Samuel Huntington’s 1993 essay, The Clash of Civilizations, is often cited as the current paradigm through which to view international politics especially the so called clash with Islam. Huntington’s article was an attempt to provide a framework by which to understand and anticipate post Cold-War conflict. While the idea of a clash of civilizations seems to be self evident on a cursory examination, the idea that there is a “clash of civilizations” starts to falter upon a closer inspection. The flaws in Huntington’s original conception show the concept to have no utility is describing current patters of conflict.
The Clash of the Civilizations would occur as Western military and economic power grew. There would be resistance to the spread of Western ideals from the other civilizations. Western concepts (such as democracy, liberalism, human rights and liberty for example) to be fundamentally different from the values held by the other civilizations. Efforts to promote such ideals would be met with strong resistance as they would encroach on cultural identity. Huntington also regarded the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations as an enduring and obvious flash point for future conflict.
Huntington’s concept of civilizations is the fulcrum on which his thesis rests. Huntington claimed that:
the great division among humankind and dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nations states will remain the most powerful actors on world affairs, but the principle conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.
Huntington regards civilizations as the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest shared cultural identity. A civilization can be large of small and in itself feature subcivilizations. While civilizations may have blurred edges, the lines between civilizations exist . Huntington identified eight major civilizations; Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and African. The differences between these civilizations represent the fault lines where conflict will occur.
There has been strong criticism in regards to whether Huntington’s definition of civilizations has any merit. Edward Said criticized Huntington’s concept of civilizations as as being
shut down, sealed off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and counter currents that animate human history
In the academic world a paper by Jack Matlock delves deeper in Huntington’s concept of civilization and finds a number of issues. Firstly is the idea that civilizations possess a high degree of coherence within is “ill-founded.� Huntington mistakenly assumes that the many, differing components that comprise a civilization combine into an independent, coherent entity. Secondly, Huntington also assumes that because civilizations are referred to as the “broadest level of cultural identity� this translates to an intensity of loyalty. The evidence is provided by Huntington for this argument is sparse at best. The third mistaken assumption by Huntington is that cultures are differentiating. Given the expansion of globalization and the ease of information sharing via the Internet no culture is immune from outside influences.
Huntington regarded the Balkans conflict as an example of civilizations clashing. Matlock however argues that the Bosnian conflict was founded in geopolitics and ideology. While the intervention of some countries did follow civilizational lines, the reason the break-up of Yugoslavia was allowed because geopolitically it was of little interest after the Cold War. Matlock concludes that the faults that are at the basis of Huntington’s concept of civilizations, make any utility that the concept may have questionable. The idea of a civilization as a mental construct to assist in a field of study is one thing. But to regard that construct as an objective entity is problematic. Huntington’s notion of civilizations as a distraction from the states, movements, alliances that make up the world and influences such as geography and economic/military strength which may determine interaction on the world stage.
While Huntington’s concept of civilizations maybe a flawed construct, taking the charitable assumption that the concept that some utility does allow Huntington’s thesis to be tested and Russett, O’neal and Cox put Huntington’s idea to the test. Russet et al grouped states as best they can per Hungtinton’s eight civilizations. Focusing on interstate conflict, they tested the hypothesis that by firstly examining the likelihood that a pair of states would become involved in a military dispute due to civilizational differences. Secondly they added key variables from realism – bilateral balance of power and whether states are allied. Thirdly, variables from liberalism such as shared democracy and economic independence were added. It is not just Huntington’s idea that was tested but whether realist or liberal ideas could just as adequately explain the conflicts.
The conclusion of Russett et al is that differences in civilizations are not an indicator of whether two states would come into military conflict. The realist and liberal variables used in their analysis, which measure military, political and economic interests, provide a better framework to understand conflict. Even when allowing for the utility of Huntington’s idea of civilizations, it does not provide any better means of understanding international conflict.
As Russet et al mainly used data from the Cold War era to test their hypothesis; Huntington asked them to ‘try again.â€? Huntington claimed that as his thesis deals with the post Cold War era Russet et al’s conclusions are invalid. However as Henderson points out, if Huntington constructed his argument from empirical observations then others should also be able to unravel the empirical relationships from the same era. Henderson goes further to say that if
one closely analyses the causal logic of Huntington’s argument it becomes clear that his thesis is not only applicable to the post-Cold War era but to a much longer historical domain.
One of the “longer historical domains� is the apparent enmity between Islam and the West. Conflict between Western and Islamic civilizations has been ongoing for 1300 years. Perceived conflict between the West and Islam is held as an exemplar of Huntington’s ideas. The Western values of democracy and freedom are supposedly antithetical to non-Western civilizations. However Inglehart and Norris decided to test the extent of the cultural divide between the West and Islam. They confirmed Huntington’s claim that culture does matter. Religious traditions have a heavy hand in influencing contemporary values. However, it is not political values that seems to be at the core of an clash between the West and Islam but concerns matters of gender and sexual equality. Inglehart and Norris point to data that the idea of democracy has a very positive reception in Islamic countries. However when attitudes towards issues such as abortion, homosexuality and gender equality are considered then there is a considerable gap between the Western and Islamic nations in acceptance and tolerance. However a modernization via economic development takes place in a society, it is accompanied by a shift towards greater gender equality. ‘Culture does not have to be destiny.’
It is worth pointing out that some conservative commentators and Christian fundamentalist have similar views in regards to acceptance of gender and sexual equality as certain elements of Islam. The cultural chasm is not as wide as it appears.
Huntington’s thesis gained new converts in the reaction to the 911 terrorist attacks. The Huntington post- September 11 view is that US culture, representing the West, is superior and that it is a moral battle to defend Western values. Those using Huntington as a framework for understanding the September 11 attacks, commit to the same flaws discussed earlier. Civilizations are not monolithic or static entities and Al Qaeda should not be representative of the Islamic civilization.
Huntington tried to defend his concept in “If Not Civilizations, What?â€?. The basis of Huntington’s argument, after Kuhn, is that unless another paradigm can be formulated to replace the idea of a clash of the civilizations then the reigning paradigm is still valid. This case of special pleading rests on that the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ has been accepted as only paradigm in town. Just because a idea has popular currency it doesn’t mean it is correct nor the only explanation.
Hungtington’s thesis is built on faulty premises and outmoded Cold-War idealogy. Even assuming that the idea of the clash of civilizations has some value, plugging the figures in yields not real empirical evidence. Realist and liberal concepts just as adequately explain intercivilizational conflict as does geography and military/economic strengths between states. The idea that “freedom and democracyâ€? is part of the clash and a threat to the ‘values’ of other civilizations is not borne out by the data.
The shorter refutation of Huntington is that culture is not destiny.
It’s always amused me that both G. W. Bush and Bin Laden repeatedly paraphrase Huntington.
And of course if you scratch Huntington, Bernard Lewis is just beneath the surface.
Haven’t read Huntingdon. However, the successful assimilation of the vast majority of Muslims here into Australian culture, and their delighted adoption of real Australian values, not the ones JWH espouses, seems to argue against it. Its a bit like the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland recognising the Troubles were based on bullshit, once they settled here.
Shaun Cronin says:
Huntington was onto something, in that he was correct to direct his primary focus on cultural, rather than political, conflicts. There is a sense in which civilizational clashes are a globalisation of some aspects of the Culture War: culture shock.
But he misframed the conflict. The Clash is within, not between, Civilizations. And the civilizations are not defined by race or religion. They are defined by region, specifically the conflict between urbane cities and the “rural idiocy” of country life.
Terrorism springs from the clash between civic and ethnic cultures that accompanies the passage of peoples through modernity. It tends to flare up when there is a clash between as people with a pre-modern retro-tribal background move into cities with a post-modern proto-global foreground.
Huntington’s theory actually implies a rejection of the Cold War ideological dichotomy. He is saying that political clashes will tend to have an ethnological, rather than ideological, slant. He is surely right about that. Islamism is to lagging political cultures as Bolshevism was to lagging economic classes.
Regional disparities are brought into sharp focus with globalisation of professional economy and multiculturalisation of personal society.
Religion is not the primary issue. There are millions of nice Muslims living in the cities.
Normally the culture clash is moderated by the development of modern metro-nationalist states that encourages all citizens into civic integration. But the less-developed regions are badly lagging the more developed ones in both economy and polity. Particularly in SW Asia, for long, complicated reasons to do with imperialism and deficient state formation.
In short, the immigrating youths suffer culture shock. They get alienated rather than assimilated and strike out in xenophobic fashion.
Most of the Italian Red Brigades had a Catholic upbringing like Pope Paul VI. But they came from primitive tribalistic regions of Southern Italy. Same deal with the Shiites from Southern Lebanon.
One question that has always bugged me: Why do the Southern regions always tend to lag the Northern ones?
Nations states will remain the most powerful actors on world affairs, but the principle conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.
And that’s where Huntington’s thesis falls down - at the second hurdle. Most mayhem today results from the collapse of weak states, not from warfare between strong states. Look at Rwanda, the Congo or Sudan. All of the agents in each conflict are from the same “civilization”, but that doesn’t stop them killing each other in hundreds of thousands - or in the Congo’s case, millions.
Sam Huntington is a poor taxonomist of countries. For example, there is little justification for separating out Latin America from the “West”; the first is clearly part of the second. I suspect he did it so he could put all the poor countries in another “civilization”, and feel better about himself.
Well, the Romans had a huge civilisation - the word itself is Latin. They never wiped out all local influences in the disparate parts of their empire, and in fact, in at least some instances the local itself eventually became Roman - see the widespread cult of Isis and early Christianity. It’s “clash” with its border civilisations - the Parthians to the east, the Dacians and German tribes to their north (if you can call the Germans at the times “civilised”) eventually led to the conditions of its downfall through the stretching of its resources at far-flung borders. Over-ambition (especially on the part of the so-called “Optimus Princeps” Trajan) was the problem, not any fundamental difference with its enemies (although there were in fact, actual fundamental differences). One should also remember that the conquering Ostrogoths became even more Roman than the official “Romans” of the Eastern Empire who eventually defeated them. *
Looking at this example from history, I don’t see any possibility how Huntington’s thesis is in fact general.
* This actual institution it has to be remembered was the one finally defeated by the “Islamists” in 1453.
On the topic of Islamic civilisations backwardness viz. sheilas (wogs?) and pooftas — uh, exactly when was homosexuality decriminalised in most Western Countries? It wasn’t all that long ago was it? Legalised rape within marriage, again was acceptable until very recently. Blue laws, dry counties, the six’o'clock swill, anyone? The Uber-Western Swiss didn’t deign to let women vote until a good fifty years after the rest of the continent and some US states still criminalise sex toys.
This isn’t to say that Saudi Arabian and Iranian practicises towards gays and women aren’t barbaric; what people like Huntington call ‘the West’s record is much more mixed than they’d like to admit, and this wonderful ‘Englightened’ secular tolerant society didn’t get started until much later. And, funnily enough, many of the people who champion ‘the West’ and it’s values seem to think these latest changes are where it all started going downhill.
Terrific post Shaun. Thanks for pointing to that Article by Huntington mentioned here:
Huntington thereby disqualified himself from being regarded as a logical thinker.
Some questions:
Who raises taxes?
Who levied armies?
Who signs trade deals?
Who polices boycotts and embargoes?
Who declares war?
Who formulates terms of surrender?
Nation states do all of these things.
Civilisations do none of these things.
The intersections between nation state decisions and actions and their supposed civilisational roots are so vague and contradictory it is an exercise in trivia to attempt to tease them out.
Strocchi is closer to the mark. Occasionally, civilisational issues crop up within existing polities. Civil wars and cultural revolutions are the possible, thoug not necessay, products of those issues.
Huntington’s theory has a lot of problems, but if you think realism’s perfect you need to look again.
Huntington was also right about a lot of things. In particular, he was right in pointing out that the Western culture would not expand unchallenged merely because the Soviet Union collapsed. He also correctly predicted that the major international tensions of the modern era would occur along cultural boundaries.
Obviously cultural differences aren’t the sole causes of these conflicts. But even assuming cultural difference don’t bring about these conflicts, they do complicate them - especially when one culture is trying to convert the other. Conflicts are just so much harder to resolve when the opposition can be characterized as (and often is) so fundamentally different.
Huntington’s fundamental normative point (which often seemed to be ignored in efforts to debate the descriptive validity of his theory) is that it is important for us to devote more attention to ameliorating cultural tensions. Who thinks he’s wrong?
Another way of looking at this ‘clash of civilizations’ would be to borrow some mega-historical perspectives. As David Christian argues in his world history Maps of Time developments in human societies tend to begin in certain place and eminate outwards from them. The next developmental leap will often occur on the fringes of the centre that bore the previous leap. Hence ‘civilization’ in the west begins with city-states in Sumer the result of trading intersections between farmers to the north and fishing communities around the Persian gulf. From there developmental leaps occur from centres previously periferral. The Western story goes something like this: Sumer, Akkadian empire; Babylonian empire/Egyptian empire; Minoan culture; Mycenean culture/Persia; classical Greece; Rome; Caroligian France/Muslim Caliphate; Great Britain; America and the New World.
Leaps can also occcur in previously civilized areas that have been ‘wiped clean’ politically speaking as in the case of the Muslim caliphate that gave rise to Islam’s golden age (ca 800-1200 CE). The process outlined above could be called ‘Easternization’ because the waves of change started in the East and moved West.
With the rise of a truly global economy and the last developmental leap (from the European renaissance thru the Enlightenment to the modern era) the world is finally being sewed up. The developmental wave that eminates from the West is not ‘Westernization’ so much as modernization. I say this because traditionally European societies bore more resemblance to Islamic societies than they do to their modern descendants. Throughout the world there is a resistance to the transformative power of this leap. This is true of, say, Korea and Japan, as well as Islamic nations. It is also true of religious fundamentalists in Western society Christian, Jewish and otherwise.
The model I believe is fundamentally sound although it does get clouded by the theocratic underpinnings of the Abrahamic faiths particularly Judaism and Islam. Christianity has the benfit of its founder’s implied division of Church and State (render unto Caeser etc). It is also complicated by neo-imperialist strategems by the UK and USA which encourage the notion that modernization is a cultural imperialism of some sort.
The resistance to modern views of gender, sexuality etc are fundamentally a resistance to basic aspects of liberal society. European cultures and their descendants have taken centuries to arrive at their modern state. It is reasonable to expect that societies still bound by traditions pertinent to Agragrian Patriarchies will take time so developing. Given that such cultures alos have the vantage point of seeing actual modern liberal socieites function (with the ’sloppiness’ attendant to democracies) it hardly surprising that those who have the most to lose should be organizing to stop the change dead where it stands or at least moderate its import so that only the ‘good bits’ (ie getting rich) are admitted.
In short, the immigrating youths suffer culture shock. They get alienated rather than assimilated and strike out in xenophobic fashion.
You don’t think there’s a teensy-weensy element of the Anglo (and even not so Anglo) Australians striking out at them in xenophobic fashion?
And Max Weber.
Oh yeah, true, MH, but he ignores another century of post-Weberian scholarship.
1991 in Queensland.
Ps - thanks for the post, Shaun!
Helen on 8 September 2007 at 3:04 pm
Sure. A perverse form of Newtonian physics operates at the cultural level. For every cultural revolution there is an opposite cultural reaction.
If you incite ethnic identity politics amongst the minorities it is not surprising that the majority starts to practice the same vice. Thus we get Cronulla.
The obvious solution is to discourage ethnic identity politics for all and sundry. In practice this requires a policy of national civic integration.
It is possible for pre-modern multicultural tribes to co-exist, so long as they stick to their own ethnno traditions and their own turf. The tribal elders tend to hold unruly youth into check.
It is also possible for sub-cultural groups to co-exist without too much trouble eg hippies, punks, mods, rockers, train spotter etc. These formations generally represent a stage that most young people go through before they become older, boring and prone to conservative commentary.
The trouble starts when you add to the multicultural mix a variety of post-modern sub-cultural gangstas, mindlessly following techno fashions. The tribal elders lose their traditional authority. But the youth do not recognise any new authority, save the charismatic variety (eg Bin Laden).
(Yes, Max Weber knew a thing or two about culturally triggered social formation and transformation. TO the extent that Huntington follows Weber he is on the right track.)
My theory predicts that terrorism or youth gang violence will be most likely develop in a “failing state” which has entrenched ethno traditions but is being swept by techno fashions. I am eager to invite empirical criticism and other tests of its validity.
I thought by now we’d all be pretty darn leery of any sort of generalized skeleton-key to all of history. Personally I think, if we have to have giant oversimplified theories of stuff, then ibn Khaldun’s is still one of the earliest and sturdiest, although naturally he gets it quite wrong in his final conclusions. Still, it was a well-known idiot of much more recent vintage who informed us that,
“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of… oh, wait, I’m a bloody retard, aren’t I.”
Nevertheless, just because a key doesn’t fit every single lock known to man, doesn’t mean it won’t fit a few, or at least one. Just because Huntington’s theory can’t explain what I had for dinner, doesn’t mean his thought can’t be useful in lighting up at least a small part of the night sky.
Shaun, I think your critique of Huntington is somewhat as strait-jacketed as H.’s original theory, but it’ll take me some time to explain why. Hopefully I’ll get back to this later. But for one thing, at least, I think your (and probably his, too, in fairness) conception of what defines ‘clash’ and ‘conflict’ is not only too narrow, it’s quite likely looking in the exact opposite direction from where many of these clashes are mainly active. Too, a lot of your language seems also to unconsciously assume the correctness of your position before you’ve quite finished sketching it out. Which is not to say I think you’re wholly wrong; but then, that would mean Huntington isn’t *entirely* wrong, either.
j_p_z: Khaldun’s great. Aomg other things I seem to recall he argued that intelligence was linked to climate, and that warm-blooded equatorial Arabs and Persians and the like had it over those thicko frozen-bog-dwelling Franks — of course the exact opposite was later argued by ‘Western’ anthropologists to explain the supremacy of the Global North over those slothlike heat-mad equatorial types.
Which shows how useful most of this Clash of Generalisations argumentation is.
Leinad — You know, I’ve only read summations of ibn K., never the original, so I don’t know if the whole brain-temperature-and-intelligence thing was an original thought of his, or if he was only repeating what came to be a widely-held prejudice of the time. I was thinking more about his cyclical theory of societies becoming fat and happy and decadent, and thus easy pickin’s for the energetic savages who show up down the street.
But on the topic of grand schematics of history, it doesn’t hurt to toy with them so long as you realize they won’t yield all, or even necessarily most, of the answers; they can illuminate some difficulties, and maybe even point one towards asking newer and more accurate questions.
For instance, was it Lenin, or was it some other critter, who said that the key questions to history were “Who? Whom?” (viz., ‘Who gets to do what to whom?’) The idea is, or once was, interesting; but I think it rather belongs to its time. I would say that the questions which will probably determine a great deal of the coming century’s history are more like “Whose?” and “How many? How much? How?” (or better than ‘how?’ would be the Latin ‘quomodo?’ i.e., ‘by what method?’).
Yay, Weber and the secularization thesis… gee history has been kind to that one…
Um, remind me pls someone, but wasn’t Huntington from the school of thought that great powers needed a defined enemy to struggle against, and if there wasn’t one ready an enemy should be manufactured?
Of course, Huntington was writing in ‘93…
“If you incite ethnic identity politics amongst the minorities it is not surprising that the majority starts to practice the same vice. Thus we get Cronulla.”
…and the Mujahideen.
The deliberate incitement of political Islam and the conflation of crusade to jihad (both traditions were dormant for centuries)*, were a deliberate policy of the US under both Carter & Reagan… the idea being to create a new ally against the USSR that could hopefully spark a regional movement in the Sov’s southern provinces… oops.
* Has it ever stuck anyone that when you compare historical notions of jihad (outer, of the fist) to modern AQ’ist style notions they bear little resemblance? The modern form is much more like a western style crusade… perhaps reflecting the mindset of those that established it. Of course, another reason may have been that the US hoped “to turn a doctrinal difference inside Islam between minority Shia and majority Sunni into a political divide. It hoped thereby to contain the influence of the Iranian revolution as a minority Shia affair.” (Mamdani 2002)
Blowback anyone?
Tony D on 9 September 2007 at 9:59 am
The End of History is simply a restatement of Weber’s secularisation-rationalisation thesis, adapted to the post-Cold War era. Weber’s shade would be having a quiet self-congratulatory chuckle, looking at the way the PRC and India have shrugged off so much of their retro-gressive ethnological traditions and ideological fahions.
Setting aside the local flare ups in the Civilizational Clash, it is apparent that most people in most places are getting more and more like the homo economicus model. How else do you explain the colossal increase in the scale and scope of financial markets, superannuation plans, investment properties, currency trading etc
Tony D says:
I think that it was Toynbee who first suggested the utility of permanent enmity, with his challenge-response theory of history. It was later taken up by Burnham and then Kennan.
Huntington is a Cold Warrior from the realist school of international relations (ie Hans Morgenthau). This school presumes diverse national interests will always effortlessly produce rivalry and conflict without the need for contrivance.
His Clash of Civilizations notion is just scaling up the national interest to a civilizational interest. I think that he is right to “culturalise” political conflict. But I think his scaling is all wrong. The culture war is all about local regions rather than global civilizations.
Tony D on 9 September 2007 at 10:15 am
Sure. It would not be the first time that the Martial Right and the Multicultural Left marched in political lock-step. Divide and rule enemies both inside and outside the state.
And just as the Martial Right is suffering blowback in South West Asia so the Multicultural Left is suffering blowback in Middle Australia. Hence the lurch to the Cultural Right by mainstream voters.
Tony D says:
No, in fact I think that the current form of jihadism is much more post-modern, rather than pre-modern, in social form. Jihadist gangs remind me of rock bands and art collectives the way they ape the sub-cultures of the sixties and seventies in its DIY, tech-savvy approach.
On a purely tactical level it appears to me that OBL’s latest video missive is designed to be an incitement to Bush to provoke him to maintain or perhaps to ramp up the US military effort in Iraq.
OBL appears to know well what drives Bush. Bush cannot be seen to back down in the face of AQ. Thus, OBL makes grand claims about AQ successes in Iraq. These claims are in fact belied by the record, which reveals AQ in Iraq to be a marginal player in the Shiite/Sunni civil war.
In the short term OBL wants American reception of Petraeus’s report on the progress of the “surge” to be as favourable as possible.
So what does OBL want in the longer term?
It is arguable that OBL is taking a Leninist line on the so-called “War on Terror”. OBL argues that the dismantlement of Sunni Iraq at the hands of Shiite theocrats and with the tacit support of the US will have ultimately good effects for Sunni theocracy. Like Lenin during WWI, OBL wants the situation to deteriorate in order to transform the nature of the struggle throughout the Middle East.
OBL expects the triumph in Iraq of the hated “Persians” (Sunni code for Iran and Shiites interchangeably) will provoke an upsurge in Sunni fundamentalism grafted on to Arab nationalism.
The millions of Sunni refugees in Syria, Jordan and Egypt will become willing enlistees in Sunni Islamism.
The massive movement of refugees out of Iraq into the above-named countries will cause destabilisation of the anti-Islamist regimes.
Sunni Islamism promotes a cause that captures the imagination in Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and further afield.
Tony D: “The deliberate incitement of political Islam and the conflation of crusade to jihad (both traditions were dormant for centuries)*, were a deliberate policy of the US…”
I gotta say, when you’re in the right mood for it, “blame America” is the gift that just keeps on giving. As one-stop-shopping models of convenience go, it’s a popular and durable brand. I’m amazed they don’t sell it at Wal-Mart. Yet.
“jihad (…dormant for centuries)”
Sayyid Qutb, Hasan al-Banna, and Ruhollah Khomeini, you are all hereby excused. You too, 19th-century Sudanese Mahdi. Oh, and you too, numberless Muslim persecutors of Armenians, Copts, and assorted other kuffar rabble unlucky enough to live within the dar al-islam.
“Has it ever stuck anyone that when you compare historical notions of jihad (outer, of the fist) to modern AQ’ist style notions they bear little resemblance?”
Huh. Could it be because since the end of the 17th century, militant Islam hasn’t been able to field an army that could win against a Western one? Courses for horses, as I think you blokes say. By the beginning of the 18th century, Islam was flanked on all sides: by a resurgent Western Europe in the Mediterranean, an expanding Russia in the north, and the British Raj in the east. Oh, and all those pesky Europeans controlling every damn sea lane you could think of. Didn’t keep them from a little internal jihad from time to time, though; I suppose it’s a species of comfort food.
AQ fights as it can, which is not surprising. Perhaps the resurgence of interest in jihad has something to do with the incredible demographic spike in the Islamic world over the past 40 years, combined with a perception of Western spiritual and political weakness. For the first time in about 3 centuries, the Islamists think they’re holding a hand they can actually win with. And Europe’s zany immigration policies are tailor-made to this perception, too: as Woody Allen once said, 90% of success is just showing up.
“The modern form is much more like a western style crusade…”
??? That would come, I think, as something of a surprise to, say, Richard Coeur de Lion. Back to you, Bullwinkle, for the color commentary.
I’m sure there are elements of useful truth to what you’re saying. But they are pieces of a puzzle, not the whole picture. Time to add a happy little tree…
The defining conflicts of world history are not, in and of themselves, the result of substantial differences, be they on questions of culture, politics or economics. Rather, they are the result of several powerful political units vying with each other for dominance of a particular system, be it regional or global. Differentiation is, more often than not, the way in which each power legitimizes their aspirations to themselves, and uncommitted units that they would aspire to woo onto their side. The ideological aspect of the Cold War could be seen in this light. Conflict is more likely as these political units become more alike in their power, and thus in their aspirations for influence within the system. Therefore, from the 1500’s to the end of WW2, the defining political and military rivalries were intra-civilizational, as only one civilization, the west, was pre-eminent within the world system.
Currently, we see nations from several of the different civilizations increasing in their economic, if not their military, power. Russia is regaining power, China and India are rising, and Brazil may also be a nation to watch in the medium term. The only ‘civilizations’ without their own existing or aspiring great powers are Africa and the Middle East (Iran is aspiring, but I’m not sure about its ability to rally the Arabs around them). No doubt, if conflict between these great powers, and the established powers in Nth America and Europe increased, many would see this as a ‘clash of civilizations’… but really, it would just be an example of great powers vying with each other for influence in the world system. The clash of civilizations would be a symptom, but not necessarily the disease.
However, I would not be so quick as to point to globalization as an argument against Huntington. If anything, the cosmopolitan-izing nature of the process is just as likely to provoke parochial reactions and, in the process, positively reify cultural differences… particularly among the economic ‘losers’. The idea that increased economic competition and integration is a pacifying and unifying force in the world relies on its continued ability to deliver growth and expansion which has the potential, at least, of generalizing the gains. Hitherto, capitalism has had the capacity to do this. However, if growth falters, or constraints become apparent, economic competition has a danger of becoming a zero-sum game, and thus an invitation to conflict.
Great comment, Cliff. Interesting, smart, and sane.
One is reminded that, after all, it’s still possible to look on the bright side: we’re leaving the blood-soaked crazy Age of Ideology, and largely entering an age of simple (well, not too simple) practical interests. If the large power blocs, or civilizations, or whatever you want to call them, can manage their material differences intelligently and reasonably, there’s hope for a peaceful and cooperative and sane century rather than a crazy one.
btw, though I somehow doubt it’s really in the cards, I still find the idea of a super-power Brazil rather tempting. Would they invade other countries with giant, armed conga lines? Launch ICBMs that were loaded with used Carnival floats? The possibilities are endless.
I think Ronaldinho would launch them with his precision strike technology. And thankyou, JPZ… I’m not often described as sane
have been a superpower, JPZ, for three quarters of a century or more, in the all-important arena of international football. They’re currently invading countries across the globe, levying tribute and ransacking salary caps everywhere, it’s just not noticed in your little sporting backwater. Ordem e progreso, I say: in 4-4-2 formation.
[ahem]
Chunks of my comment got eaten somehow.
And the Annales School, a much-maligned and often forgotten bunch of crypto-determinists. I’ll see your Fukuyama and raise you a Braudel.
And Brazil *have* been a superpower… (continue comment).
All fear the arsenal of the great superpower, Max Weber! All your sociology department are belong to us!
Russia is a country, not a civilisation. Its cultural roots are Christian and agricultural, just like the rest of Europe.
Russia’s nineteenth century authors and composers dominate the canon of great western literature.
Take home message: Huntington’s ciivilisational categorisations are next to useless in defining what is allegedly essentially different between the regions he purports to haveidentified.
That’s a Lolcat I’d love to see!
Russia in many ways bridges east and west. I believe that Huntington places Russia as part of “Orthodox” civilization, of which Greece and Yugoslavia are also part… which I found a bit strange. Certainly Russia and Serbia are close… but Russia and Greece?
Liam: “in the all-important arena of international football.”
If by ‘all-important’ you mean to say ‘trivial and meaningless,’ then you are exactly correct.
“They’re currently invading countries across the globe, levying tribute and ransacking salary caps everywhere, it’s just not noticed in your little sporting backwater.”
Ah, now we see the true clash of civilizations. You still haven’t realized, my poor man, that what you gamely refer to as a ’sport’ is in fact a sort of interminable stadium-sized Samuel Beckett play, with sweat added. (I salute the world of soccer for its good literary tastes, then, if not its concept of ‘being awake.’) Alas, it’s still the same old pointless same old: in soccer as in Waiting for Godot, nothing happens, twice. Even if you’re lucky enough to be Brazilian.
Nor have you fully realized that, if it ‘isn’t noticed’ in my little sporting backwater, then in fact it hasn’t happened. Ah, “It hasn’t happened”: a fitting epitaph for the sport that kept Rip van Winkle remaining soundly a-snooze, not ready to rouse himself til a truly interesting and exciting game, like, erm, Tenpins, was in the offing.
btw, a propos the concept of Brazil as a superpower: a long while ago, I had the pleasure to meet two jolly young junior Brazilian politicians at a party one time. We got to talking about this and that, which led to Brazil’s place in the world, and eventually I just HAD to ask them, as politely as I could. Brazil, I said, is comparable in size to the United States, i.e. it’s big. It has a large population, vast resources, world-class cities, ports, technology, a deep and venerable culture. When, I asked, is Brazil finally going to step up on the world stage and become a major player, as it clearly should? The two of them looked at each other for a few moments, then just started to giggle uncontrollably.
I got the next round.
There was the Crimean War.
During Vietnam, Huntington trotted out the same thesis with regard to China: we are at war with Eastasia, we have always been at war with Eastasia …
It’s also interesting to note that for a generation, western conservatives have not only been uninterested in culture but proudly philistine. Churchill and Menzies not only regarded Shakespeare as important but believed his works contained practical lessons about human behaviour. Modern conservatives regard Shakespeare as something to be foisted on children, like cod liver oil. This also undermines Huntington’s thesis, because you have to believe that Cheney, Bush, Howard et al really are guardians of the traditions of Voltaire, Mill, Locke, (insert non-marxist western theorist here). Not only is this logically flawed, it’s actually quite funny.
jack strocchi:
Toynbee, that’s who it was! Thanks Jack!
I suspect it may be more along the lines of clans, tribes, ethnic groups, cultures, religions and even urban gangs. Where H goes wrong I think (aside for not allowing for change), is that he focuses on 1 thing only. There’s more to the rich chaotic complexity of human life than just culture and religion.
Yeah, sad isn’t it. That Al-Qaedaism could become almost fashionable says a lot about the ‘western’ counter-narrative.
j_p_z:
I’m confused, all your tree references may actually make sense if only you knew what my gaming nic was, but then again who knows?… Yah sorry for the heavy anti-us shtick, shouldn’t do it you’re right. Rats in barrel etc I know, I know. Though I admit to semi-trolling, granted.
I wasn’t clear enough; I was referring to 1979 Afghanistan mujahideen fighters, the ones Reagan called the moral equiv of America’s founding fathers. As in the ones who were supposedly to eventually inspire an Islamic war against the ‘Evil Empire’ and be good little proxy fighters for the US… That particular attempt at inspiring crusade/jihad is what I should have specifically said I was referring to in that comment… todays “The Movement”/AQ… that came later and for more complex reasons, like Iraq 1991. But the AQ ideology seems to be grounded in the jihadist notions and ideas developed in and during and as a result of the 20thC Afghan wars.
Yah, and you forgot Faraj too, apparently. Seriously though, compare the goals and character (for want of a better term) of Saladin to of those modernish instances and then to Afghanistan circa 1980s. Today is different again.
Of a traditional western crusade it could be said that all it’s participating members’ are provided religious justification for their barbaric behaviors. Since it’s all for the greater glory of god etc it’s apparently ok. Thus targeting civilians is perfectly excusable.
The traditional Islamic concepts of Jihad however does not allow, for example, deliberate targeting of civilians. Note the use of the word ‘traditional’.
See what I’m driving at? Change has occurred within the fundamental nature of jihad - it has become more ‘westernised’ over time. Possibly dating from ‘lie back and think of England’ boy’s days exercising his royal prerogative in the ME sun, you never know.
Reactionary politics certainly accounts for some and probably the historical bulk, particularly in some of the examples you cite. Organic change yet more. Cynical political manipulation of religious traditions for personal/state advantage (either internally or externally to Islam) accounts for some more.
“For every complex problem, there is a simple solution. And it’s usually wrong.”
But hey, I ultimately blame those pesky Zoroastrians. If they hadn’t formalised the whole Good vs Evil thing way back when, none of this would be happening.
I’m not sure that the Hindu population of India quite remembers it that way, and their contact with Muslim invaders pre-dates anything Western. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Timur_the_Lame.27s_Campaign_against_India
Especially tricky when you consider the lack of standing armies in premodern societies made a mockery of notions of a civilian (i.e. non-military) social sphere.
GregM:
So you’re saying that Timur’s campaign was jihad?
Mere “cynical political manipulation of religious traditions for personal/state advantage (either internally or externally to Islam).” if it could be called a jihad. Though Timur’s wiki page says that while “he thought of himself as a ghazi, .. his biggest wars were against Muslim states.” Reading wiki further it sounds like the man was steeped in political expediency, not Islam.
There is one mention of jihad - under Mahmud of Ghazni. The section describes behaviour consistent with traditional jihad if you believe the Holt ref’s.
But getting back to Huntington, Shaun nails it: Culture is, indeed, not destiny. H makes no allowance for the changing nature of cultures. As the saying goes, we have a lot to learn from , and sometimes we can learn what not to do. And learn.
The evidence doesn’t seem to support you. While you may be right that Huntingdon makes no allowance for the changing nature of cultures but nor is it helpful to blame the West for everything that happens in the world. “Jihad” has changed over time, and long before any Western influence can be ascribed to that change.
Tony
Unmitigated bollocks. Islam was founded on both genocide and imperialism and The Koran is humanity’s most unapologetic panegyric to both.
Tony D
1. Shaun is fighting paper tigers, as Huntington has never said anything like this.
2. If this is the case, Shaun certainly does not ‘nail it.’ Mere assertion is hardly ‘nailing.’
Oh you thin-shelled Tellurians, so like so ripe for the shell cracking to get to the juicy meat of the back octopide quarters of a plumpy irradiated Tsonite Major bug.
Culture is not destiny. Destiny is destiny! As some of your more desire straits and incentivized plundits and filosophers whistle, if you’ve got the power, you take what you want easy like sunday afternoon delight.
Your “cultures” are just the double ripple rum and raison flavoring on the same lactose tolerant hydrocarbon products up for the smash and takeaway in all your star bucks outflows. But you all want the big big juicy scoops first.
But when you are finally enfiladed into the warm bosoms of Boskone, you will realise just how big big 42 double scoops can be when we brazierly napalm the bra of “culture” and let it all hang down, visage of humanoid simulacra marketed for spawn.
Tch, too much thionite in the airstream tonight.
Katz
Indeed. Personally I think both Bush and bin Laden are dizygotic twins whose rise on the earth was prophesised in The Book of Revelation.
And you are correct on this too.
There has been a bizarre trend in Gaza since Hamas’ election where at Fatah meetings, when Hamas is mentioned the crowd starts chanting “Shia! Shia!” and hissing about “Persians,” even though Hamas is clearly neither!
GregM,
I don’t blame some ephermeral ‘west’, I blame individuals within the governments, businesses, NGOs, etc within what Huntington would call ‘The West’.
These problems are human in nature, not anything else.
Never asign to conspiracy that which should rightly be asigned to incompetance. I think that’s the saying anyway.
John G:
So I take it you’re a christian then? If so - we won’t agree about Islam then, no matter what. Your opinions of the nature of Islam is pretty much what I ascribe to all religions, but especially christanity…
Tony D
Where do you get the idea I am a Xian? I am an atheist for goodness sakes.
JohnG,
H may not actually say it, but that is his implication…
H is approaching things from the End of Ideology/History position so popularised by US ‘victory’ in the cold war… they forget their classics… “War does not determine who is right, merely who is left.” Thanks Bertrand!
Ahhh, sorry I’m not so hip with the blogger lingo homie, UR 2 L337 4 me! I’m an computer engineer, semantic games bore me.
Oh and the XP thing was due to this comment:
That anyone would claim this about a particular religion, without allowing that it’s pretty common across all of them… usually means that some buttons are being pushed. Sorry for misinterpreting you!
Tony D
That’s OK!
Tony, the problem with that is that you are blaming Western institutions or the individuals within them for things that have occurred in the course of the history of Islam in which Western institutions simply weren’t there and therefore had no role to play. Islam is a very assertive and at times aggressive religious ideology. You ascribe a victimhood to it, a popular theme on this site, that it doesn’t deserve. It makes its own decisions and, from our perspective, mistakes according to its own sense of what is right. It ran a slave trade based upon the violent seizure of people up and down the east coast of Africa for hundreds of years before Vasco da Gama (and Bartholemew Diaz before him, just in case there is a dreary pedant lurking) rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Its violent invasion of India and persecution of its Hindu population occurred long before there was any Western contact with that subcontinent.
Then you indulge in the convenient moral relativism of arguing that all religions are much the same, with the standard caveat that Christianity is the worst of them all, when you say to JG:
I don’t hold any brief for Christianity but please explain to me the commonalities of Islam and Buddhism. Where has Buddhism engaged in genocide and imperialism?
Ah well, it’s dropped off the page but…
GregM:
I have to agree - it is after all Islamic history. So getting back to one of my earlier points: throughout history the nature and reasons for religious war have changed with the nature of their societies… dating from the 1980s, Islamic notions of jihad seem to have altered more drastically then at previous points of contact… What happened in the 80s -> Afghanistan -> US/Pak/Saudi/Chinese/etc support of an international jihad to be waged against the Soviets. In other words we taught them how to internationalise it, and furthermore actively assisted jihadist groups to travel and train with the mob that would go on to form Al-Q, JI, and every other major Islamic ‘terrorist’ group of the 21stC.
What, unlike Christianity? Or Judaism? All ism’s share these features.
Islam deserves it’s victim-hood as much as does Judaism… or XPism, Hinduism, etc, etc, in fact anything that ends in “ism” tends to have some notion of victim-hood within it - even Liberalism.
Yes, because the Islamic ‘church’ is so centralised and consistent across the world… just like, say, Catholicism and the Vatican’s standardised/globalised message…? Wtf?
So did everyone else at some point in history. So what?
They are - they’re all utter nonsense, usually based on some pseudo-scientific, non-causal nonsense.
Naaaa, that was just trolling/flaming. I’ve already apologised to JohnG for that. If I was doing the same to you I’d make comments about Buddhism instead ‘cos you seem to be hung up on it (in previous comments), but not because I have a serious expectation that you’re Buddhist.
Both require an adherent to give up their independent thought and uncritically accept a mode of thinking / perspective on reality that will influence the adherents actions. Refer “ism”. Once an adherent accepts without question, inhumane actions (of which genocide is one pinnacle) are sure to follow eventually. Just a matter of time really.
You really know jack-shit about Buddhism, don’t you?
Your entire post is a demonstration of the lack of independent thought and uncritical acceptance of a mode of thinking/ perspective on reality that you condemn.
Guilty as charged! And I couldn’t give a proverbial, so don’t bother.
Kinda like Huntington yah? Which was the point, but anyway…
As for Buddhism - Buddhists are just as likely to engage in terrorist acts (by which I mean an act of politically motivated violence), as any other ideological adherent. Though Buddhist terrorists tend to direct that violence at themselves rather than not. Remember the self immolating Buddhist monk of the Vietnam era? That was the use of violence/force (towards himself), to make a political point - in other words a terrorist act. Just ‘cos it didn’t kill other people doesn’t mean it wasn’t an act of terrorism.
Ok, so genocide is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, as is an imperialist Buddhist! But it is possible…
But anyway… the thread is old and we’re off topic. Let’s leave it there