if they can pull it off and create another Iran in the current situation. Certainly it seems that the US would again use anything, up to and including force of arms, to prevent the re-installation of a purely Arab/Islamic state in Iraq.

    Sunnis and other terrorists actually play into the hands of Western goals here, because the reality is that people get tired of living in fear of their lives. The terrorists stupidly think they are destabilizing the US occupation. But the fact is that they are destabilizing the will of the Iraqi people to hold to their traditional cultural boundaries. Given the choice to acquiesce to the sea change of Western cultural values, or to fear that their children will be killed on their way to school, the average person, Iraqi or otherwise, will opt for safety and peaceful security. Now that the terrorists have turned to attacking Iraqis, the only possible outcome from an Iraqi citizen&#39;s point of view is to destroy those who are attacking them. No one can fight a two front war effectively. The average Iraqi can either accept many or most of the Western changes and focus on keeping their self and family safe, or oppose the changes and accept "collateral damage" to their loved ones.

    Whatever the results turn out to be, it seems that Bush&#39;s American adventure has forcibly crossed the cultural/civilization boundary and altered the face of Islam. How much, and to what end effect (amalgamation and amelioration vs reaction and virulent enmity) is still unknown at this point.

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    Originally posted by morble@Mar 4 2005, 07:02 PM
    Whatever the results turn out to be, it seems that Bush&#39;s American adventure has forcibly crossed the cultural/civilization boundary and altered the face of Islam. How much, and to what end effect (amalgamation and amelioration vs reaction and virulent enmity) is still unknown at this point.
    Well, I don&#39;t know it remains to be seen whether Bush has or hasn&#39;t changed the face of the Islamic Civilization as a whole, or caused a temporary hick up in its current course of development. The greatest challenge for Islam (for other non-Western Civilizations as well, but particularily for Islam) is the process of modernising without becoming Western. Turkey has succeeded at this to a significant extent, and Iran has also made progress in this sense, but it still a major obstacle for the Islamic civilization, which is quite rigid and conservative at the moment. Not very open to change. The somewhat secular tradition in Iraq that Saddam was able to instill might have worked in favour of accepting the new system of doing things.

    We live in exciting times.
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    I haven&#39;t found other cultures to be totally opaque to my comprehension. I suspect that Qin is not actually constantly flummoxed at every action by everyone around him, but can almost always make reasonable projections of expected behaviors and reponses to stimuli. Actually, I suspect that his post here was written on short notice, and not after years of contemplative retreat, honed by recursive editing, and so he did not truly mean to suggest that no comprehension can occur between humans on different sides of a cultural boundary. ]
    I&#39;ll admit that with the basic knowledge I had before coming to China, and that 3 years is by no means long enough to get a full comprehension of a culture, but I suspect that were I to live here a few decades I would still find myself being surprised by the actions of Chinese on occasion. True, it is not often that I have no idea what to expect, but it is precisely those times when I do get blinsided that I make the biggest mistakes. I can also say that I&#39;ve definately altered the way I think about this issue having spent 9 yrs in the military and started out by considering myself as superior because of my skin colour and origins. I&#39;ve gone on to review all of my stereotypes and discard my ideas in favour of a genral acceptance of difference where I have had no actual contact with a nation or culture. It may have seemed that I believed that no comprehension is possible, my meaning is that no full comprehension is possible, which renders partial comprehension useless. Perhaps at individual level this isn&#39;t so much of a problem, but at national and civilisation level its a completely different kettle of fish.

    require the West to develop a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests. It will require an effort to identify elements of commonality between Western and other civilizations.
    Afaik this basically means that people should be able to put themselves in the shoes of people from different cultures for long lasting peace to be possible. Understanding a culture is different from going through the same thought processes as people from that culture. While maybe you could predict the responses of people on the majority of occasions, the idea that you will be able to put yourself in their shoes is a little difficult to believe because you did not grow up with all the influences from governement, media, history, family and peers that that implies. It follows that on occasion you will misjudge a situation. At governement level, this becomes a much bigger issue as it can be seized on as an excuse for any action. While I understand that governments will always seek to find excuses for their actions, an informed public will (hopefully) be able to stop this from happening. Short of a miracle, there is no way that whole populations will ever understand other cultures, and it is only the mob that governments need to influence. Governments can easily pounce on misunderstandings to forward their agendas, so without full national comprehension, you will always get conflict as governements play on the stereotypes of their generally ill-informed population. Varying comprehension is possible at different levels, but its at the lowest levels of society where governments aim their propaganda.

    So going back to what I said:

    The only way for a real peace between cultures/civilisations is either elimination or assimilation (creating a blend).
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    I do not see any blend being possible. After all civilization is not exactly rigid thing.

    Current EU is not only affecting what is considered orthodox world but is also being affected by it unlike as been apparently thought by some (considering terms like "host" civilization) but at the same time other splinters will separate and move away.

    Greatest explanation of splintering of civilization is USA/Europe. While USA had most of it&#39;s origins in european settlers the time and different situation have caused USA and overall European trends to become more distant. I see current "rift" as first signs of complete break from each other over the years. By no means will EU/USA ties become nonexistent or change to be sudden but it is clear that because different conditions require different mentality it is very much impossible to come closer again, it is impossible for european cultures to see things "the american way" or vice versa since USA has secure borders and is distanced from practically everything and meanwhile European nations have seen some of the greatest devastation caused by human hand and have to live in tightly populated area with actual "alien" neighbours. Gaps may be bridged and for now UK acts as little as a larger bridge but in time UK has to decide where to belong or be broken from both groups and become isolated in it&#39;s own small world.

    So when some cultures close on each other there tends to be also process of separation of others which used to be closer ones and as a result whole new civilizations are born. Perhaps one day there is one "terran" civilization but it has to mean there is "martian" civilization (human colony which has distanced from Earth) or even "alien" (as in space alien) civilization. This is because before there is some uniting factor there has to be something to set clear difference.

    That is also why the attempts of "spreading" civilization are ultimately futile. You may be able to plant a form of "your" civilization but since conditions are different they will rapidly start to separate from you and will eventually form their own cultural way.


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    Originally posted by Tiwaz@Mar 5 2005, 04:36 PM
    Greatest explanation of splintering of civilization is USA/Europe. While USA had most of it&#39;s origins in european settlers the time and different situation have caused USA and overall European trends to become more distant. I see current "rift" as first signs of complete break from each other over the years. By no means will EU/USA ties become nonexistent or change to be sudden but it is clear that because different conditions require different mentality it is very much impossible to come closer again, it is impossible for european cultures to see things "the american way" or vice versa since USA has secure borders and is distanced from practically everything and meanwhile European nations have seen some of the greatest devastation caused by human hand and have to live in tightly populated area with actual "alien" neighbours. Gaps may be bridged and for now UK acts as little as a larger bridge but in time UK has to decide where to belong or be broken from both groups and become isolated in it&#39;s own small world.
    The current rift is perfectly explainable using the civilizational paradigm. It is caused by contemporary attitudes and policies which are somewhat different, the USA driving a more aggressive policy, while Europe would like to work more through diplomatic channels. However, the values and ideals ARE the same. Both Europe and USA could agree Saddam was a bad guy, that international terrorism must be countered, and so on. The only difference is one of the means of how to do it. I don&#39;t see a civilizational split occuring at all. The only way I can see the USA separating from the rest of Western Civilization is if its population is in majority from another Civilization, e.g. if the Hispanics form a majority, then it is possible that the USA might align itself closer with the Latin American Sub-Civilization.

    So when some cultures close on each other there tends to be also process of separation of others which used to be closer ones and as a result whole new civilizations are born. Perhaps one day there is one "terran" civilization but it has to mean there is "martian" civilization (human colony which has distanced from Earth) or even "alien" (as in space alien) civilization. This is because before there is some uniting factor there has to be something to set clear difference.
    Could you give me an example where a nation/state people has separated from their original culture in modern times? I can&#39;t think of any, unless you count South America, but again, it is slightly different as most of the native population was killed off and immigrants were brought from over seas. This mixture of immigrants and remaining natives then created the Sub-Civilization of Latin America as we know it today.
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

    ROGER SCRUTON, Modern Culture

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    Could you give me an example where a nation/state people has separated from their original culture in modern times? I can&#39;t think of any, unless you count South America, but again, it is slightly different as most of the native population was killed off and immigrants were brought from over seas. This mixture of immigrants and remaining natives then created the Sub-Civilization of Latin America as we know it today.
    I can&#39;t think of an example of a group splintering entirely, but I would be interested to hear how the theory accounts for the change that took place in India before and after the British empire. Before the British invasion, there was a distinct &#39;Indian&#39; culture and civilisation under the Muhgals (sp?). This was broadly maintained during the British occupation, if surpressd. However of course, when the British withdrew, the civilisation fractured, leaving Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan/Bangladesh.
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    Originally posted by Profler@Mar 6 2005, 02:43 PM

    I can&#39;t think of an example of a group splintering entirely, but I would be interested to hear how the theory accounts for the change that took place in India before and after the British empire. Before the British invasion, there was a distinct &#39;Indian&#39; culture and civilisation under the Muhgals (sp?). This was broadly maintained during the British occupation, if surpressd. However of course, when the British withdrew, the civilisation fractured, leaving Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan/Bangladesh.
    Well this was a time when the civilizational paradigm might not have been as a valid as today, but still it is evident that the "Indian Culture" you are talking about is anything but one culture. Rather a collection of two main cultures: Muslim and Hindu. Pakistan & Bangladesh belongs to the Civilization of Islam and India to the Hindu Civilization. The country was divided up by civilizational fault lines (which to this day are uneasy and prone to conflict), separating the cultures with international borders. There have been very violent and bloody clashes in India between the Muslim and Hindu populations. I don&#39;t think that Mughal India had one distinct "Indian Culture".
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

    ROGER SCRUTON, Modern Culture

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    I will grudgingly concede defeat on this issue until I&#39;m better able to comment on the theory (i.e. once I&#39;ve read it). However, I will accept that it is becoming an increasingly plausible theory in my mind.
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    Originally posted by Profler@Mar 8 2005, 02:21 AM
    I will grudgingly concede defeat on this issue until I&#39;m better able to comment on the theory (i.e. once I&#39;ve read it). However, I will accept that it is becoming an increasingly plausible theory in my mind.
    Learning is never a loss *wink*
    There are no doubt things that do not go well with the paradigm, but I think that so far it has shown its validity as guide for interpreting and understanding modern global politics.

    EDIT: I am probably not the best at interpreting Huntington&#39;s work, so I cannot stress enough that it is worth reading. It is truly an impressive piece of work.
    The common culture of a tribe is a sign of its inner cohesion. But tribes are vanishing from the modern world, as are all forms of traditional society. Customs, practices, festivals, rituals and beliefs have acquired a flut and half-hearted quality which reflects our nomadic and rootless existence, predicated as we are on the global air-waves.

    ROGER SCRUTON, Modern Culture

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