The end of the Cold War did not usher in a New World Order. The vast expenditure on armaments has not been diverted to development and the raising of living standards in the Third World.
Some 48 armed conflicts are said to be raging in different parts of the world. These conflicts are mostly within nation-states and are ethnic, religious or cultural nature. In an article published in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1993, Samuel T. Huntington sought to explain the unrest in the world today as arising from a clash of civilizations. His thinking provoked widespread interest and discussion. In a recently published book on ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the New World Order’ (Simon and Schuste, New York 1996) Huntington has propounded his thesis in a more expanded form.
During the Cold War, the world was divided into three camps on the basis of ideology: the West, led by the United States, the East, led by the Soviet Union, and the Non-Aligned, which tried to steer clear of the East-West confrontation. The ideological clash between the capitalist and communist worlds lasted until the collapse of communism symbolised by the demolition of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in the winter of 1991.
President George Bush, in his address to the UN General Assembly in 1991, spoke triumphantly of the victory of the ‘Free’ world and the emergence of a New World Order. Francis Fukuyama, in his End of History and the Last Man, argued that with the triumph of western liberal democracy, the world had arrived at the final form of human government and that this was the ‘end of history’ as we have known it. However, these predictions have been belied. The world is different but not necessarily more peaceful.
In early 1992, the conflagration in the former Yugoslavia erupted. Tribal conflicts rage in Africa. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989 did not bring peace to that hapless country where civil war took over. In the separate territories of the former Soviet empire, some 164 territorial-ethnic claims and conflicts concerning borders have arisen. The world seems to be coming apart in a rather disturbing and strange manner. Is the turbulence due merely to the break-up of colonial empires, a process that began with the end of World War II with decolonization, and culminated in the demise of the communist empire 45 years later? Huntington attempts to explain the current unrest.
The Western nations recovered quickly from the devastation of World War II and their economies grew by leaps and bounds. Other parts of the world have been trying to catch up with modernization.
First, Japan and later the dragons of the Far East - Hongkong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore - forged ahead in economic growth. Other countries were not far behind. The nations of ASEAN joined the race for modernization. Communist China embarked upon the market economy labelling it ‘socialist liberalization’, and not giving up entirely the communist political structures. All these countries have modernised but they have not westernised as well. They held on to their indigenous cultures, some of which date back to very early times.
Global politics has begun to be re-configured on cultural lines. Huntington identifies eight major civilizations which predominate in the world: Western (Christian), Eastern Orthodox (Russian), Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Islamic, Hindu (Indian), Latin American and African. The 185 nation states belong to one or the other of these eight civilizations. Each of these civilizations may consist of one or more than one culture.
Japanese civilization consists of a single culture and one nation state. Islamic civilization, however, consists of Turkish, Arab, Persian, Malay and other cultural groups. Some civilizations have a core country which typifies it; For example, China is the core of Chinese civilization, India of Hindu civilization, the United States of Western civilization, Russia of the Eastern Orthodox and Japan of the Japanese civilization. There are no core countries in the Islamic, Latin American and African cultures, although South Africa may typify African culture in the years ahead.
In the emerging World Order, the core states of the major civilizations are supplanting the two Cold War superpowers as the principal poles of attraction and repulsion for other countries. This change is most visible with respect to Western, Orthodox, Sinic and Hindu civilizations. Lacking a core state, Islam is intensifying its common consciousness but has so far developed only a rudimentary common political structure. Countries tend to ally themselves with (or ‘bandwagon’) with countries of similar culture and to balance against countries with which they lack cultural commonalty. This is particularly true of the core states.
The core states of civilization are thus sources of order within civilizations. Again, through negotiations with other core states, they are factors of stability between civilizations. A core state can perform its ordering function because member states perceive it as having a cultural kinship. For this reason, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka will not accept India as the order-providing state; no East Asian state will accept Japan in that role in East Asia. When civilizations lack core states the problems of creating order within civilizations or of negotiating order between civilizations become more difficult. The absence of any cultural connection between the US and Bosnia and European opposition to the creation of a Muslim state in Europe made UN intervention in Bosnia difficult.
Nation states are still the only important actors in world affairs. States are, and will remain, the dominant entities in world affairs. The priority of nation state government is to ensure the external security of their states. A higher priority may sometimes be to ensure their security as a government against internal threats.
States will pursue their interests differently from one historical period to another. During the Cold War era they were aligned with one of the superpowers or with the Non-Aligned movement. In the new era of civilizations they are bound to remain for the most part with the civilization to which they belong. For example, on the basis of the nation states paradigm, the situation between Russia and the Ukraine should lapse into competition driven by security fears.
A civilizational approach, however, would encourage one to believe that the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, overwhelmingly Orthodox and with a cultural commonalty, would be one of co-operation, the promotion of Ukrainian unity and the prevention of a possible break-up of Ukraine. In Chechnya, on the other hand, Russian Orthodoxy clashes with Islamist Chechnya. The civilizational paradigm is useful in predicting the likely trouble spots on the planet.
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