Opinion of "Clash of Civilizations"

[12th Doctor]

For those of you familiar with the theory of Sameul Huntington, what is your opinion of it?  I will offer my own, but for now I'm off to bed.

[Beet]

There was a topic on this forum before I think where I suggested some points that I'll now elaborate on with regard to the Clash of Civilizations.

1) Huntington's model of international relations, like other models (realist, liberal, neoconservative), is important in the way that it shapes the paradigm and hence psychology from which policymaking is based. Thus while realism, liberalism, and neoconservatism are -isms associated with realist, liberal, and neoconservative theories of international relations, the clash of civilizations is also connected to (but not yet associated with) a broad -ism, which in this case I identify as civilizationalism. Osama bin Laden, for example, can be characterized as a "civilizationalist" in that his ideology fits into the model of civilizationalist clash.

2) However, the civilizationalist model doesn't deal purely with international relations but also domestic affairs within each nation, as the Taliban regime showed. It is associated as an international theory competing with the neoconservative theory primarily because Huntington chose to present his idea as such in 1993, in response to The End of History and the Cold War. His most recent work, Who Are We, however, argues that America should pursue a model that fits with the ideas he wrote about ten years earlier.

What's more, the connection between the international and domestic doesn't stop purely at the Clash of Civilizations. International (and domestic) political theory in general are each related. While it is useful to divide things up into fields for ease in specialization, these days specialization has gone too far due to the dominance of professional specialists, if they don't see international-domestic connections in political theory.

3) International theory has undergone a set of paradigm shifts of the type described byThomas Kuhn over the course of modern history.

The industrial revolution and the sweeping transformations it brought about led to the rise of various new ideologies and specializations designed to respond to its challenges. Prime among them were communism, nationalism/fascism, and 20th century liberalism. Thus the international political paradigm from 1918-1991 was one of ideological clash. This clash of ideologies ended in 1991 with the apparent triumph of 20th century liberalism. This prompted some, vocalized by Franis Fukuyama, to proclaim the end of history. However, what it really marked was the end of one paradigm in international relations and the rise of another paradigm.

During the 1990s, it became clear that although liberal democratization was occuring worldwide, the end of the Cold War would not mean the end of history. First, even before the Cold War, new challenges to 20th century liberalism other than communism emerged from what we would broadly identify as the political right. For example, in 1967, the collapse of Nasser's dream of pan-Arab nationalism ushered in not an era of Hebrew-Arab cooperation and mutual acceptance, but the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. This trend accelerated at the end of the Cold War and in the 1990's confounded those who hoped for a true end of history. In 1989-92, for example, it became clear that the collapse of communism in China would not usher in an era of liberalism but an authoritarian state legitimized by, in part, nationalism (although materialism remains the primary legitimzer). By 1998, it was clear that the collapse of communism in Russia and the apparent triumph of liberalism there was not the entire story either. 'Liberalism' as it was implemented had brought as much disaster as it had freedom. In India, the Bharayita Janata Party took power in 1998 and once and completed the end of the Nehru legacy that Huntington wrote about in Clash of Civilizations. In the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalism remained strong, even innovative, with the first suicide bombing in Israel occuring on April 6, 1994 in marking the first step in derailing the Oslo accords.

[Beet]

For a while, it remained unclear whether liberalism and its allied force of globalization would triumph over the forces of nativism which is, an allied force of Huntington's civilizationalism. The liberals' hope was that economic transformation was the answer to bringing in those areas of the world outside what Barnett called the Core. The Washington Consensus coming out of the Reagan revolution and the Cold War was that neoclassical economics was a sure sign to miraculous economic growth. However, in 1994, one of the post child countries of the neoclassical economic reformers, Mexico, was plunged into recession as a result of the collapse of its currency, the peso. This ironically coincided with the beginning of NAFTA. A 2004 report covered in the Economist now indicates that NAFTA did not help Mexico increase its GDP growth in the years after 1994 compared to the years before. Then in 1997, the so-called miracle economies of Asia, which were being praised by the World Bank just months earlier and represented the only example of a non-Core region entering the Core on large scale, suddenly plunged into depression virtually overnight in one of the most dramatic financial collapses in history. The shockwaves emanating from this collapse and the resulting depression in oil prices affected every developing region of the world, ranging from Argentina, which slid into a 5-year recession starting in 1997, to Russia, where Boris Yeltsin's government was delegitimized and Vladimir Putin rose meteroically to power, to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose economies were stagnating by 1998 and into which some of the 9/11 entered the workforce at that time. Even the election of George W. Bush indicated changing currents as the U.S. and Western Europe, the two primary winners of the Cold war, were beginning to move in different directions, with the U.S. now increasingly less satisfied with the liberal international order that it led to victory in 1989.

4) Thus the Sept. 11 attacks were only the final in a long series of events in the 1990's indicating the prescience of Huntington's prediction, not in the sense that civilizationalism triumphed, but in the sense that liberalism did not triumph.

5) The pathetically passive collapse of 1990's liberalism as political theory in the years leading up to 9/11 led after 9/11 to pro-active international political theory leading in the neoconservative direction and which has been captured and embraced by the presidency of George W. Bush. The neoconservatives are essentially pro-liberal disciples of Francis Fukuyama. However, they advocate an aggressive, imperialist approach to spreading liberal values. The primary test of neoconservatism has been both Iraq and Afghanistan, and in both instances, the cracks have already begun to show.

The neoconservatives' fatal flaw has been their total disregard, to the point of blindless, to the idea that, even if one does not agree with the Clash of Civilizations, Huntington did point out an aspect of world politics that is pervading and unavoidable. The idea of civilizational legitimacy, identity, and culture, is inescapable. While they did cause 9/11 and are usually, extremely destructive forces when embraced as civilizationalism, they cannot be totally eradicated. Just like economic leftism could not be eradicated by Metternich in the 1840s. The key insight that allowed 20th century liberalism to defeat communism was that one could accomodate and adapt to the sources of an opposing ideology's strength while at the same time rejecting the ideology as a whole. This is was the neoconservatives do not seem to understand.

Hence, we are in the ironic situation in Iraq of trying to impose a democracy. No surprise that it is generating resistance, and the trouble the neoconservatives are in is represented not only by the trouble that Donald Rumsfeld is in, but by the structure of the 2004 elections. Many agree that without the war in Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush might have won in a landslide. Of those that listed the war in Iraq as a primary concern in exit polls in 2004, most went for Kerry. Hence, a nascent rejection of a neoconservative policy is already brewing. This direct rejection, of course, is more important from the point of the neocons than the rejection of George Bush as a person and candidate, which did not happen.

6) My prediction is that there is a high chance that neoconservatism in Iraq will dramatically fail sometime within the next 20 years. Neoconservatism and the clash between imperialist Western-state-building and the forces of civilizationalism is a faulty paradigm. But the more interesting question is, what will replace it? I feel that it would be unwise the underestimate the backlash from a failure in neoconservatism. After all, in some sense, neoconservatism is the knee-jerk, assertive version of the liberalism of the 1990s. If it fails, as it probably will, it is highly unlikely that another form of liberalism, which is both more proactive than the 1990s version, and less blind to civilizational realities than the Bush administration version, will emerge.

What is most likely, is that the vindication that Huntington received in 2001 will be reinforced by the failure of the disciplines of Fukuyama in running George W. Bush's foreign policy. Hence I predict the likely probability of the rise of civilizationalism, or an embrace of the thesis of Huntington's latest work, in the United States, matching its rise elsewhere in the world. If civilizationalism triumphs around the world (except for Europe, which is the last bastion of 1990s liberalism but hampered by a boyarish political structure, Africa and possibly Latin America), we may eventually see a kind of third world war I talked about in my other post, in which America today is situated similiar to that of the Athenian city-state in the 5th century B.C. That last prediction is a wild one but the most likely cause of such a conflict.

[Lunar]

For those of you familiar with the theory of Sameul Huntington, what is your opinion of it?  I will offer my own, but for now I'm off to bed.

He basically argued that the future war would be Culture A vs Culture B fought over cultural reasons (rather than economic or land).

While it does hold true for the War on Terror, I don't view this to be the future war.  Cultures are becoming more homogenized across the world every day.  In addition, it's not hard to visualize scenarios where his arguments don't apply.  For example, he views Colombia and Venzuela as part of the same "South American" culture.   If those two went to war over border disputes and narcoterrorist problems then it's not hard to imagine the United States helping Colombia.

Other problems include: Painting Indochina and China as part of the same civilization.  Vietnam keeps a huge army for the sole purpose of deterring the Chinese.   He paints the entire Muslim world as one civilization when it reality it's sharply divided among Indonesians, Kurds, Turks, Pakistanis, Arabs, etc.

Edit: Posted before looking at Beet's posts.

[J. J.]

I would argue that World War II was a cultural war to an extent.  World War I, despite the clain of German "Kulture" really wasn't.  Wilhelm II admired English culture, and there was a lot cross cultural contacts, especially among the elites.

[Lunar]

I would argue that World War II was a cultural war to an extent.  World War I, despite the clain of German "Kulture" really wasn't.  Wilhelm II admired English culture, and there was a lot cross cultural contacts, especially among the elites.

WW2 seemed to be more along ideological lines.

[J. J.]

I would argue that World War II was a cultural war to an extent.  World War I, despite the clain of German "Kulture" really wasn't.  Wilhelm II admired English culture, and there was a lot cross cultural contacts, especially among the elites.

WW2 seemed to be more along idealogical lines.

Culture and idealogy can go hand in hand, and I think did in WW II.  I would say that the differences between the traditional Western culture/ideology and that of the Nazi's was much wide than the gap between the West and Islam.

[The Duke]

Beet,

You are wrong about a few things.  The first is that soehow, democracy is the middle east is met with resistance by the native peoples.  This is certainly not true in Afghanistan, were the same dynamic exists as in Iraq (a foreign nation imposing democratic governance).  The trouble in iraq is a direct result of not enough democratization at an early stage.  When Paul Bremer runs Iraq like a viceroy, imposing a flat tax and refusing to give Ali Sistani a voice in forming the new government, he alienated a lot of people.  It was our shutting out democratic voices and processes that led to our troubles, not too much democracy.

You are wrong that neoconservative policy disregards cultural differences between regions.  The necon vision for democracy is necessarily broad.  No American would spend an election cycle in Turkey and consider it a real democracy, yet it is a model for our transformation of Iraq.  While neoconservatives do emphasize the universal nature of human desires for freedom, they are only saying what is obvioulsy true.  It is their opponents who disregard the similiarities between cultural traditions.

You are wrong that there is a broad public rejection of neoconservative foreign policy.  Those that believe Iraq is part of the war on terror support it, and those who do no believe Iraq is part of the war on terror oppose it.  An exit poll question that asks if your highest priority issue is Iraq or terrorism produces a self selected sample.  Almost all Iraq war supporters will say terrorism, since to them iraq is part of that equation, and almost all anti-war voters will say "Iraq" because to them, it was a distraction from the war.  This self selected sample of ant war voters cannot be used to substantiate a borad based opposition to neoconservative principles.


Clash of Civilization theory gives us a good paradigm for udnerstanding certain aspects of globalization and the culture clashes that go with it, but it fails to explain certain things and leads to conclusions that are not always wise (Like hi anti-immigrant posture).  He assumes that people are genetically wired to act a certain way, although he doesn't say it that explicitly, and that they will be in inevitable conflict with each other.  He is wrong.

[12th Doctor]

Acctually, if you read the end of the book, there is no assumption of an enevitable clash, rather, he states that understanding these cultural differences can avoid future clashes.

He does note that the Islamic/Western dimension is quite different from those existing between other civilizations, but you must remember that his book was written in 1996, before it could be anticipated that there would be a full scale invasion of Iraq and Afganistan and that those Western forces would stick around long enough to form new Democratic governments.

Centainly, parts of his theory are evident in the modern world.  Look at the situation in tha Balkans.  Both sides were supported by other countries of their cultural groups inspite of lack of any national interest for countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and even the PLO.  This, might have something to do with the Islamic concept of the ummah then again, that doesn't explain Russian involvement in the crisis.

Similarly, we have the creation of a fault-line in the Ukraine, which Huntington predicted.  Orthodoxy is the primary civilization of Eastern Ukraine and Westernism is the primary civilization of East Ukraine.  Both sides are battling hard to pull the country into its shpere of influence and the are clear cut civilizational differences within the country.

[Beet]

Beet,

You are wrong about a few things.  The first is that soehow, democracy is the middle east is met with resistance by the native peoples.  This is certainly not true in Afghanistan, were the same dynamic exists as in Iraq (a foreign nation imposing democratic governance).  The trouble in iraq is a direct result of not enough democratization at an early stage.  When Paul Bremer runs Iraq like a viceroy, imposing a flat tax and refusing to give Ali Sistani a voice in forming the new government, he alienated a lot of people.  It was our shutting out democratic voices and processes that led to our troubles, not too much democracy.

You are wrong that neoconservative policy disregards cultural differences between regions.  The necon vision for democracy is necessarily broad.  No American would spend an election cycle in Turkey and consider it a real democracy, yet it is a model for our transformation of Iraq.  While neoconservatives do emphasize the universal nature of human desires for freedom, they are only saying what is obvioulsy true.  It is their opponents who disregard the similiarities between cultural traditions.

You are wrong that there is a broad public rejection of neoconservative foreign policy.  Those that believe Iraq is part of the war on terror support it, and those who do no believe Iraq is part of the war on terror oppose it.  An exit poll question that asks if your highest priority issue is Iraq or terrorism produces a self selected sample.  Almost all Iraq war supporters will say terrorism, since to them iraq is part of that equation, and almost all anti-war voters will say "Iraq" because to them, it was a distraction from the war.  This self selected sample of ant war voters cannot be used to substantiate a borad based opposition to neoconservative principles.


Clash of Civilization theory gives us a good paradigm for udnerstanding certain aspects of globalization and the culture clashes that go with it, but it fails to explain certain things and leads to conclusions that are not always wise (Like hi anti-immigrant posture).  He assumes that people are genetically wired to act a certain way, although he doesn't say it that explicitly, and that they will be in inevitable conflict with each other.  He is wrong.

John,

Sorry to not reply for a long time.  The reason why Afghanistan worked was that native forces largely run the country (the warlords) whereas in Iraq there were no native structures to take over. Therefore Afghanistan's situation is far less "imperialistic" than the Iraq situation. However the problem in Afghanistan is very different from that in Iraq... it involves not local resistance but lack of U.S. political will. While the country has been pacified, it has not really been built as a country by the U.S... It is still controlled by warlords, and Hamid Karzai has extremely limited power. In this case, while violence remains muted (positive), no new nation has really been constructed, thus the possibility of problems in the future remain high.

I do not think that it is impossible to have democracy in most societies... most cultures though diverse can thrive as democracies. But I feel the neoconservatives are ignoring the fact that the Arab world has a civilizational (religious, historic, ethnic, linguistic) identity that must assert itself independently of U.S. nation-building. The best way for us to proceed from here on out would be to allow the native leaders who seem to believe in democracy such as Al Sistani to gain more strength and ally ourselves with him, not Allawi, who is seen as too Westernized. Perhaps after the Jan 30 elections if they proceed successfully (a big if) what eventually will happen is that the US should consolidate its alliance with the sh**ttes and Kurds and thus the stability of Southern Iraq, and seek to reach an 'accord' with Northern Iraq, and eventually pull out of the country leaving a kind of agreement between Iraq's three regions within the constitution that gives each certain protections that they are satisfied with. This is the best case scenario in my view, however it is merely a dim possibility and even if achieved would leave open a high chance of civil war.

The polls on whether the war in Iraq was worth it shows a gradual downward trend in the percentage saying it was worth it. 
In the America of 2005 the neocons' stock has already plummetted from its peak in April 2003. Their first failure was the failure to find WMD. This is not to say they will 100% fail, but I think it is more likely than not they will.

Clash of civilizations theory works in my mind mostly as "a good point"-- a factor but not a complete paradigm. It explains only one out of many factors in international relations. Its importance depends mostly on that which societies place on it--- Arabic societies recently have placed a lot of stock on it. Japan, for example, less so. Personally I am a realist. My ideology in IR is not to have an ideology. Do what works best, and try to be humane.

Supersoulty,

Huntington should talk more about how these understandings can be reached. It seems to me that if one buys into his view of the world, its one that divides us up into 'teams' without seemingly a larger development context within which to place these 'civilizations', making it a similiar International Relations structure to nationalism, and thus is a recipe for eventual conflict--after all he titles his work with 'clash' though I have only read his 1993 essay (where he mentions mutual understanding only in virtually the last sentence) not his later book.

[Beet]

Centainly, parts of his theory are evident in the modern world.  Look at the situation in tha Balkans.  Both sides were supported by other countries of their cultural groups inspite of lack of any national interest for countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and even the PLO.  This, might have something to do with the Islamic concept of the ummah then again, that doesn't explain Russian involvement in the crisis.

Similarly, we have the creation of a fault-line in the Ukraine, which Huntington predicted.  Orthodoxy is the primary civilization of Eastern Ukraine and Westernism is the primary civilization of East Ukraine.  Both sides are battling hard to pull the country into its shpere of influence and the are clear cut civilizational differences within the country.

True, but all of these things could be explained in other ways--

Muslim countries perhaps supported the Bosnian muslims due to religious affinity rather than some kind of civilizational bind. If civilizationalism was the explaination, the Turks, not the Saudis or PLO, should have been the biggest supporters of the Bosnian muslims. After all it was their imperialism in the region that created the muslim community there, and it was their medieval bridge that was blasted away.

It certainly doesn't explain the U.S.'s intervention on behalf of the Bosnian muslims.

The Russians were motivated perhaps by geopolitical interest. The expansion of NATO influence in Europe was a big concern at that time for the Yeltsin government, and the Russians didn't want to see that happen any more than it already had, so they had to assert some kind of involvement.

The Ukrainian divide I think is more convincing for the civilizationalist, though it seems to indicate some fluidity in the "borders" of civilizations depending on the issues. Correct me if I'm wrong but Eastern Orthodoxy and Slavic culture reaches much further into Europe than just Eastern Ukraine. The recent efforts of nations such as Poland and Hungary to "join" the West perhaps have actually moved them out of the Slavic "civilization" and into the European one. Which brings up the separate issue of whether the US and Western Europe should be considered in the same "civilization".

Anyways, the neocons can't be heartened by recent polls:

According to Fox News Bush's approval on the Iraq war is 44 / 51, according to CNN/Gallup it is 42 / 56. Meanwhile his overall approval rating is 52 / 44 and 52 / 41 respectively. This suggests Bush's overall approval rating is being dragged down by Iraq, as some who don't approve might approve if not for Iraq, and, most troubling for the neocons, that some who say they approve of his handling of Iraq might be saying so merely out of loyalty for Bush overall.

This seems to vindicate my earlier point that the people's endorsement of Bush as a candidate does not translate into approval of neocon policies... yet the re-election of Bush is currently hiding (to some extent) a backlash to neocon policies that will probably explode into the mainstream within 3-4 years at the latest unless the situation changes drastically in Iraq. 

[The Duke]

Beet,

Go to the Weekly Standard's website and tell me that Bush is listening to the neocons.  There may be an association in the public's mind between the war and neoconservatives, but in reality this is not a neocon policy or a neocon advisory team.  Agreement only existed on broad policy questions, so the association is far from fair or accurate.

[Beet]

Beet,
Go to the Weekly Standard's website and tell me that Bush is listening to the neocons.  There may be an association in the public's mind between the war and neoconservatives, but in reality this is not a neocon policy or a neocon advisory team.  Agreement only existed on broad policy questions, so the association is far from fair or accurate.

If the until-recently coherent movement has growing disagreements, this is a consequence of the difficult situation in Iraq and the already faltering neoconservative influence within the Bush administration, not a cause of it.

Edit: With regard to the topic of this thread, civilizationalism is the sleeping giant in U.S. intellectual circles. Clash of Civilizations theory provides a perfect explanation lying in wait for the questions and recriminations that come from failure in Iraq, just as neoconservative theory was catapaulted into national policy by 9/11.

I am not saying the situation does not get better... it is often when the pundits of doom and gloom become the most confident in making predictions that you know the bottom has been reached. But the chances now of turnaround are something like 1 in 5.

[The Duke]

There is no new developement of division, it was always there.  The adminstration's foreign policy was/is dominated by Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Powell, none of whom are neocons.

Neoconservatives believe in large militaries, nation building, rejecting international institutions, and the INC.

Rumsfeld sent an intentionally small force.

No serious nation building effort is taking place, only bare bones efforts.

We spent 7 months working through the UN.

Chalabi and the INC have been targets of Bremer & Co. since day one, including insubstantiated criminal charges.

You may not agree with neoconservatives, but stop pretendeding that anyone listened to us on how to run the occupation.

[phk]

Rumsfeld's strategy, military strategy is he wants to keep a lean and mean force.

Whereas the neo-conservative folks at PNAC want a massive increase in troop levels and they want a long-planned occupation, in hopes of somehow building a model to bring a region of the world still-mired in the dark ages, into the light of the Western World.

You can't conduct nation-building operations with a lean military force, which is designed for fighting foreign armies but isn't quite suitable to occupy a country. (Notes in the margin: Iraq; perhaps Rumsfeld is 'against' nation-building which is why he prefers that 'lean-mean' force).

My suspicion is that Rumsfeld opposes the idea of sending more troops a lot, and that he's been the prime obstacle (other than the fact that there ain't that many more troops to send) to putting more boots on the ground in Iraq. He wants a small, quick, efficient military because it's an efficient killing machine.

Now we see these two strategies collide, and we see friction between Rumsfeld and the neo-cons, which is why Kristol (prominent neo-con) wrote that nasty bit on him in the Washington Post.

You can generally get a pretty good sense of the internal politics of Republican Washington by looking at who the neocons are attacking. Richard Clarke, Colin Powell and now Rumsfeld have all been the target of the neocon hit machine. Because they threatened to undermine support within and without the administration for the neocon project.

Rumsfeld wants out of Iraq, and the neocons are scared to death that he'll succeed

[12th Doctor]

Beet's comments are, unfortunatly, typical of average thinking about neo-conservativism.  I am currently reading a book called "The Neocon Reader" which acctually is the best explanation of neocon beliefs.  As John Ford said, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell are not neocons.  If they were, then the days leading up to the war would have been far different and the plan of attack and occupation would have beared little resemblence to the current policy.

Neoconservatism gets a bad rap, because it is used as a lable for everything that both Liberals and Conservatives don't like.