Critically evaluate Samuel Huntington’s claims in “The Clash of Civilizations?” Essay

The abrupt demolition of the Cold War meant that the bipolar model of thinking which had dominated the plain of mankind Politics for decades became obsolete. This new phase led to a innovation in thinking in the study of Inter raceal Relations dubbed the snow schools of thought which led to a wide spectrum of visions about the uncertain upcoming of introduction affairs. One of the more prominent visions was the late Professor Samuel Huntingtons Clash of Civilizations? published in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article, where he predicted a growing pattern of conflict based on differences in pagan, religious and historical identity of entities he labelled subtletys instead of the ideological differences of the Cold War Era. Huntingtons thesis was a Realist response to Fukuyamas 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama argued that the post-1991 world was left with no feasible ideological alternative to liberal democracy and the free market delivery predicting a n ew era of spheric consensus on democracy, justice, human rights and cooperation.The nation entrust continue to be a central pole of identification, flush if more and more nations come to share common economic and semipolitical sours of organization. i Huntingtons premise was that The great divisions among humankind and the dominating acknowledgment of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will outride as the most powerful actors in world affairs but the atomic number 82 conflicts of global politics will occur amidst nations and groups of different civilizations.ii The controversial nature of Huntingtons thesis ensured the stern critique by some of his fellow academics for reasons including oversimplification, neglecting contradicting factors and inaccurate predictions. The tragedy of 9/11 and the events that followed bring some the confidence in his thesis by his supporters who saw this as the submission of Huntingtons predictions nonably the inconsolable brushwood amidst Islam and the West.Huntington begins by describing the historical evolution of the nature of conflicts in the Western World from the competition among monarchs and emperors for territorial and mercantile expansion leading to the emergence of nation states ascendant with the French Revolution, to the rise of ideological conflict after the Bolshevik Revolutioniii. His Europocentric bias is clear early as he quotes and perpetuates an idea dumbfound forward before by William Lind that these were principally Western Civil Wars.Labelling World War II, the deadliest war machine conflict in account statement which involved the majority of the worlds nations, as such(prenominal) greatly diminishes the involvement and sacrifices make by people across the world. Notably the Soviet Union which was principally composed of nations Huntington would regard as part of a Slavic-Orthodox civilization sustained the highest amount of casualties totalling at around twenty-seven millioni v.Later in the paragraph, Huntington writes peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of recital as targets of Western colonialism but articulation the West as movers of history as if to suggest that events occurring in non-western separate of the world somehow do not constitute as history if they dont involve or collapse a felt effect upon Western society.Although the leadership of the West in fields such as science, technology and engineering for the larger part in young centuries is indisputable Jewish philosophy, Hindu mathematics, Muslim astronomy and engineering contributed significantly to the foundations of what we know today and this shouldnt be undermined. The sharing and borrowing of ideas amongst the different corners of the world through the millennias thats still going away on today suggests a long-term cooperation instead of a clash of civilizations in our common pursuit of knowledge.According to Huntington a civilization is the highest cultural assort of people and the broadest level of cultural identityv. He divides the worlds population into seven civilizations as well as hinting at the possibility of a Caribbean and an African civilization Africa being indeed a continent known for its vast diversity of cultures and traditionsvi. He defines a civilization by what he calls objective elements such as language, history and primarily pietism as well as by the subjective self-identification of people.Huntington argues the encroachment of globalization has led to increased levels of interaction between peoples of different civilizations, which in turn intensifies civilization consciousness and brings to the forefront their cultural differences which unlike ideological and political differences are fundamental and much less mutable and so less easily compromised. Its clear that people instinctively spot themselves closely to others who share common traditions, customs and history I throw away the belief however that Huntington downplays the penetration of globalization and focuses on one cyclorama of its possible consequences.Its not the differences that drive cultural conflict between peoples its the lack of understanding which in turn creates prejudices and fears. The increased interactions between peoples have led to a wider acceptance of and fascination with other cultures, component us understand why unconnected societies live the way they do. Huntington argues Russians cannot start Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenianvii. An Estonian living in Russia will absorb aspects of Russian culture depending on ones willingness, aloofness of stay and the extent to which one feels alienated or accepted by Russian society.Thus the objective elements invoked are not convincingly unambiguous in determining ones identity an Englishman whitethorn discern to convert to Islam while a Chinese citizen in Shanghai may choose to learn French as a pastime. Globalization in its elf has penetrated the long-standing limitations in global trade of the past politicians ever increasingly have to consider the global implications of domestic policy. More than ever national states around the world are dependent upon each other the United States Demands Chinese goods while China needs the US to buy its goods.Huntington ascribes ideas such as constitutionalism, human rights, the rule of law, free markets and democracy as Western unable to gain a foothold in other civilizations. He writes new-made democratic government originated in the West. When it has developed in non-western societies it has usually been the harvest-home of the western colonialism or impositionviii. suggesting that somehow peoples of other civilizations may not be able to sustain or see the benefits of a form of democratic governance.The people of India would point out that democratic government was create in their unpolished despite, not because of the Westix. Today more than two-thirds of the worlds governments operate in some form of democracy, which reaffirms the idea that democracy is a ordinary value, contradicting Huntingtons attend of its general Western exclusivity. If asked, most Middle-Easterners would pick out the idea of a democratic to authoritarian governancex the limitation of democratic emergence in the region however is a product of the unstable and inapposite political landscape rather than the irreconcilability of the culture.Defining the religious aspects of the Western Civilization, Huntington justifies the grouping of Protestant and Catholic Christians into a single entity by emphasizing dual-lane experiences in European history such as the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the industrial Revolution which in turn separates them from the Orthodox Christians beyond Central Europexi. Although it is translucent that the closer proximity of those events has influenced Protestants and Catholics more than their Orthodox counterparts, the closer resemblance of Catholic and Orthodox practices and beliefs as opposed to Protestants is however neglected.Huntington consistently appeals to religion as the primary source of cultural identity, rightly so, to a Christian the creeds of their religion have a profound influence on their world view and thus how they would identify themselves. When speaking of the Islamic civilization however, Huntington doesnt await to make the effort to differentiate between the major denominations of Shia, Sunni and Sufism which have so strongly influenced the historical and especially current political landscape of the Middle-East.In a passionate attempt to warn his fellow Americans of the potential threats that their country may face in the post-Cold War environment, Huntington essentially perpetuated ideas that were dangerous and self-fulfilling. The organism of a Confucian-Islamic connection that may threaten the West described by Huntingtonxii is yet to be empirically verified, as the Chinese an d US economies remain inter-linked and Barrack Obama moves towards a policy of dialogue in the Middle-East. Given the history of US foreign policy, legislators would have found Huntingtons paradigm open to understand and convenient in terms of implementation.A worldview of distrust towards foreign powers that demands the maintaining of military superiority in the name of security panders to the powerful military industrial complex in the US. In order to maintain peace, global stability and have any hopes of dealing with transnational issues such as global warming, policy makers should regard all nations as members of the world conjunction and work closer with international organizations such as the UN and WTO in establishing universal laws. The alienation and coercion of other governments will indeed create an automatic teller of antagonism and hostility.