A critical evaluation of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis.

1. The Clash OF Civilizations
Impressions
and
Critique

2. In the post cold-war era, there
have been numerous
attempts at trying to
straighten-out the state of
world-
politics
• The End of History and The Last Man – Francis
Fukuyama (Universalisation of Western Liberal
Democracy) – 1992
• The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of
World-Order – Samuel Huntington (Perpetual
Clash) – 1993
• Jihad vs. McWorld – Benjamin Barber
(Struggle between Globalization and Tribalism)- 1995

3. Who is Samuel Huntington?
Political Scientist
White-House coordinator
(Carter Administration)
Professor at Columbia And Harvard
Universities

4. Genesis of the idea of Clash
• This notion of “Clash of Civilizations” is not original
in Huntington
• In a sort of classic ‘orientalist’ gesture , he took it
from a 1990 Atlantic Magazine article – The Roots
of Muslim Rage by Bernard Lewis
• Its also suggested that Huntington’s proposition was
an attempt to ‘academically’ validate the fictitious
Islamic ‘Green Threat’ for the sustenance of Euro-
American military-industrial complex

5. Huntington’s
Clash of Civilizations
- First presented as a lecture in 1992 at
American Enterprise Institute
- Foreign Policy Magazine carried it as
a long-read in 1993
- Huntington later expanded it into a
book in 1996

6. Basic Premises

7. Dividing the World into ‘Civilizations’
• Western
• Confucian
• Japanese
• Islamic
• Hindu
• Slavic-Orthodox
• Latin-American
• African

8. The faultlines between civilizations will be
the battle lines of future
- Misappropriating diversity into conflict
- Faultlines don’t necessarily devolve into battle lines

9. Civilization is the broadest concept of
cultural identity
- Identities can traverse the boundaries civilization
- People can, for example, be western-muslims,
latin-american hindus, Japanese-muslims etc.

10. Increase in
Intra-Civilization Consciousness
due to increasing interactions
within the civilization
- What about the inter-civilizational exchanges?
- There is a healthy socio-cultural, economic
and political exchange between civilizations,
cutting across Huntington’s “battle lines”

11. West, at the peak of its power confronts
NON-WESTS that increasingly have
a desire, the will and the resources
to shape the world into non-western ways
- Creating a “non-western” demon
- A demon that “we” are in “confrontation”
with

12. Economic Regionalism is increasing
amongst civilizations. It can only
succeed only when its rooted in
common civilization
- Inter-Civilizational trade organizations
- BRICS
- Trans-Pacific Partnership
- BRICS contains five different ‘civilizations’

13. First Arab Nationalism then Islamic
fundamentalism manifested themselves
-As if so called Islamic Fundamentalism is a successor
of Arab Nationalism
- Arab Nationalism was mainly anti-colonial in nature
- Islam has bloody borders. Classic example of
Islamophobic bigotry

14. Aggrandizing the west
West Versus the Rest
Most of the attention is given to West
West propounds a “universal civilization”

15. Right-Wing Neocon Agenda

16. Alarmist Themes
- The Islamic-Confucian alliance has emerged
to challenge western interests, values and power
- Western countries are decreasing their
military power while non-western ones are
increasing it. Only west promotes non-
proliferation
- Flow of weapons is generally from East-Asia
to Middle-East?

17. Sounds more like policy-recommendation
than a genuine academic research
- To create a “western block”, by roping-in
Latin-America, Europe, Russia and Japan,
against “Confucian and Islamic States
- Maintain Western Military Superiority in East and
South-West Asia
- To “exploit” differences and conflicts among
Confucian and Islamic States. To support, in other
Civilizations, groups sympathetic to the West-
Divide and Rule