Clash Of Civilizations By Samuel P. Hungtington: Critical Review

The years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the phrase ‘clash of Civilizations’ was widely heard with a great deal, mainly from the right wings groups opposing that Islam and ‘The West’ were profoundly mismatched with the conflict between them being unavoidable. This kind of thinking was developed in Anders Behring Breivik’s view of the world and which ultimately led to his terrible crimes.

According to my view as an international Relations student, mainly the use of such language has declined meaningfully in the recent years, basically the following countries; “Arab Spring”. This has mainly focused to understand the involvedness of political relations in the country where there is the high tendency of Muslim majorities. So as part of the assignment, I was not quite familiar to these phrases before and soon after the professor’s description of the topic has help to understand furthermore along with other materials regarding this phrase.

The context of the modern era of the terminology of ‘Clash of Civilizations’ comes from the book by Samuel P. Huntington. While reading the various scholars in this regard, once I was forcing myself to think and which also led me to believe that the Islam/ west dichotomy. These both were too simple and also ignored the complexity of Huntington’s perception’s which was more focused on a multi-civilizational world.

Keywords: Civilization, clash, Islamic, confusion, western, conflict.

Overview of the book

The name Samuel P. Huntington comes usually when we think about the term’ Clash of Civilizations’. It is the 1993 theory where he is best known on both theories, the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, of a post–Cold War new world order.

He was known to be a great American academic and political scientist, During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. During the 1980s Apartheid era in South Africa, he served as an adviser to P. W. Botha’s Security Services according to the Wikipedia biography.

The book was published in 1996 and the year itself to be very significant to come up with a concept of ‘clash of civilizations’. It means the writer thought was formulated in the year of disorder which followed the downfall of the Soviet Union comprising in specific the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. In his book, he also introduced and mentioned the eight major of world civilizations to develop such as the western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic, Latin American and African. Out of these eight world major powers, it could easily and gracefully identify them would step to the top and be the most powerful; Islam, Western and Confucian. The western power would be on decline if factors such as the members of this culture not join together to allow them to defend their position at the top. The main cause to create the disparity between the hindering power of the Western world and Islam is religion which plays a major role to become the world to be more unstable, and anarchy would be on the rise.

A critical review of the book

In the 1993, a book ‘Clash of civilizations’ of Samuel P. Huntington argues that the wake of the fall of Berlin wall presents the domination due to the lack of existence of international relations no longer. As a result, it could easily notice the ideological conflict become witnessed during the cold war years between capitalism and communism. So the state-to-state tension pattern for the next conflict would not exist there. In his argument, the world would have witness a clash of civilizations between westerns and others particularly with an Islamic and a confused civilization. He also added the strong valid point in terms of what international relations would not be dominated by, however; the argument that a clash of civilizations based on cultural differences between the West and other civilizations is a one-dimensional hypothesis born out of a realist Cold War archetype.

Huntington’s claims begins with the cultures are varying from each other within a same state from different communities and likewise between states within a civilization and common bonds but within this civilizations, they completely differ in the both group. He has given the example, two villages in Italy may be different culturally, and however, these cultures of two villages will still maintain an overall Italian culture. The Italian culture is different than the German, for example, both are part of a large European culture that indicates the part of western civilization’s culture. He argued in western civilization, there has no commonality in cultural values with other civilization such as The Islamic and Confucian civilization. Since then the western civilization is largely based on democracy and human rights in one hand and while other civilization are not included such issues. He also mentioned with his argument that it creates a division between the ‘West and the rest’. In this way, he argues that the east and other civilizations will ultimately have clash and even not share the cross-border cultural identity, diminutive of the human race.

The main source of the conflict is that culture is the strongest and valid argument from Huntington. The broader civilization that one identifies with usually appears to be over-generated in the Huntington’s civilization grouping are troubled with their own internal cultural divisions and conflict. When it was closely observed this, the elusion to unity among civilization is invalid was easily addressed as evidence in Huntington’s book. He also claims the loyalties to the civilization is one of the sources of conflict versus national or ethnic identities is unsound. According to Russet, Oneal, and Cox (2000), they argue, the above claim is doubtful, mainly in Islamic civilization where interests within particular states have outweighed those of all – incorporating Islamic or pan- Arab convictions. So it can clearly present invalidate Huntington’s claim that one identifies with him or herself as western, Islamic or confused civilization first and notable.

According to Huntington’s argument in the most important conflict in the world is the fault lines which establish a civilization’s boundary with another’s. This has triggered some data statistical analyses to conduct for the validity of Huntington that this has to be the case. Russet. et.al (2000). This was conducted to come up with one analysis and also reported that ‘There is little evidence that ‘Civilization’ define the fault line along which international conflict is apt to occur’. Likewise, Errol Henderson (1998) did a study reporting where religion created the incidence of war, ethnic and linguistic similarities also increase the likelihood of conflict. The study also found that geographical proximity between states is also a stronger factor than culture. As this report shows the source of primary conflict is coming from cultural differences. In some cases, the same civilizations create more likely foundations are more responsible for the conflict. As a result, it brings a question to Huntington’s claim that conflicts between civilizations will be more focused on the cultural fault lines dividing civilizations. So it is most reasonable to argue that many of the conflicts identified on these fault lines simply have a greater likelihood to conflict even they are neighboring states.

According to Kunihiko Imai (2006) – showed the statistical result disprove is one of the major hypotheses of Huntington. Although the data was extracted from the past military dispute since this research is based on the data. In this way, the test may not have been suitable for Huntington’s thesis in era of post-cold war. So the conflict is found fault lines of the civilizational boundaries or not does unnecessarily disprove his thesis. In spite of the weakness for the argument that made the civilizations grow increasingly grounded in their own culture, values, religion, the conflict will occur at the fault lines where civilization is established.

References

Books:

1. Huntington, Samuel p., 1993. The clash of civilization: Foreign affairs of summer.

Journal Article ;

1. Russett, Bruce; John Oneal & Michaelene Cox, 2000. `Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà Vu? Some Evidence’, Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 583-608

Thesis;

1. Shahi, Deepshika; 2017. The clash of civilization thesis: A critical appraisal

Useful websites ;

1. https://www.simon.says.com
2. https://www.e-ir.info2017/04/02-The clash of civilization thesis-critical appraisal
3. URL:// https://youtu.be/c8wS9cOrSlA