Nawaat.org, Tunisia
Feb 5 2005
The Clash of civilizations.
By Samuel P. Huntington.
This article does not argue that civilization identities will replace
all other identities, that nation states will disappear, that each
civilization will become a single coherent political entity, that
groups within a civilization will not conflict with and even fight
each other.
THE NEXT PATTERN OF CONFLICT
World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not
hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be–the end of
history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states,
and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of
tribalism and globalism, among others. Each of these visions catches
aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed
a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the
coming years.
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 dominate global
politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle
lines of the future.
Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the
evolution of conflict in the modern world. For a century and a half
after the emergence of the modern international system with the Peace
of Westphalia, the conflicts of the Western world were largely among
princes–emperors, absolute monarchs and constitutional monarchs
attempting to expand their bureaucracies, their armies, their
mercantilist economic strength and, most important, the territory
they ruled. In the process they created nation states, and beginning
with the French Revolution the principal lines of conflict were
between nations rather than princes. In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it,
“The wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun.” This
nineteenth- century pattern lasted until the end of World War 1.
Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against
it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies,
first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then
between communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this
latter conflict became embodied in the struggle between the two
superpowers, neither of which was a nation state in the classical
European sense and each of which defined its identity in terms of its
ideology.
These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were
primarily conflicts within Western civilization, “Western civil
wars,” as William Lind has labeled them. This was as true of the Cold
War as it was of the world wars and the earlier wars of the
seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 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 peoples 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.
THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATIONS
During the cold war the world was divided into the First, Second and
Third Worlds. Those divisions are no longer relevant. It is far more
meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or
economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development
but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.
What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a
cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities,
religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of
cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy
may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both
will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from
German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural
features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities.
Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader
cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is
thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level
of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes
humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective
elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions,
and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have
levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with
varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a
Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he
belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he
intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities
and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations
change.
Civilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China (“a
civilization pretending to be a state,” as Lucian Pye put it), or a
very small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A
civilization may include several nation states, as is the case with
Western, Latin American and Arab civilizations, or only one, as is
the case with Japanese civilization. Civilizations obviously blend
and overlap, and may include subcivilizations. Western civilization
has two major variants, European and North American, and Islam has
its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilizations are
nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are
seldom sharp, they are real. Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and
fall; they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows,
civilizations disappear and are buried in the sands of time.
Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in
global affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few
centuries. The broader reaches of human history have been the history
of civilizations. In A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee identified 21
major civilizations; only six of them exist in the contemporary
world.
WHY CIVILIZATIONS WILL CLASH
Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future,
and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions
among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western,
Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American
and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of
the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these
civilizations from one another.
Why will this be the case?
First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are
basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history,
language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. The
people of different civilizations have different views on the
relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the
citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as
well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and
responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy.
These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon
disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among
political ideologies and political regimes. Differences do not
necessarily mean conflict, and conflict does not necessarily, mean
violence. Over the centuries, however, differences among
civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent
conflicts.
Second, the world is becoming a smaller place. The interactions
between peoples of different civilizations are increasing; these
increasing interactions intensify civilization consciousness and
awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities
within civilizations. North African immigration to France generates
hostility among Frenchmen and at the same time increased receptivity
to immigration by “good” European Catholic Poles. Americans react far
more negatively to Japanese investment than to larger investments
from Canada and European countries. Similarly, as Donald Horowitz has
pointed out, “An Ibo may be … an Owerri Ibo or an Onitsha Ibo in
what was the Eastern region of Nigeria. In Lagos, he is simply an
Ibo. In London, he is a Nigerian. In New York, he is an African.” The
interactions among peoples of different civilizations enhance the
civilization-consciousness of people that, in turn, invigorates
differences and animosities stretching or thought to stretch back
deep into history.
Third, the processes of economic modernization and social change
throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local
identities. They also weaken the nation state as a source of
identity. In much of the world religion has moved in to fill this
gap, often in the form of movements that are labeled
“fundamentalist.” Such movements are found in Western Christianity,
Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam. In most
countries and most religions the people active in fundamentalist
movements are young, college-educated, middle- class technicians,
professionals and business persons. The “unsecularization of the
world,” George Weigel has remarked, “is one of the dominant social
facts of life in the late twentieth century.” The revival of
religion, “la revanche de Dieu,” as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides
a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national
boundaries and unites civilizations.
Fourth, the growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the
dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of
power. At the same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return
to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations.
Increasingly one hears references to trends toward a turning inward
and “Asianization” in Japan, the end of the Nehru legacy and the
“Hinduization” of India, the failure of Western ideas of socialism
and nationalism and hence “re-Islamization” of the Middle East, and
now a debate over Westernization versus Russianization in Boris
Yeltsin’s country. 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.
In the past, the elites of non-Western societies were usually the
people who were most involved with the West, had been educated at
Oxford, the Sorbonne or Sandhurst, and had absorbed Western attitudes
and values. At the same time, the populace in non-Western countries
often remained deeply imbued with the indigenous culture. Now,
however, these relationships are being reversed. 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.
Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and
hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and
economic ones. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become
democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor rich, but Russians
cannot become Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class
and ideological conflicts, the key question was “Which side are you
on?” and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In
conflicts between civilizations, the question is “What are you?” That
is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the
Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a
bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates
sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and
half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is
more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.
Finally, economic regionalism is increasing. The proportions of total
trade that were intraregional rose between 1980 and 1989 from 51
percent to 59 percent in Europe, 33 percent to 37 percent in East
Asia, and 32 percent to 36 percent in North America. 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. The European Community rests on the shared foundation
of European culture and Western Christianity. The success of the
North American Free Trade Area depends on the convergence now
underway of Mexican, Canadian and American cultures. Japan, in
contrast, faces difficulties in creating a comparable economic entity
in East Asia because Japan is a society and civilization unique to
itself. However strong the trade and investment links Japan may
develop with other East Asian countries, its cultural differences
with those countries inhibit and perhaps preclude its promoting
regional economic integration like that in Europe and North America.
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. With the Cold War over,
cultural commonalities increasingly overcome ideological differences,
and mainland China and Taiwan move closer together. If cultural
commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration, the principal
East Asian economic bloc of the future is likely to be centered on
China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into existence. As
Murray Weidenbaum has observed,
“Despite the current Japanese dominance of the region, the
Chinese-based economy of Asia is rapidly emerging as a new epicenter
for industry, commerce and finance. This strategic area contains
substantial amounts of technology and manufacturing capability
(Taiwan), outstanding entrepreneurial, marketing and services acumen
(Hong Kong), a fine communications network Singapore), a tremendous
pool of financial capital (all three), and very large endowments of
land, resources and labor (mainland China)…. From Guangzhou to
Singapore, from Kuala Lumpur to Manila, this influential
network–often based on extensions of the traditional clans–has been
described as the backbone of the East Asian economy.”(1)
Culture and religion also form the basis of the Economic Cooperation
Organization, which brings together ten non-Arab Muslim countries:
Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. One impetus to
the revival and expansion of this organization, founded originally in
the 1960 by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the
leaders of several of these countries that they had no chance of
admission to the European Community. Similarly, Caricom, the Central
American Common Market and Mercosur rest on common cultural
foundations. Efforts to build a broader Caribbean-Central American
economic entity bridging the Anglo-Latin divide, however, have to
date failed.
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 end of
ideologically defined states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union permits traditional ethnic identities and animosities to come
to the fore. Differences in culture and religion create differences
over policy issues, ranging from human rights to immigration to trade
and commerce to the environment. Geographical propinquity gives rise
to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao. Most
important, the efforts of the West to promote its values of democracy
and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military
predominance and to advance its economic interests engender
countering responses from other civilizations. Decreasingly able to
mobilize support and form coalitions on the basis of ideology,
governments and groups will increasingly attempt to mobilize support
by appealing to common religion and civilization identity.
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.
THE FAULT LINES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS
The fault lines between civilizations are replacing the political and
ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis
and bloodshed. The Cold War began when the Iron Curtain divided
Europe politically and ideologically. The Cold War ended with the end
of the Iron Curtain. 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. The most significant dividing line in
Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern
boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs
along what are now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and
between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and
Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox
eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the
rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly
along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of
Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line, of course, coincides with the
historic boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The
peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or
Catholic; they shared the common experiences of European
history–feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the
Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution; they
are generally economically better off than the peoples to the east;
and they may now look forward to increasing involvement in a common
European economy and to the consolidation of democratic political
systems. The peoples to the east and south of this line are Orthodox
or Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist
empires and were only lightly touched by the shaping events in the
rest of Europe; they are generally less advanced economically; they
seem much less likely to develop stable democratic political systems.
The Velvet Curtain of culture has replaced the Iron Curtain of
ideology as the most significant dividing line in Europe. As the
events in Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line of difference; it is
also at times a line of bloody conflict.
Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic
civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding
of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and north only ended at
Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the
Crusaders attempted with temporary success to bring Christianity and
Christian rule to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth to the
seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended
their sway over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured
Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries as Ottoman power declined Britain, France,
and Italy established Western control over most of North Africa and
the Middle East.
After World War 11, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial
empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic
fundamentalism manifested themselves; the West became heavily
dependent on the Persian Gulf countries for its energy; the oil-rich
Muslim countries became money-rich and, when they wished to,
weapons-rich. Several wars occurred between Arabs and Israel (created
by the West). France fought a bloody and ruthless war in Algeria for
most of the 1950; British and French forces invaded Egypt in 1956;
American forces went into Lebanon in 1958; subsequently American
forces returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various
military encounters with Iran; Arab and Islamic terrorists, supported
by at least three Middle Eastern governments, employed the weapon of
the weak and bombed Western planes and installations and seized
Western hostages. This warfare between Arabs and the West culminated
in 1990, when the United States sent a massive army to the Persian
Gulf to defend some Arab countries against aggression by another. In
its aftermath NATO planning is increasingly directed to potential
threats and instability along its “southern tier.”
This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is
unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left
some Arabs feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and
stood up to the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and
resentful of the West’s military presence in the Persian Gulf, the
West’s overwhelming military dominance, and their apparent inability
to shape their own destiny. Many Arab countries, in addition to the
oil exporters, are reaching levels of economic and social development
where autocratic forms of government become inappropriate and efforts
to introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab
political systems have already occurred. The principal beneficiaries
of these openings have been Islamist movements. 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. The movement within
Western Europe toward minimizing internal boundaries has sharpened
political sensitivities with respect to this development. In Italy,
France and Germany, racism is increasingly open, and political
reactions and violence against Arab and Turkish migrants have become
more intense and more widespread since 1990.
On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a
clash of civilizations. The West’s “next confrontation,” observes M.
J. Akbar, an Indian Muslim author, “is definitely going to come from
the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the
Maghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will
begin.” Bernard Lewis comes to a similar conclusion:
We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of
issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no
less than a clash of civilizations–the perhaps irrational but surely
historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian
heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of
both.(2)
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. In the past, this
antagonism was epitomized in the image of Arab slave dealers and
black slaves. It has been reflected in the on-going civil war in the
Sudan between Arabs and blacks, the fighting in Chad between
Libyan-supported insurgents and the government, the tensions between
Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the Horn of Africa, and the
political conflicts, recurring riots and communal violence between
Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The modernization of Africa and
the spread of Christianity are likely to enhance the probability of
violence along this fault line. Symptomatic of the intensification of
this conflict was the Pope John Paul II’s speech in Khartoum in
February I993 attacking the actions of the Sudan’s Islamist
government against the Christian minority there.
On the northern border of Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted
between Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including the carnage of Bosnia
and Sarajevo, the simmering violence between Serb and Albanian, the
tenuous relations between Bulgarians and their Turkish minority, the
violence between Ossetians and Ingush, the unremitting slaughter of
each other by Armenians and Azeris, the tense relations between
Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, and the deployment of Russian
troops to protect Russian interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Religion reinforces the revital of ethnic identities and restimulates
Russian fears about the security of their southern borders. This
concern is well captured by Archie Roosevelt:
Much of Russian history concerns the struggle between the Slavs and
the Turkic peoples on their borders, which dates back to the
foundation of the Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In
the Slavs’ millennium-long confrontation with their eastern neighbors
lies the key to an understanding not only of Russian history, but
Russian character. To understand Russian realities today one has to
have a concept of the great Turkic ethnic group that has preoccupied
Russians through the centuries.(3)
The conflict of civilizations is deeply rooted elsewhere in Asia. The
historic clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests
itself now not only in 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 destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992
brought to the fore the issue of whether India will remain a secular
democratic state or become a Hindu one. In East Asia, China has
outstanding territorial disputes with most of its neighbors. It has
pursued a ruthless policy toward the Buddhist people of Tibet, and it
is pursuing an increasingly ruthless policy toward its Turkic-Muslim
minority. 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 same phrase has been applied to the increasingly difficult
relations between Japan and the United States. Here cultural
difference exacerbates economic conflict. People on each side allege
racism on the other, but at least on the American side the
antipathies are not racial but cultural. The basic values, attitudes,
behavioral patterns of the two societies could hardly be more
different. 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 the same 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.
The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to
which they are likely to be characterized by violence. Economic
competition clearly predominates between the American and European
subcivilizations of the West and between both of them and Japan. On
the Eurasian continent, however, the 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. In Eurasia the
great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more
aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the
crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to
central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand,
and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India,
Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody
borders.
CIVILIZATION RALLYING: 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. As the
post-Cold War world evolves, civilization commonality, what H. D. S.
Greenway has termed the “kin-country” syndrome, is replacing
political ideology and traditional balance of power considerations as
the principal basis for cooperation and coalitions. It can be seen
gradually emerging in the post-Cold War conflicts in the Persian
Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia. None of these was a full-scale war
between civilizations, but each involved some elements of
civilizational rallying, which seemed to become more important as the
conflict continued and which may provide a foretaste of the future.
First, in the Gulf War one Arab state invaded another and then fought
a coalition of Arab, Western and other states. While only a few
Muslim governments overtly supported Saddam Hussein, many Arab elites
privately cheered him on, and he was highly popular among large
sections of the Arab publics. Islamic fundamentalist movements
universally supported Iraq rather than the Western-backed governments
of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Forswearing Arab nationalism, Saddam
Hussein explicitly invoked an Islamic appeal. He and his supporters
attempted to define the war as a war between civilizations. “It is
not the world against Iraq,” as Safar Al-Hawali, dean of Islamic
Studies at the Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, put it in a widely
circulated tape. “It is the West against Islam.” Ignoring the rivalry
between Iran and Iraq, the chief Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, called for a holy war against the West: “The struggle
against American aggression, greed, plans and policies will be
counted as a jihad, and anybody who is killed on that path is a
martyr.” “This is a war,” King Hussein of Jordan argued, “against all
Arabs and all Muslims and not against Iraq alone.”
The rallying of substantial sections of Arab elites and publics
behind Saddam Hussein caused those Arab governments in the anti-Iraq
coalition to moderate their activities and temper their public
statements. Arab governments opposed or distanced themselves from
subsequent Western efforts to apply pressure on Iraq, including
enforcement of a no-fly zone in the summer of 1992 and the bombing of
Iraq in january I993. The Western- Soviet-Turkish-Arab anti-Iraq
coalition of 1990 had by 1993 become a coalition of almost only the
West and Kuwait against Iraq.
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 alleged, 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. Armenian military successes in 1992 and I993
stimulated Turkey to become increasingly supportive of its religious,
ethnic and linguistic brethren in Azerbaijan. “We have a Turkish
nation feeling the same sentiments as the Azerbaijanis,” said one
Turkish official in 1992. “We are under pressure. Our newspapers are
full of the photos of atrocities and are asking us if we are still
serious about pursuing our neutral policy. Maybe we should show
Armenia that there’s a big Turkey in the region.” President Turgut
Ozal agreed, remarking that Turkey should at least “scare the
Armenians a little bit.” Turkey, Ozal threatened again in 1993, would
“show its fangs.” Turkish Air Force jets flew reconnaissance flights
along the Armenian border; Turkey suspended food shipments and air
flights to Armenia; and Turkey and Iran announced they would not
accept dismemberment of Azerbaijan. In the last years of its
existence, the Soviet government supported Azerbaijan because its
government was dominated by former communists. With the end of the
Soviet Union, however, political considerations gave way to religious
ones. 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.
In the early stages of the Yugoslav breakup, Germany, in an unusual
display of diplomatic initiative and muscle, induced the other II
members of the European Community to follow its lead in recognizing
Slovenia and Croatia. As a result of the pope’s determination to
provide strong backing to the two Catholic countries, the Vatican
extended recognition even before the Community did. The United States
followed the European lead. Thus the leading actors in Western
civilization rallied behind their coreligionists. Subsequently
Croatia was reported to be receiving substantial quantities of arms
from Central European and other Western countries. Boris Yeltsin’s
government, on the other hand, attempted to pursue a middle course
that would be sympathetic to the Orthodox Serbs but not alienate
Russia from the West. Russian conservative and nationalist groups,
however, including many legislators, attacked the government for not
being more forthcoming in its support for the Serbs. By early 1993
several hundred Russians apparently were serving with the Serbian
forces, and reports circulated of Russian arms being supplied to
Serbia.
Islamic governments and groups, on the other hand, castigated the
West for not coming to the defense of the Bosnians. Iranian leaders
urged Muslims from all countries to provide help to Bosnia; in
violation of the U.N. arms embargo, Iran supplied weapons and men for
the Bosnians; Iranian-supported Lebanese groups sent guerriuas to
train and organize the Bosnian forces. In I993 uP to 4,000 Muslims
from over two dozen Islamic countries were reported to be fighting in
Bosnia. 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. By the
end of 1992, Saudi Arabia had reportedly supplied substantial funding
for weapons and supplies for the Bosnians, which significantly
increased their military capabilities vis-a-vis the Serbs.
In the 1930s the Spanish Civil War provoked intervention from
countries that politically were fascist, communist and democratic. In
the 1990s the Yugoslav conflict is provoking intervention from
countries that are Muslim, Orthodox and Western Christian. The
parallel has not gone unnoticed. “The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has
become the emotional equivalent of the fight against fascism in the
Spanish Civil War,” one Saudi editor observed. “Those who died there
are regarded as martyrs who tried to save their fellow Muslims.”
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 1991 and 1992 many people were alarmed by the possibility of
violent conflict between Russia and Ukraine over territory,
particularly Crimea, the Black Sea fleet, nuclear weapons and
economic issues. If civilization is what counts, however, the
likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low.
They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close
relationships with each other for centuries. As of early 1993,
despite all the reasons for conflict, the leaders of the two
countries were effectively negotiating and defusing the issues
between the two countries. While there has been serious fighting
between Muslims and Christians elsewhere in the former Soviet Union
and much tension and some fighting between Western and Orthodox
Christians in the Baltic states, there has been virtually no violence
between Russians and Ukrainians.
Civilization rallying to date has been limited, but it has been
growing, and it clearly has the potential to spread much further. As
the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia continued,
the positions of nations and the cleavages between them increasingly
were along civilizational lines. Populist politicians, religious
leaders and the media have found it a potent means of arousing mass
support and of pressuring hesitant governments. 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 VERSUS THE REST
The west in now at an extraordinary peak of power in relation to
other civilizations. Its 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 political and
security institutions and with Japan 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. Decisions made at the U.N. Security Council or in the
International Monetary Fund that reflect the interests of the West
are presented to the world as reflecting the desires of the world
community. The very phrase “the world community” has become the
euphemistic collective noun (replacing “the Free World”) to give
global legitimacy to actions reflecting the interests of the United
States and other Western powers.(4) Through the IMF and other
international economic institutions, the West promotes its economic
interests and imposes on other nations the economic policies it
thinks appropriate. In any poll of non-Western peoples, the IMF
undoubtedly would win the support of finance ministers and a few
others, but get an overwhelmingly unfavorable rating from just about
everyone else, who would agree with Georgy Arbatov’s characterization
of IMF officials as “neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other
people’s money, imposing undemocratic and alien rules of economic and
political conduct and stifling economic freedom.”
Western domination of the U.N. Security Council and its decisions,
tempered only by occasional abstention by China, produced U.N.
legitimation of the West’s use of force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait
and its elimination of Iraq’s sophisticated weapons and capacity to
produce such weapons. It also produced the quite unprecedented action
by the United States, Britain and France in getting the Security
Council to demand that Libya hand over the Pan Am 103 bombing
suspects and then to impose sanctions when Libya refused. After
defeating the largest Arab army, the West did not hesitate to throw
its weight around in the Arab world. 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.
That at least is the way in which non-Westerners see the new world,
and there is a significant element of truth in their view.
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. V. S. Naipaul has
argued that Western civilization is the “universal civilization” that
“fits all men.” At a superficial level much of Western culture has
indeed permeated the rest of the world. At a more basic level,
however, 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 such
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. Indeed, the author of a review
of 100 comparative studies of values in different societies concluded
that “the values that are most important in the West are least
important worldwide.”(5) In the political realm, of course, these
differences are most manifest in the efforts of the United States and
other Western powers to induce other peoples to adopt Western ideas
concerning democracy and human rights. Modern democratic government
originated in the West. When it has developed in non-Western
societies it has usually been the product of Western colonialism or
imposition.
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.(6) Those responses generally take one or a combination of
three forms. At one extreme, non-Western states can, like Burma and
North Korea, attempt to pursue a course of isolation, to insulate
their societies from penetration or “corruption” by the West, and, in
effect, to opt out of participation in the Western-dominated global
community. The costs of this course, however, are high, and few
states have pursued it exclusively. A second alternative, the
equivalent of “band- wagoning” in international relations theory, is
to attempt to join the West and accept its values and institutions.
The third alternative is to attempt to “balance” the West by
developing economic and military power and cooperating with other
non-Western societies against the West, while preserving indigenous
values and institutions; in short, to modernize but not to
Westernize.
THE TORN COUNTRIES
In the future, as people differentiate themselves by civilization,
countries with large numbers of peoples 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 torn countries. Their leaders
typically wish to pursue a bandwagoning strategy and to make their
countries members of the West, but the history, culture and
traditions of their countries are non-Western. The most obvious and
prototypical torn country is Turkey. The late twentieth-century
leaders of Turkey have followed in the Attaturk tradition and defined
Turkey as a modern, secular, Western nation state. They allied Turkey
with the West in NATO and in the Gulf War; they applied for
membership in the European Community. At the same time, however,
elements in Turkish society have supported an Islamic revival and
have argued that Turkey is basically a Middle Eastern Muslim society.
In addition, while the elite of Turkey has defined Turkey as a
Western society, the elite of the West refuses to accept Turkey as
such. Turkey will not become a member of the European Community, and
the real reason, as President Ozal said, “is that we are Muslim and
they are Christian and they don’t say that.” Having rejected Mecca,
and then being rejected by Brussels, where does Turkey look? Tashkent
may be the answer. The end of the Soviet Union gives Turkey the
opportunity to become the leader of a revived Turkic civilization
involving seven countries from the borders of Greece to those of
China. Encouraged by the West, Turkey is making strenuous efforts to
carve out this new identity for itself.
During the past decade Mexico has assumed a position somewhat similar
to that of Turkey. Just as Turkey abandoned its historic opposition
to Europe and attempted to join Europe, 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. Mexican leaders are engaged in the great
task of redefining Mexican identity and have introduced fundamental
economic reforms that eventually will lead to fundamental political
change. In 1991 a top adviser to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari
described at length to me all the changes the Salinas government was
making. When he finished, I remarked: “That’s most impressive. It
seems to me that basically you want to change Mexico from a Latin
American country into a North American country.” He looked at me with
surprise and exclaimed: “Exactly! That’s precisely what we are trying
to do, but of course we could never say so publicly.” As his remark
indicates, in 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).
Historically Turkey has been the most profoundly torn country. For
the United States, Mexico is the most immediate torn country.
Globally the most important torn country is Russia. The question of
whether Russia is part of the West or the leader of a distinct
Slavic-Orthodox civilization has been a recurring one in Russian
history. That issue was obscured by the communist victory in Russia,
which imported a Western ideology, adapted it to Russian conditions
and then challenged the West in the name of that ideology. The
dominance of communism shut off the historic debate over
Westernization versus Russification. With communism discredited
Russians once again face that question.
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. Among the more moderate dissenters, Sergei Stankevich argues
that Russia should reject the “Atlanticist” course, which would lead
it “to become European, to become a part of the world economy in
rapid and organized fashion, to become the eighth member of the
Seven, and to put particular emphasis on Germany and the United
States as the two dominant members of the Atlantic alliance.” While
also rejecting an exclusively Eurasian policy, Stankevich nonetheless
argues that Russia should give priority to the protection of Russians
in other countries, emphasize its Turkic and Muslim connections, and
promote “an appreciable redistribution of our resources, our options,
our ties, and our interests in favor of Asia, of the eastern
direction.” People of this persuasion criticize Yeltsin for
subordinating Russia’s interests to those of the West, for reducing
Russian military strength, for failing to support traditional friends
such as Serbia, and for pushing economic and political reform in ways
injurious to the Russian people. Indicative of this trend is the new
popularity of the ideas of Petr Savitsky, who in the 1920s argued
that Russia was a unique Eurasian civilization.(7) More extreme
dissidents voice much more blatantly nationalist, anti-Western and
anti-Semitic views, and urge Russia to redevelop its military
strength and to establish closer ties with China and Muslim
countries. The people of Russia are as divided as the elite. An
opinion survey in European Russia in the spring of 1992 revealed that
40 percent of the public had positive attitudes toward the West and
36 percent had negative attitudes. As it has been for much of its
history, Russia in the early 1990s is truly a torn country.
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 this 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. The conflict between liberal democracy and
Marxism- Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major
differences, ostensibly shared ultimate goals of freedom, equality
and prosperity. A traditional, authoritarian, nationalist Russia
could have quite different goals. A Western democrat could carry on
an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist. It would be virtually
impossible for him to do that with a Russian traditionalist. If, as
the Russians stop behaving like Marxists, they reject liberal
democracy and begin behaving like Russians but not like Westerners,
the relations between Russia and the West could again become distant
and conflictual.(8)
THE CONFUCIAN-ISLAMIC CONNECTION
The obstacles to non-Western countries joining the West vary
considerably. They are least for Latin American and East European
countries. They are greater for the Orthodox countries of the former
Soviet Union. They are still greater for Muslim, Confucian, Hindu and
Buddhist societies. Japan has established a unique position for
itself as an associate member of the West: it is in the West in some
respects but clearly not of the West in important dimensions. 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.
Almost without exception, Western countries are reducing their
military power; under Yeltsin’s leadership so also is Russia. China,
North Korea and several Middle Eastern states, however, are
significantly expanding their military capabilities. They are doing
this by the import of arms from Western and non-Western sources and
by the development of indigenous arms industries. 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. During the Cold War the primary purpose of arms control
was to establish a stable military balance between the United States
and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. 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 conflict between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states
focuses largely, although not exclusively, on nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons, ballistic missiles and other sophisticated means
for delivering them, and the guidance, intelligence and other
electronic capabilities for achieving that goal. 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. They also have absorbed, to the full, the truth of the
response of the Indian defense minister when asked what lesson he
learned from the Gulf War: “Don’t fight the United States unless you
have nuclear weapons.” Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and missiles
are viewed, probably erroneously, as the potential equalizer of
superior Western conventional power. China, of course, already has
nuclear weapons; Pakistan and India have the capability to deploy
them. North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Algeria appear to be
attempting to acquire them. A top Iranian official has declared that
all Muslim states should acquire nuclear weapons, and in 1988 the
president of Iran reportedly issued a directive calling for
development of “offensive and defensive chemical, biological and
radiological weapons.”
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.
It is purchasing weapons from the former Soviet states; it is
developing long-range missiles; in 1992 it tested a one-megaton
nuclear device. It is developing power-projection capabilities,
acquiring aerial refueling technology, and trying to purchase an
aircraft carrier. Its military buildup and assertion of sovereignty
over the South China Sea are provoking a multilateral regional arms
race in East Asia. China is also a major exporter of arms and weapons
technology. It has exported materials to Libya and Iraq that could be
used to manufacture nuclear weapons and nerve gas. It has helped
Algeria build a reactor suitable for nuclear weapons research and
production. China has sold to Iran nuclear technology that American
officials believe could only be used to create weapons and apparently
has shipped components of 300-mile-range missiles to Pakistan. North
Korea has had a nuclear weapons program under way for some while and
has sold advanced missiles and missile technology to Syria and Iran.
The flow of weapons and weapons technology is generally from East
Asia to the Middle East. There is, however, some movement in the
reverse direction; China has received Stinger missiles from Pakistan.
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 power of the
West. It may or may not last. At present, however, it is, as Dave
McCurdy has said, “a renegades’ mutual support pact, run by the
proliferators and their backers.” A new form of arms competition is
thus occurring between Islamic-Confucian states and the West. In an
old-fashioned arms race, each side developed its own arms to balance
or to achieve superiority against the other side. 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.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WEST
This article does not argue that civilization identities will replace
all other identities, that nation states will disappear, that each
civilization will become a single coherent political entity, that
groups within a civilization will not conflict with and even fight
each other. This paper does set forth the hypotheses that 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.
This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between
civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypotheses as to what
the future may be like. If these are plausible hypotheses, however,
it is necessary to consider their implications for Western policy.
These implications should be divided between short-term advantage and
long- term accommodation. 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 Western 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.
In the longer term other measures would be called for. Western
civilization is both Western and modern. Non-Western civilizations
have attempted to become modern without becoming Western. To date
only Japan has fully succeeded in this quest. Non-Western
civilizations will continue to attempt to acquire the wealth,
technology, skills, machines and weapons that are part of being
modern. They will also attempt to reconcile this modernity with their
traditional culture and values. Their economic and military strength
relative to the West will increase. Hence the 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. For the relevant
future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world
of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to
coexist with the others.
Notes:
(1) Murray Weidenbaum, Greater China: The Next Economic Superpower?,
St. Louis: Washington University Center for the Study of American
Business, Contemporary Issues, Series 57, February 1993, pp. 2-3.
(2) Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic Monthly,
vol. 266, September 1990, p. 6o; Time, June 15, 1992, pp. 24-28.
(3) Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing, Boston: Little, Brown,
i988, PP 332-333.
(4) Almost invariably Western leaders claim they are acting on behalf
of “the world community.” One minor lapse occurred during the run-up
to the Gulf War. In an interview on “Good Morning America,” Dec. 21,
1990, British Prime Minister John Major referred to the actions “the
West” was taking against Saddam Hussein. He quickly corrected himself
and subsequently referred to “the world community.” He was, however,
right when he erred.
(5) Harry C. Triandis, The New York Times, Dec. 2S, 1990, p. 41, and
“Cross-Cultural Studies of Individualism and Collectivism,” Nebraska
Symposium on Motivation, vol. 37, 1989, pp. 41-133.
(6) Kishore Mahbubani, “The West and the Rest,” The National
Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 3-13.
(7) Sergei Stankevich, “Russia in Search of Itself,” The National
Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 47-51; Daniel Schneider, “A Russian
Movement Rejects Western Tilt,” Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 5,
1993, pp. 5-7.
(8) Owen Harries has pointed out that Australia is trying (unwisely
in his view) to become a torn country in reverse. Although it has
been a full member not only of the West but also of the ABCA military
and intelligence core of the West, its current leaders are in effect
proposing that it defect from the West, redefine itself as an Asian
country and cultivate dose ties with its neighbors. 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.
Samuel P. Huntington is the Eaton Professor of the Science of
Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies at Harvard University. This article is the product of the
Olin Institute’s project on “The Changing Security Environment and
American National Interests.”
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