Samuel Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order

Samuel P. Huntington is a conservative Harvard professor, who can be considered the foremost type of armchair theorist. He usually formulated enormous, greatly simplified theories suitable for the political and social demands of the time, offering easy application to the use of popular world politics for US decision-makers and especially for the media. Before “civilization”, it created, for example, the theory of the “wave of democratization”, which gradually led to the acceptance of a more universal liberal democracy. This kind of ability for academic opinion leadership that Huntington possesses certainly cannot but be admired. However, for the same reason, his theory held grave dangers. By making the logic simplified, eagerly cutting corners on real-world involvement in conclusions,

The original context for the emergence of Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” was to respond to the world’s political need for a “new world order,” which should have been different from the ideological bipolarity of the Cold War. His article, which composed a theory of civilization, was published in “Foreign Affairs” in 1993, and immediately caused a global stir. Before long, the number of debates and responses for and against Huntington outnumbered those raised by the most-discussed article in “Foreign Affairs” — George Kennan’s Moscow report, published under the name “X”, which formulated the basic conception for Detention Policy. Huntington consciously sought to replace the previous paradigm, based on Kennan’s observations, which was gradually overridden by the emergence of George Bush Sr.’s “New World Order” doctrine. The most important political imperative behind Huntington’s theory of civilization is the need for US policymakers to declare Russia a friend or at least a secondary rival, while the new “evil empire” is, within the realm of “civilization,” in the divided Islamic world.

According to Huntington’s arrogance, who stated thus: “The ideological struggle, which once divided the world into two camps, ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and new interpretations and explanations began to emerge, looking for events in the world. ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ is the most important result of this work. … ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ describes the essential features of each culture, finds out how its influence grows in its environment, and recounts the kinds of controversies and consequences our own culture will face with it.’ The Clash of Civilizations “describes regional conflicts, controversies surrounding the state of the core culture, and the development trends of global phenomena. This work has been considered important in explaining the Iraq War and its aftermath.

The almost dogmatically faithful belief about the power of Huntington’s theory explaining all that is revealed in the back cover text of the Finnish publisher is quite convincing evidence of the same problem in which Huntington’s theory also concerns itself. Based largely on vague impressions, Huntington and his followers think they can somehow “explain” world politics as a whole and all specific and current phenomena. Behind it all, there are fundamental differences from “culture” (ie the major world religions), and moreover, “different values”. Especially Islam is a threat. Also, China is a threat. Russia, however, isn’t. It’s about the core message, to which Huntington’s theory can be reduced.

The monumental success of Huntington’s work is based on the idea that it is supposed to express out loud and to formulate certain taboos — “known to all” — about the differences between Western culture and “other people”, and especially about the West’s relations with the Islamic world. The general attitude to Huntington’s theory of civilization occurs through identification. His opponents see him as a prejudiced and even racist right-wing, who only recreates the myth that legitimizes Western imperialism. His supporters, on the other hand, consider him to say something of great value, which is muted by “politically correct” discussants. To the typical proponents of Huntington’s theory, the harsh criticism of Huntington is simply hippies, postmodernists, and relativists, who either do not understand or do not want to accept the fundamental difference between “us” and “other.” In fact, both approaches tend to mislead the entire discourse around the theory of civilization.

Of course, the roots of Huntington’s theory go further back than the end of the Cold War by the West. In fact, Huntington represents a return to classical geopolitical teachings and race theory of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth century. In Huntington, however, the state organism was replaced by “civilization” with its core state and areas of interest, and the race was replaced by “culture.” Its world-political recommendations and values ​​are characterized by the same kind of interest in the territorial space of the empire, a multipolar world divided between areas of great power interest, and aggressive alliances of the kind represented by the “Holy Alliance”.

Like previous political theorists who were preoccupied with the quest to maintain racial purity, too, Huntington seems to feel an inherent dislike of borders, cultural meeting and meeting points, their mix, and interaction. He wanted to securely fence off “civilization” on their own territory, and establish clear boundaries for their areas of interest — although with the extraordinary exception that Russia would have the extraordinary right to conquer the southern buffer zone made up of Muslim territory.

The clear difference, however, between Huntington and his European predecessors in the 1800s and early 1900s, is that Huntington did not include anti-Jewish elements in his theory. On the other hand, is a very American way, he need not explain why he regards the Judeo-Christian world as one West, while Islam is rejected in the “East.” In Huntington’s Islamophobic narrative there is no place for acknowledgment of the historical fact that anti-Semitism is primarily a Christian-originating phenomenon, whereas in Islam there was no antipathy to Judaism until 20 years, as a reaction to Zionism as well as imported loans from European ideology. Also, oddly Huntington’s disdain for all forms of Islam, despite his favorable attitude towards Israel, Huntington has no understanding of Turkey or the Westernization and modernization of Turkey. Instead, he publicly explained his hope that the Islamists (from Necmettin Erbakan) would win in Turkey so that the country could clearly be ostracized from the West to the “other” Islam. In Huntington’s model, any attempt by Turkey or Russia — as well as Romania, Bulgaria, or Greece — to cultivate Western democracy and values ​​is doomed to fail.

Huntington uses a method of listing the “signs” of our day and from the news, which he then tries to make as if the logic of everything will lie in controversy between religions. Huntington’s proponents seem to think that the theory of civilization will be very useful for clarifying the “complex” conflicts in the Balkans and the Caucasus. However, it is precisely in this region that Huntington has strayed the most, and the explanatory power of his theory points to its worst flaws.

In addition, the theorist who paints a picture of the “fringes” of the world with an extremely naughty brush from his distant armchair, makes dozens of rather embarrassing factual errors that are too much for the dignity of the work and the author. For example, Huntington claims that Moldovans are Slavs, Kazakhstan and Bosnians are Orthodox and Sri Lanka is Hindu, and that “the Georgians decided” to allow Russian military bases in Georgia for the eternity to come. The number of errors and ignorant interpretations suggests that Huntington cannot compete in the same category of knowledge-based strategic analysis with, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose work “The Grand Chessboard” (1996) also deserves a Finnish translation,

Perhaps the error of “details” does not bother such Western readers, who are mostly interested in the outline of the theory, and who do not know, and are not particularly interested in knowing, the many “small” countries of Eastern Europe or Eurasia. So Huntington should be read primarily as a theoretical idea that awakens the mind. But even in this sense, “The Clash of Civilizations” is not without problems. Initially, Huntington’s main thesis was based on the idea that “cultural similarities and differences shape the interests of nations, their antagonisms, and alliances.” In this sense, Huntington basically took abstractions such as “political culture” and “the idea of ​​the state” from what he called “civilization,” which for Huntington meant the same thing as religion.

In Huntington’s thinking, we have to assume that the antagonism will deepen, the more distinct the “civilization” will be. Then why didn’t the world split up so that theologically very similar “People of the Book” — Christian, Muslim, and Jewish — would form one block? Why does the Huntington model view Islam as the most Western-opposing civilization, even though it is culturally closest to the West when Huntington feels no particular antipathy to polytheist Hinduism or pantheistic Buddhism? Wouldn’t it make more sense to derive the antagonisms now associated with “civilization” than from geographic location, competition for resources, history of war and imperial expansion, and the myths that constitute collective identification?

Huntington’s second major thesis is that the more dangerous the conflict, the more different civilizations are represented by the warring parties. This thesis is also not supported by history. Most of the worst and most prolonged conflicts have occurred between very close neighbors. The bloodiest religious wars have occurred within Christianity and Islam, not between them, and in border areas such as the Balkans, Caucasus, and Kashmir, the “cultural” differences between people representing different concessions are often highly questionable, while syncretism is common.

Huntington’s third key principle is that the allegiance and support of nations to one another, as well as their mutual enmity, are determined by their civilization. Huntington defends this thesis by making reference to, among other things, the Balkan and Caucasus conflicts. Yet the same conflict is strong evidence of the erratic logic of Huntington’s theory. For example in the Karabagh conflict (which Huntington superficially uses as an example), Monophysical Armenia is supported by Orthodox Russia, a radical Shiite Iranian, while predominantly secular Shiite Azerbaijan is supported by secular Sunni Turks and Georgian Orthodox. Russia supports a historically Muslim Abkhaz uprising against Georgia, while Georgia shows sympathy for the Chechen Muslim independence struggle. In Bosnia, Catholic Croats and Bosniak Muslims ended up fighting together against Orthodox Serbs, and the predominantly Sufi (Muslim) Kosovar Liberation Army was supported by Catholic Albanians as well. What is relevant is that in all these conflicts the patterns of loyalty and hostility are shaped more by geopolitics, history, ethnicity (language), and the practical Brzezinskian game of chess than by religion.

Finally, Huntington’s causal assumption that “culture” will indeed explain state political behavior and motivations is dubious. Huntington firmly believes that “Islamic culture explains the failure of democracy in much of the Islamic world.” Moreover, he does not believe Muslim Westernization has in no way changed the primordial tendencies of “Islamic culture”: “Somewhere in the Middle East, half a dozen young men can wear jeans, drink coke, listen to rap, and in between bows them in Mecca. , setting up a bomb to blow up an American plane “.

Huntington’s divisions of “civilization” are not established scientifically, historically, or even in an elegant way. In contrast, Huntington is primarily concerned with the US global political position, where he wants to turn Russia’s old enemy into a threat made by Islam and China. The rest of the world has largely been brought in to have a running section. For example, the civilizations “Africa”, “Japan”, and “Latin America” ​​are not described in religious terms. It is said that the widespread attention that Huntington has enjoyed has overwhelmed more talented historians, who have studied the theme of civilization in a more interesting and nuanced way. Among them, especially Felipe Fernández-Armesto who deserves a mention — especially for his work “

What remains is to interpret Huntington’s bestseller as a political pamphlet, an ideological commentary for a time. Interpreted as such, the book has had an effect and is quite well placed. What, then, is the “new world order” that Huntington wants to “recreate”, or rather, to spread? He didn’t hide the answer. Quite the contrary, typical of political pamphlets, they have even been underlined at the end of the book with a list of direct recommendations, aimed at the whole “West”.

First, like Brzezinski, also Huntington wants Western hegemony in the undeniable US leadership. Huntington demands Western unity and maintains military superiority in the face of the “threats” it faces, in the name of “Western cultural continuity.” Huntington wants the EU and NATO to include all Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe, while all Orthodox countries (including Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece) he wants to push under Russian rule.

Islam and China are the main scourges of Huntington’s world view, and he, therefore, demands to limit their development and increase their military capacity. On the contrary, he wanted to allow Russia to have a privileged position, and to gain power that included not only all Orthodox countries but also “a cordon made of the weak Muslim countries of the south.” Conquering such a buffer zone is seen by Huntington as “Russia’s legitimate security interest on its southern flank.” Huntington also shows interesting selective amnesia on his maps. In the Islamic world, he carefully included even Northern Nigeria and Mindanao, but Kazakhstan, Bosnia, North Caucasus, Volga and Crimea Tatars, East Turkestan (Sinkiang), and even Kashmir have been completely excluded from the Islamic world, let alone a very Muslim population. large throughout India and China. But he didn’t forget to separate Tibet from China into Buddhist civilization.

Although Huntington wanted to maintain Western preeminence and US leadership, he was an isolationist, demanding that the United States refrain from all intervening in “other areas of civilization.” According to Huntington, every civilization must have one core state, stronger than the others, which will then maintain order and discipline within the “civilization”. Interestingly, this does not apply to the Islamic world which according to Huntington does not have a suitable core state. Maybe because this Huntington will allow Russia to maintain discipline also in Muslim countries?

Huntington breeds towards a multipolar world, which would practically be divided into “core state” domination areas, with the special exception of extra-large Russian territories. In practice, the world will be divided into areas of interests of the US, Russia, and China. This is very reminiscent of not only the constructions of the geopolitics of the early 1900s (e.g. Karl Haushofer), but also those presented after the Cold War by Russian geopolitics, ranging from somewhat more restricted expressions to nude representations of Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Gennady Zyuganov, where the US forced to live outside the Atlantic, while Europe got Africa, China got Southeast Asia, and Russia controlled much of the Islamic world, including Turkey, Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. After all,

Like any other paradigm that serves as a justification for political gain, Huntington’s theory of civilization is certainly a welcome source of quotes by various interest groups, such as Islamophobic and anti-immigration activists, and those who want Russia to retain the status of a special superpower in a changing world too. Apart from the Western hegemonic ethos of Huntington’s work, it has also been used for anti-American purposes, for example as justification for criticism aimed at Western support for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation, against intervention in the Balkans. and Somalia, and fighting the war in Iraq.