All Annotations of Huntington: Clash of Civilizations[Preview]

saved bySam on 2006-07-18

• It is my hypothesis
  that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be
  primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among
  humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation
  states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the
  principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and
  groups of different
  civilizations. The clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of
  the future.
• ideology
• Western civil wars
• With the
  end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase,
  and its center-piece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western
  civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of
  civilizations, the people and governments of non-Western civilizations
  no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western colonialism
  but join the West as movers and shapers of history.
• group countries
• in terms of their culture and civilization.
• The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level
  of identification with which he intensely identifies.
• Civilizations are nonetheless
  meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp,
  they are real.
• The broader reaches of human
  history have been the history of civilizations
• The most important conflicts
  of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these
  civilizations from one another.
• These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox,
  Latin American and possibly African civilization.
• First, differences among civilizations
  are not only real; they are basic
• Second, the world is becoming
  a smaller place
• Third, the processes of economic
  modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people
  from longstanding local identities
• In much of the world religion has moved in to
  fill this gap, often in the form of movements that are labeled "fundamentalist."
• Fourth, the growth
  of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West.
• A West at the peak of its power confronts
  non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources
  to shape the world
  in non-Western ways.
• A de-Westernization
  and indigenization of elites is occurring in many non-Western countries
  at the same time that Western, usually American, cultures, styles and
  habits become more popular among the mass of the people
• Finally, economic regionalism
  is increasing.
• The importance of regional economic blocs is likely to continue to increase
  in the future. On the one hand, successful economic regionalism will reinforce
  civilization-consciousness. On the other hand, economic regionalism may
  succeed only when it is rooted in a common civilization.
• Common culture, in
  contrast, is clearly facilitating the rapid expansion of the economic
  relations between the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong, Taiwan,
  Singapore and the overseas Chinese communities in other Asian countries.
• Culture and religion also
  form the basis of the Economic Cooperation Organization, which brings
  together ten non-Arab Muslim countries
• As people define
  their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an
  "us" versus "them" relation existing between themselves
  and people of different ethnicity or religion.
• The clash of civilizations
  thus occurs at two levels. At the micro-level, adjacent groups along the
  fault lines between civilizations struggle, often violently, over the
  control of territory and each other. At the macro-level, states from different
  civilizations compete for relative military and economic power, struggle
  over the control of international institutions and third parties, and
  competitively promote
  their particular political and religious values.
• As the ideological division of Europe has
  disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity,
  on the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity and Islam, on the other, has
  reemerged.
• coincides with the historic boundary between the Hapsburg
  and Ottoman empires
• Conflict along the fault line
  between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300
  years.
• first Arab
  nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested themselves
• This
  warfare between Arabs and the West culminated in 1990
• This centuries-old
  military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline
• In the Arab world, in short, Western
  democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces. This may be a passing
  phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations between Islamic countries
  and the West.
• Those relations are also complicated
  by demography. The spectacular population growth in Arab countries, particularly
  in North Africa, has led to increased migration to Western Europe.
• On both sides the
  interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash of civilizations.
• Historically, the
  other great antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic civilization has
  been with the pagan, animist, and now increasingly Christian black peoples
  to the south.
• On the northern border of
  Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted between Orthodox and Muslim peoples,
  including the carnage of Bosnia and Sarajevo
• The historic clash between Muslim
  and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests itself now not only is the rivalry
  between Pakistan and India but also in intensifying religious strife within
  India between increasingly militant Hindu groups and India's substantial
  Muslim minority.
• The same phrase has been applied
  to the increasingly difficult relations between Japan and the United States
• The economic issues between the United States and Europe are no less serious
  than those between the United States and Japan, but they do not have thesame
  political salience and emotional intensity because the differences between
  American culture and European culture are so much less than those between
  American civilization and Japanese civilization.
• With the Cold War over,
  the underlying differences between China and the United States have reasserted
  themselves in areas such as human rights, trade and weapons proliferation.
  These differences are unlikely to moderate. A "new cold war,"
  Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991, is under way between China
  and America.
• The interactions
  between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to which they are likely
  to be characterized by violence.
• proliferation
  of ethnic conflict, epitomized at the extreme in "ethnic cleansing,"
  has not been totally random. It has been most frequent and most violent
  between groups belonging to different civilizations.
• THE KIN-COUNTRY SYNDROME
  GROUPS OR STATES belonging to one civilization that become involved in
  war with people from a different civilization naturally try to rally support
  from other members of their own civilization.
• First, in the Gulf War one
  Arab state invaded another and then fought a coalition of Arab, Western
  and other states.
• The rallying of substantial
  sections of Arab elites and publics behind Saddam Hussein called those
  Arab governments in the anti-Iraq coalition to moderate their activities
  and temper their public statements.
• Muslims contrasted
  Western actions against Iraq with the West's failure to protect Bosnians
  against Serbs and to impose sanctions on Israel for violating U.N. resolutions.
  The West, they allege, was using a double standard. A world of clashing
  civilizations, however, is inevitably a world of double standards: people
  apply one standard to their kin-countries and a different standard
  to others.
• Second, the kin-country syndrome
  also appeared in conflicts in the former Soviet Union.
• Russian troops fought on the Side of the Armenians, and Azerbaijan
  accused the "Russian government of turning 180 degrees" toward
  support for Christian Armenia.
• Third, with respect
  to the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, Western publics manifested sympathy
  and support for the Bosnian Muslims and the horrors they suffered at the
  hands of the Serbs. Relatively little concern was expressed, however,
  over Croatian attacks on Muslims and participation in the dismemberment
  of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• Islamic governments and groups,
  on the other hand, castigated the West for not coming to the defense of
  the Bosnians.
• The governments of Saudi Arabia and other countries felt under
  increasing pressure from fundamentalist groups in their own societies
  to provide more vigorous support for the Bosnians.
• In the 1990s the Yugoslav conflict
  is provoking intervention from countries that are Muslim, Orthodox and
  Western Christian.
• Conflicts and violence
  will also occur between states and groups within the same civilization.
  Such conflicts, however, are likely to be less intense and less likely
  to expand than conflicts between civilizations.
• Common membership in a
  civilization reduces the probability of violence in situations where it
  might otherwise occur.
• In the coming years,
  the local conflicts most likely to escalate into major wars will be those,
  as in Bosnia and the Caucasus, along the fault lines between civilizations.
  The next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations.
• THE WEST IS NOW at
  an extraordinary peak of power in relation to other civilizations. In
  superpower opponent has disappeared from the map. Military conflict among
  Western states is unthinkable, and Western military power is unrivaled.
  Apart from Japan, the West faces no economic challenge. It dominates international
  economic institutions. Global political and security issues are effectively
  settled by a directorate of the United States, Britain and France,
  world economic issues
  by a directorate of the United States, Germany and Japan, all of which
  maintain extraordinarily close relations with each other to the exclusion
  of lesser and largely non-Western countries.
• The West in effect is using international institutions,
  military power and economic resources to run the world in ways that will
  maintain Western predominance, protect Western interests and promote Western
  political and economic values.
• Differences in power and struggles for
  military, economic and institutional power are thus one source of conflict
  between the West and other civilizations. Differences in culture, that
  is basic values and beliefs, are a second source of conflict.
• Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent in
  other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism,
  human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets,
  the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islamic,
  Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox cultures. Western efforts
  to propagate each ideas produce instead a reaction against "human
  rights imperialism" and a reaffirmation of indigenous values, as
  can be seen in the support for religious fundamentalism by the younger
  generation in non-Western cultures. The very notion that there could be
  a "universal civilization" is a Western idea, directly at odds
  with the particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what
  distinguishes one people from another.
• The central axis
  of world politics in the future is likely to be, in Kishore Mahbubani's
  phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest" and the
  responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values.
• IN THE FUTURE, as
  people differentiate themselves by civilization, countries with large
  numbers of people of different civilizations, such as the Soviet Union
  and Yugoslavia, are candidates for dismemberment. Some other countries
  have a fair degree of cultural homogeneity but are divided over whether
  their society belongs to one civilization or another.
  These are town countries.
• Mexico has stopped defining itself by its opposition to
  the United States and is instead attempting to imitate the United States
  and to join it in the North American Free Trade Area.
• Mexico as in Turkey, significant elements in society resist the redefinition
  of their country's
  identity. In Turkey, European-oriented leaders have to make gestures to
  Islam (Ozal's pilgrimage to Mecca); so also Mexico's North American-oriented
  leaders have to make gestures to those who hold Mexico to be a Latin American
  country (Salinas' Ibero-American Guadalajara summit).
• Globally the most important torn country
  is Russia.
• President Yeltsin
  is adopting Western principles and goals and seeking to make Russia a
  "normal" country and a part of the West. Yet both the Russian
  elite and the Russian public are divided on this issue.
• To redefine its civilization
  identity, a torn country must meet three requirements. First, its political
  and economic elite has to be generally supportive of and enthusiastic
  about the move. Second, its public has to be willing to acquiesce in the
  redefinition. Third, the dominant groups in the recipient civilization
  have to be willing to embrace the convert. All three requirements in large
  part exist with respect to Mexico. The first two in large part exist with
  respect to Turkey. It is not clear that any of them exist with respect
  to Russia's joining the West.
• Australia's future, they argue,
  is with the dynamic economies of East Asia. But, as I have suggested,
  close economic cooperation normally requires a common cultural base. In
  addition, none of the three conditions necessary for a torn country to
  join another civilization is likely to exist in Australia's case.
• Those countries that for reason of culture and power do not wish to, or
  cannot, join the West compete with the West by developing their own economic,
  military and political power. They do this by promoting their internal
  development and by cooperating with other non-Western countries. The most
  prominent form of this cooperation is the Confucian-Islamic connection
  that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power.
• One result is the
  emergence of what Charles Krauthammer has called "Weapon States,"
  and the Weapon States are not Western states. Another result is the redefinition
  of arms control, which is a Western concept and a Western goal
• In the post-Cold War world the primary objective
  of arms control is to prevent the development by non-Western societies
  of military capabilities that could threaten Western interests. The West
  attempts to do this through international agreements, economic pressure
  and controls on the transfer of arms and weapons technologies.
• The West promotes
  nonproliferation as a universal norm and nonproliferation
  treaties and inspections as means of realizing that norm. It also threatens
  a variety of sanctions against those who promote the spread of sophisticated
  weapons and proposes some benefits for those who do not. The attention
  of the West focuses, naturally on nations that are actually or potentially
  hostile to the West.
• The non-Western
  nations, on the other hand, assert their right to acquire and to deploy
  whatever weapons they think necessary for their security.
• Nuclear
  weapons, chemical weapons and missiles are viewed, probably erroneously,
  as the potential equalizer of superior Western conventional power.
• Centrally important
  to the development of counter-West military capabilities is the sustained
  expansion of China's military power and its means to create military power.
  Buoyed by spectacular economic development, China is rapidly increasing
  its military spending and vigorously moving forward with the modernization
  of its armed forces.
• A Confucian-Islamic military
  connection has thus come into being, designed to promote acquisition by
  its members of the weapons and weapons technologies needed to counter
  the military powers of the West.
• A new form of arms competition
  is thus occurring between Islamic-Confucian states and the West.
• In this new form of arms
  competition, one side is developing its arms and the other side is attempting
  not to balance but to limit and prevent that arms build-up while at the
  same time reducing its own military capabilities.
• differences between civilizations are real and
  important; civilization-consciousness is increasing; conflict between
  civilizations will supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as
  the dominant global form of conflict; international relations, historically
  a game played out within Western civilization, will increasingly be de-Westernized
  and become a game in which non-Western civilizations are actors and not
  simply objects; successful political, security and economic international
  institutions are more likely to develop within civilizations than across
  civilizations; conflicts between groups in different civilizations will
  be more frequent, more sustained and more violent than conflicts between
  groups in the same civilization; violent conflicts between groups in different
  civilizations are the
  most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead to
  global wars; the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations
  between "the West and the Rest"; the elites in some torn non-Western
  countries will try to make their countries part of the West, but in most
  cases face major obstacles to accomplishing this; a central focus of conflict
  for the immediate future
  will be between the West and several Islamic-Confucian states.
• In the short term it is clearly
  in the interest of the West to promote greater cooperation and unity within
  its own civilization, particularly between its European and North American
  components; to incorporate into the West societies in Eastern Europe and
  Latin America whose cultures are close to those of the West; to promote
  and maintain cooperative relations with Russia and Japan; to prevent
  escalation of local
  inter-civilization conflicts into major inter-civilization wars; to limit
  the expansion of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states;
  to moderate the reduction of counter military capabilities and maintain
  military superiority in East and Southwest Asia; to exploit differences
  and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states; to support in other
  civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests; to strengthen
  international institutions that reflect and legitimate Western interests
  and values and to promote the involvement of non-Western states in those
  institutions.
• West will increasingly have to accommodate these
  non-Western modern civilizations whose power approaches that of the West
  but whose values and interests differ significantly from those of the
  West. This will require the West to maintain the economic and military
  power necessary to protect its interests in relation to these civilizations.
  It will also, however, require the West to develop a more profound understanding
  of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other
  civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see
  their interests. It will require an effort to identify elements of commonality
  between Western and other civilizations.