The CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER

Rating:
Summary: it's not that good
Review: well, i was happy with Samuel Huntington's Third Wave, but this one seems too political and not so much based on theoretical research. i like his ideas about civilization, but he doesn't show much respect for the Arab nations, and tries to present policy that further alienates and isolates Arab countries.

Rating:
Summary: Other values
Review: Underlying the surface earth are tectonic plates and Huntington's argument that a similar thing is true with civilisation(s) is in a way frightening. For it means that there probably never will be such a thing as a universal all-human civilisation, so beloved to scifi-writers. Well, I love science fiction, but also history and I live near to the Balkans where three civilisations meet. That's why I think that the analysis given here is correct. Huntington's book is valuable if you want to understand the shape of foreign policy in the near future. It may come as a shock to many Americans: most of the world doesn't want to become loke the USA. They have other values. Good? Bad? Doesn't matter: fact!

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Summary: Reveals the truth about Islam
Review: With it its profound interest in safeguarding the oil flow from the Middle East and due to the sense of false monotheistic kinship with Islam the Western Nations placate the raging Mullah. But any objective study of history shows that Islam was the most destructive ideology that history has ever produced. Stalinism and Nazism look pale before when compared to Islam in terms of victims claimed and civilizations annhilated. Colonial Christianity follows in a distant second place. Huntington does very well to bring out the potential of these ideologies in future military and political show downs. His most important contribution is to expose the danger of Islam to the average reader who has probably been fed on a string of apolegtic writings that try to paint Islam in pleasant light.

His predictive scenarios may not be right and he does not seem to show a clear grasp of the Asian geopolitics, yet the work deserves commendation due to the important point of ideology -> civilization -> leading to clashes.

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Summary: Too big a chunk of reality?
Review: I remember noticing the essay on which this book was based, in an international newspaper several years ago. Though I knew nothing of the author at the time, I don't think it took me more than a paragraph or two to realize, first, "This is a major argument," second, "It has some validity," and third, "This is going to make a lot of people mad." The book is, of course, far more nuanced and detailed than the article. I do not agree with every point Professor Huntington makes, but it certainly carries through on the promise of those first few paragraphs. This book is one strong and rather iconoclastic model by which to understand international relations in the coming years. Even if you disagree with it, or find it offensive, this is definitely a book worth reading, or if you're a teaching, assigning your students to read and attack or defend.

I do not think some attacks below (not all really arguments) on Huntington's approach to Islam were quite fair. I didn't see anything "pathological" or "paranoid" about his arguments, and he explicitly stated, time and time again, that Islam was not at all "monolithic." Actually, I think he is sometimes overly cautious and understated on the subject, in effect making all kinds of excuses for the militant character of Islam, and holding out the hope that it will mellow. Anyone who knows how Islam is perceived by non-Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa, India, or China, or is aware of the military career of Mohammed, can only be amazed how prevalent p.c. attempts to deny the obvious seem to be. (A phenomena we have seen with other absolutist idealogies.) Instead of trying to browbeat anyone who tells the truth about Islamic militarism and lack of freedom, why don't Muslim intellectuals change the realities? (If they can.)

It is true, Huntington did not clearly define what he meant by "civilization." It seems odd to designate countries that have been taught atheism for eighty years, "Orthodox," for example. But I think the basic categories are sound, however we quibble about semantics. I see the relationship between China and the West as more ambivalent, though, in other words more potentially positive, than Huntington. (I wrote a book, True Son of Heaven, which describes common links between Chinese and Christian thought.) While Huntington discusses other variables, one of the main assumptions of this book is that powers clash. He generally seems to avoid dogmatism on the nature or intensity of the clash. So I agree that some tension in the relationships he describes is fairly inevitable, though I by no means ascribe to Real Politic or any deterministic or cynical view of human relations.

Agree or disagree, Huntington's is a thesis that deserves careful consideration. It contains some hard truths, but as the Preacher said, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy."

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man / [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Culture clubbed
Review: It always helps me if I keep a books context in mind while reading it. 'Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order' was written by an individual who was a foreign policy advisor to presidents. As such, it's style naturally is one of offering policy recommendations and suggestions. It is influenced by the times in which it was written. The West was basking in the warmth of it's victory in the Cold War and giddy with the success of the United Nations forces over Iraq in the Gulf War - peace, unity, harmony. It was the 'End of History' as another writer (Francis Fukuyama) had been saying - Western liberal-democratic ideals and values had won. There was nothing more to do, no more history to be written. Along comes 'Clash of the Civilizations' with it's argument that "culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world." It's time to let go of our narrow, blinkered, focus on nation states and their geopolitical agendas. Mr Huntington says that "the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face: Who are we?" Naturally, the question is answered then by referring to cultural factors - religion, language, traditions, customs, values and history.

I am OK with his argument so far and even with his categorization of the world's people into 7 or 8 civilizations; the three major ones of most concern in the book are - Western, Islamic and Sinic. He disappoints me though by not having a specific definition of exactly what a civilization is and with his light treatment of the history of civilizations, specifically how they have changed and evolved over time. It's important to know exactly what we are talking about because Mr Huntington's central point is that the "rivalry of superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations" and he sees a clash coming between the West and either or both of the other two major civilizations. He says civilizations may be very large, such as the Chinese, or very small, such as "the Anglophone Caribbean". By birth I am a member of the latter group so naturally I sat up and paid attention to what he was saying...and I found some fault. A civilization such as the Anglophone Caribbean is a civilization of migrants. My Anglophone Caribbean schoolmates were of the following ancestry: African, Lebanese, Syrian, Portuguese, Scotish, English and Chinese. They were Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant. In short - multicultural. We shared a language in common and a heritage of having come from somewhere else, the majority by force.

Mr Huntington is concerned about multiculturalism. He sees it as the spark that will set the civilization clash ablaze or at the very least lead to disintegration and internal warfare. Yugoslavia being an example of what happens to a country where cultural factors become the means for identifying oneself. His concern is that we remain out of such 'intracivilization disputes'. It is in the interest of the US and Europe "to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilization world". Having said that Mr Huntington states that mullticulturalism at home threatens the United States...multiculturists want to make America like the world. A multicultural America is impossible because a non-Western America is not American". To me the argument can't cut both ways. If multiculturalism is OK abroad, - intracivilizational wars are caused by denying or repressing cultural expression - then how can it be such a danger in the US? Back to the 'Anglophone Caribbean' argument for a minute. Having migrated to the United States, there is another bit of heritage that my children inherit. Children who are neither 'Anglophone Caribbean' nor 'Western', but simply American. What about my same 'Anglophone Caribbean' Chinese and Syrian schoolmates - Are there children going to be 'Sinic' or 'Islamic'. This argument, by extension applies to every one here.

It's a brilliant book, well written and provocative and there is a lot that he says that is worth thinking about. Such as the need to understand civilization disputes before entering them. It's just that it doesn't seem to take into consideration that civilizations are very accomodating and extremely dynamic entities.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, he does have a valid point...
Review: ...to some certain extent, I find myself in agreement with aspects of Dr. Huntington's thesis. Particularly compelling is the notion that modernisation and western values are not as inextricably linked as the US & EU wish to think. Out of this, we have emergent the basic idea that modernisation does not satisfy all incumbent needs of any given population, and thatsomething must then necessarily arise to fill the void. This something is, for Huntington, culture, which he opts to view in a civilisational, rather than a local context.

While I believe him to be correct in identifying cultural tendencies as those most likely to be grasped by any culture (civilisation, community...to use Benedict Anderson's terminology) in search of 'new meaning' or in a quest to cope with altering conditions, I fail to find the innate maliciousness that he does therein. From his valid assessment that modernisation is implicitly lacking, Huntington devolves. First he engages himself in an effort to define what he believes to be his major civilisations...at this he fails, himself admitting that he's fundamentally unsure of the existence of Orthodox civilisation, African civilisation...his inability to achieve a successful working definition of "civilisation" (the one that he finally seizes upon smells oddly like "culture") is a major handicap to the validity of this work. After this definitional snafu, he becomes progressively encumbered by an almost pathological fear of Islam. While this is reflective of a personal bias, for which he cannot be faulted, he undermines the validity of his thesis by persistently hammering at the idea that we need all fear some monolithic Islamic fundamentalism. Going unsupported as it does, this conclusion of his ends up smelling far more of paranoia than of scholarship.

Reiterating past criticisms from critics with far superior credentials than I, this too deeply reflects Huntington's desire to find a new enemy against which to focus the Western World's energy (early criticism pointedly suggested that Huntington himself might well be partially responsible for the rise of a militant Islamic precense, should one transpire).

His scholarship, as always, scintillates, but his conclusions are dubious, and based more in a desire to find enemies and justify paranoid world-views. This particular work is rather what one might expect from the marriage of a cultural primordialist (who sees culture as incontrovertible, unchanging) and a Hobbesian (Thomas Hobbes...life is nasty, brutish, and short) thinker. If you're looking for an introduction to Huntington's work, this is certainly as fine a place to begin as any..."The Clash of Civilisations" is an undeniably influential text with regard to modern policy planning...and, as previously stated, it is (like all works of his) displaying of great thought and effort. It is very much worth reading, perhaps primarily because so many disagree so intensely with him. Think of Huntington's Clash as perhaps another Kauffman Thesis (Chaim Kauffman, partition is the best way to resolve ethnic strife). Controversial, disliked, even lambasted, yes...but valuable.

Rating:
Summary: Tribal Nostalgia
Review: Two quick points:

1. Huntingon's analysis is very loose conceptually. He never defines "Civilization," and the innumerable worthies he quotes* mean very different things by the word. But it is far from clear that the several civilizations Huntington himself identifies are comparable entities, except in the trivial sense that they can be identified with regions of the Earth. Thus Islam is a zone dominated by a religion, while the Sinic block and Japan are ethnicities and the West is defined by political ideals, etc. These differences matter. For example, ideologies and faiths can spread by conversion: racial types cannot. For Hunington, apparently, "Civilization" is a mystical idea that can only be apprehended by the intellectual intuition of rare spirits.

2. I think a pretty good case can be made for the proposition that a lot of contemporary nativism is just another borrowing from the West--hostility to cultural universalism, after all, is just as much a European intellectual trend as the Enlightenment. To judge from this book, nobody wants a tribe as much as a deracinated liberal arts professor.

*The one worthy he doesn't quote, Carl Schmitt, may be Huntington's true guru as he is for so many others.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking book...
Review: Hungtington's premise is that world alliances and conflicts will mostly develop and arise out of culture blocks. Countries will likely support other countries not on the basis of strategic importance but on the basis of shared history, culture, and religion. He divides the world into nine distinct blocks: Western, Orthodox, South American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Japanese.

I don't quite agree with Hungtington as I see a global alignment divided around nation-states (UN), corporations, NGOs, and crime and terror sydicates.

Rating:
Summary: On Huntington's thesis: basic facts
Review: In the second paragraph before the end of this book, the author writes:"On a worldwide basis Civilization [sic] seems in many respects to be yielding to barbarism, generating the image of an unprecedented phenomenon, a global Dark Ages, possibly descending on humanity". How very true is his assessment, indeed! Yet how craftily put, too, because the main cause for the spread of this dark age and its attitudes of materialism, greed, corruption and apathy has been none other than his own country, the biblical "Babylon" of the United States of America. He has been equally artful throughout this book in twisting--and/or glossing over the facts that would aportion the actual responsibility for this outcome on the actors of the global stage at the present time. This he has done with the characteristic vagueness and fudging typical of the western writers of the time, which will confuse most readers as to the true nature of this topic of central importance. This is his aim, no doubt, and it can have no benefits. Similar decadent situations have oft existed in history, such as the one of Rome on the eve of its mauling at the hands of the Vandals. (Read "the US" vs."Islam" for the present scenario). But even in ages such as our present vulgarly touted age of " unprecedented technology, information, enlightenment and global(istic) prosperity", the import of all such historical lessons seems hard to come by.....
Unfortunately there is no effective way of intercepting the careless, apathetic West and its righteously naive "liberalist" individualism and excessive consumerism: the runaway extravagance they call "deveopment"--except for a worldwide fundamentalist Islamic conflagration which is imminent. No matter how loathsome in its character this might be (and actually is), at this fateful juncture it is the only bitter pill capable of fixing the West and its key Third world elitist cronies who have a grip on the world unto death; it is just what "the doctor ordered". During the last 50 years or so, the West has mercilessly kept up with its "development", not only at the cost of others, but also to the detriment of its own integrity. It doesn't wish to proceed cautiously or look back in this regard. Such driven attitudes are as bad as the fanatical reactionism and callously evil outlook that characterise Islam, the West's most dangerous enemy (I should know, for I am a "muslim"). The West has, since 1991 at least, vigorously eliminated any other more "civil" alternative to its foolishness, such as Marxism, which would have transformed and improved, had it been left to its own course. (Although I don't subscribe to its orthodox version in particular). What use are the benefits of Western science and technology and development when they have become an end in themselves, and have acquired an unsavoury momentum of their own ? (And what use are they when the intent to promote them is basically corrupt?) The West has overshadowed all such benefits through its runaway greed, apathy and naivete and cloistered cockiness. They arrogantly don't want to believe anything about the nature of their "progress", other than what they wish to see, in their confident tunnel-vision, and in doing so have foreclosed the possibility of having "a place to fall back on" if things go wrong, as they have started to. It is too late now to do anything but to face and start understanding the consequences. Just as the nature and the concepts of their progress are extreme, so will they face an extreme backlash, in the form of a now powerfully charged and agressive Islam. No clever weapons or technology can prevent them from tasting it without dismay and disaster. It will be another Atlantis in the repeating, as the "myths" tell us.

Rating:
Summary: What all western politicians should read!
Review: In this book, a perfect description is given of the relationships between civilizations. Huntington underlines that the western civilization is not THE civilization, but just one of seven. The people of the western civilization should understand that the western standards will not always be the standards of the other civilizations. They should have more sympathy for the divergent opinion of the people in the other civilizations.

I think this is a book that all western politicians should read!