Rating: 
Summary: The gist of Huntington's analysis
Review: While there is little doubt that Mr. Huntington underestimates the destructive influence of colonialism on the development of nations (and that includes white-on-white colonialism and imperialism), he makes a persuasive case for the importance of values in civilization. Successes of the West and the Christian ideals which the West had once embraced are surely related. The Christian admonitions that all men and women have an innate dignity, and that everyone is our neighbor (and not just family members or members of "our" tribe) lie at the core of democracy and human rights which the West has proclaimed (if not always put to practice). This in turn created a society relatively free of fear and subservience to those in power, a society in which members can freely develop and in which they can cooperate with others without fear of being denounced, misunderstood, punished for innovation, jailed and tortured.It seems that what the critics of this book particularly dislike is the fact that Christianity is the fountainhead of Western development. While Huntington is no Christian apologist, he does see a relation between the fundamental beliefs of society and eventual outcome for society's members. A society in which poverty and wretchedness are considered payments for the sins of previous lives will develop very different patterns of social behavior than a society in which the first reaction to wretchedness is - "let us help!" While Christianity receives mostly lip service from the ruling circles of the West, the ideals it has planted in society have been secularized in the form of democracy, social institutions protecting the individual, the idea of "fair play" and many others. It is the realization of the above that Mr. Huntington's book promotes, and for this I give it the hightest mark.
Rating: 
Summary: HUNTINGTON'S VIEWS = WORLD WAR 3 + DESTRUCTION OF THE U.S.
Review: I hope the Clinton Administration does not believe Huntingtons's views and engage in military adventurism aginst a resurgent Russian/People's Republic Of China Axis which in 25 years will be more powerfull than the United States. Samuel Huntington takes sollace in the fact that The United States is supposedly invinsible. Before 1945 Great Britain thought the same way .Now after being humbled militarily it isa much more enlightened nation. I believe the same thing will happen to the United States in a colossal war to come after it loses a large part of it's economic wealth and population following the adoption of Huntington's " Manifesto" . Huntington likes to make enemies..It seems making friends is less difficult and much less dangerous. The United States relies solely on nuclear weapons as defence. However , out of the countries likely to use nuclear weapons it is the one less likely to stomach catastrophic depopulation , perhaps 5-7 times greater than that of the Soviet Union In World War Two. The United States needs to lose a war to ensure any flirtation with views such as Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations never rears it's ugly head again.
Rating: 
Summary: a book more dangerous even than Fukuyama's or Landes'
Review: I have met Mr. Huntington personally and he is a cordial man, so perhaps it would be better of me to address my criticisms of his book to him directly but it is a book in the public arena and so my critique should not remain private if I bother to make it at all. A book which claims to present a theory about "civilizations" at all, much less one contending that whatever they might be are necessarily in conflict should make reference to the vast literature on the specific "civilizations" themselves (area studies, history, history of religion, anthropolgy, etc.). All I see in the endnotes are references to articles by other political scientists, which "research method" amounts, in discussions of cultural difference and inter-cultural relations, to the "blind leading the blind" (and when the "blind" are also self-serving, then it can end up in quite a mess for the cafteria). One example of the fallacious foundations of this entire "conceptual model" is the sheer ignorance in evidence in SH's discussion of the defining characteristics of the "West" which include separation of church and stat which is supposed to have some relevance to the claim of the West's predisposition towards the religious toleration which is essential to Western "individualism." The paragraph (p.70) where he discusses this creates a spurious contrast between the West and the "Caesaropapist" other civilizations, partly because none of them possess a "church" which is directly comparable to the Roman Catholic Church of the "West" in that organization's temporal and thought-controlling claims. Another disturbing example is his insistence on labeling China "Confucian," when the sort of autocratic tendencies which Westerners refer to when they use that term are in fact the legacy of *another* Chinese political philosophy altogether, Legalism (Fajia) and that there are at least two further political philosophies, the Daoist "anti-statist" and the Moist "utopian." Elsewhere he says that the West is distinguished by its elevation of Law. But what is Islam but shariah, Law, Law, and more Law (like Judaism and unencumbered by Christological debates like the homoousios/Filioque dividing Catholicism and Orthodoxy one). Indeed, it is a simplified conceptual model, and what such are not, but we must remember that simplemindedness is ignorance and that ignorance, whether willed or unwilled, is an IRRESPONSIBLE basis for action. Better the US play Hamlet on the world's stage than aid in the balkanization of once usually harmononious societies through "civilizationist" hysterias.
Rating: 
Summary: simplistic yet sophisticated
Review: In late 1996 I had the pleasure of watching Palestenian intellectual Edward Said savagely rip into Huntington and his entire "clash of civilizations" thesis (first posited in a "Foreign Affairs" article). The criticism session was a highly entertaining exercise in scholarly colleague-bashing, because Said (rather blatantly) had the gloves off, and not only trashed Huntington's work but also articulated a scathing critique of the entire beltway, foreign affairs, Washington-insider academic elite (of which Huntington is an eminent member) for its American paternalism, alarmism and triumphalism. While Huntington's thesis is hardly of a triumphalist nature, of course, it is indeed alarmist, painting a world-scale portrait of Western Civilization in decline and under attack on all fronts. But this is not the main flaw of Huntington's detailed and meticulously researched work (in which, it must be admitted, there are few serious flaws). Instead, the biggest criticism that can be made of this book is the overly simplistic (almost childishly so) nature of the "Clash" hypothesis (which Said never tired of caricaturing in mocking tones). Huntington is basically saying that "different" people cannot get along, that they will usually prefer their own "kind", and will probably always be in conflict of one sort or another. Duh. One would like to think that such cynical neo-realism would be confined to computer games such as "civilization" (an immensely entertaining means of wasting an entire evening, by the way) but apparently not. Of course, Huntington's argument is more nuanced and deep than that unjust reduction makes it out to be, but that is, I'm afraid to say, the main thrust of his book. Unfortunately, when seeing Said speak I hadn't yet read Huntington's book, so of course I laughed at the ridiculousness of the Clash thesis as portrayed by Said. Now I have read the book, however, and other than limited alarmism and over-simplification, I can safely say that Huntington's work is an impressively-researched piece of social scientific brilliance. As Huntington himself admits in his introduction, the Clash is of course an over-simplified conceptual model, but then, what conceptual models aren't over-simplified to some degree? Marxism, anyone? Huntington's thesis is parsimonious and intensely provocative, and that is exactly what the field of international relations needs at this time of widespread theoretical poverty.
Rating:
Summary: Good--but ignores human nature.
Review: This book gives a comprehensive overview of the world today, the seven existing civilizations (excluding sub-Saharan Africa because it lacks civilization as defined), and how these civilizations are moving towards conflict and warfare on many levels. It is not a definitive "this is what will happen" but poses a number of scenarios that with the inherent conflicts among humans, peace in the twenty first century will not be achievable, and war in this century could far exceed last centuries numbers in death. One incredible oversight in this book, but one I have been getting used to for those that do not consider our past, is the ignorance surrounding why humans fight amongst themselves in the first place. Huntington seems oblivious to evolutionary psychology, while accepting the premise that humans will willingly kill each other when the opportunity arises. How political and social scientists can continue to ignore human behavior to me is astounding. He does however seem to grasp the dangers for America with regards to diversity and multiculturalism, and does a good job of outlining how this trend will eventually cause the Balkanization of the United States. Just as the Soviet Union broke apart when the cement of a unified ideology--Marxism--was abandoned, so will the United States break apart as liberalism is shoved aside as competing groups fight for rights based on group interests. We are seeing it take place, at a slower pace than the fall of the Soviet Union, but it will eventually die as there will no longer be a "core" American culture to hold the nation together. All great civilizations die when they fail to understand what made them great in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Logically inconsistent, yet precious
Review: Huntington's thesis is based on reasonable and valid premises about the importance of civilizational identities in world politics. However, instead of suggesting that the West has a lot to learn from non-Western civilizations, he exhibits a typical sort of "Western arrogance" which he himself condemns in suggesting that the West should isolate itself from the rest of the World in a desparate xenophobic final attempt to sustain its priviliged position in relation to the civilizations which it has harassed in the past. Moreover, he is logically inconsistent, contradicting his own words, as he has not yet made up his mind whether the West could "invent modernity" and "expand throughout the world" thanks to its "superiority in applying organized violence" (p51), or thanks to its "distinctive characteristics" (pp72,311). Still, he also appears to be unsure whether Western civilization have inherited "most notably" the Classical legacy and Christianity "directly from Rome" (pp69,140,160), or whether "the home" of Classical civilization have been Greece, not Rome (p162), and the West have "never generated a major religion" (p54). His arrogant spin becomes quite embarrassing when he explicitly depreciates all non-Western civilizations on the basis that the "unique qualities of Western civilization" be "European ideas, not Asian, nor African, nor Middle Eastern ideas, except by adoption" (p311), having apparently forgotten that, to the extent that these ideas are European, they are so by adoption as well, and he arbitrarily asserts that "Islamic and Orthodox civilizations" have inherited from Classical civilization "nowhere near to the same degree the West did" (p70). Still, I offer 5 stars to this book, since I think it is an excellent monument of Western arrogance that will be considered classic by future generations.
Rating:
Summary: Too Simplistic
Review: While the premise of the future world order being based on the divisions between rival civilizations is a very interesting one, Huntington's focus on this one aspect is a little too simplistic. Much as the previous division between Communist and capitalist over-simplified the previous world order (as evidenced by Communist China being in the capitalist camp against the USSR), saying that all nations of a particular civilization will be united against the nations of another is hard to believe. Instead these civilizational lines should be used as a frame work for discussing potential nation-specific problems. Huntington's concept of a civilizational anchor state is a good starting point for the nation-specific view. It is easy to envision a time when nations like the United States, Russia, and China will be vying for world supremacy in a number of categories. But to expect the closely related civilizational nations to follow behind is naive. One need only look at the anti-American slant of the French or the anti-Iranian bias of the Saudis to understand why.
Rating: 
Summary: The typic american view of the world
Review: I didn't finish this book yet . But i've already the feeling that the author's point of view depends on the American position in this world . The only superpower facing around the world rebellions against its authority . Even the most trusted allies dare today to disagree on several crucial points (WTO, NATO's future, etc.)with . Considering the diplomatic evolution in the western world : the european will to build an Independant (read from the states) United Europe . the western world as he like to call it, has never been so divided . His view of the muslim world far from any unity, is also quite simplistic . All I see in this book, is the crucial need for the USA to trust allies . The need of the states to be part of something and to lead something . That's not a global view of the world It is a sophisticated american view of the world : "the good men led by me against the bad ones (the others)" .
Rating:
Summary: Huntington Shows His Anglo-Saxon Bias
Review: Huntington is a historian who tries to understand the dynamics of world politics through simplistic -almost mathematical- concepts. Unfortunately , his views will almost certainly turn out to be irrelevant as the ruling anglo-saxon elites in America become the minority. His Anglo-centric views will then have to make way to catering to other ethnic lobby groups , as US politicians cater for their votes.
Rating:
Summary: Average
Review: While the erudition of Mr.Huntington cannot be denied a historian of Russia and Orthodoxy has to be very wary to look at the worlkd politics through his 'clash of civilizations' picture. It is just too problematic to make such sweeping generalizations. There many levels on which this analysis just does not work and not only for teh Orthodox world.
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