Samuel P. Huntington’s civilizational paradigm (The Clash of Civilizations and the New World Order, Simon and chuster, New York 1996) shows that world politics is being reconfigured along cultural lines. It could have predicted important developments after the end of the Cold War, for example, the outbreak of fighting among the Croats, Muslims and Serbs in the former Yugoslavia.
Conflict in the emerging world can take two forms: fault-line conflicts within nation states, and core conflicts among the major states of different civilizations. The Afghan war started as an effort by the Soviet Union to sustain a satellite regime. But fighting the Soviets turned out for the Muslim world to be a Jihad (holy war), waged on Islamic principles. It became a civilizational war as Muslims everywhere saw it as such and rallied against the Soviet Union. The Persian Gulf war became a civilizational war because the West intervened militarily in a Muslim conflict. While Muslim governments were initially divided, Arab and Muslim opinion was, from the first, overwhelmingly anti-West. Muslims in the West and elsewhere denounced the presence of Western troops in Saudi Arabia.
Fading of the West
Western civilization is currently seen to be triumphant and in unparalleled dominance. Its people have become blinded by what Toynbee called “the mirage of immortality” but there are signs that it is in decline. In many Western countries, including the United States, there is social disintegration, drugs and crime. Slow economic growth, stagnating population, unemployment, huge government deficits and a declining work ethic are prevalent in a number of western countries. Economic power is rapidly shifting to East Asia.
However, the decline of the West is slow and irregular. The process can stretch out over time. The open democratic societies of the West have great capacities for renewal and can reverse its declining influence in world affairs. At the peak of its territorial expansion in 1920, the West directly ruled about 25.5 million square miles or close to half the earth’s land surface. In 1991 this territorial control had been cut in half to about 12.7 million square miles.
European colonization is over. American hegemony is receding. Non-western economies are growing, non-western cultures are reviving throughout the world. There is no longer the desire of non-western societies to ape the west. East Asians, for example, attribute their dramatic economic development not to their import of western culture but rather to their adherence to their own culture. Of course they have used western values such as self determination, liberalism, democracy and independence to promote their interests.
In the coming era, the avoidance of major intercivilizational wars requires, first, that the core states refrain from intervening in conflicts in other civilzations. Second, that core states negotiate with each other to contain or to halt fault-line wars between states or groups from their civilization.
The security of the world requires the acceptance of global multiculturality. The civilizations of the world will have to learn to co-exist in peaceful interchange, learning from each other, studying each other’s history and ideals, and art and culture, mutually enriching each others’ lives. In a multicultural world, the requisites for cultural co-existence demand a search for what is most common to most civilizations. We must seek commonalties in our cultures. It is on this basis that civilizations can co-exist with each other. Clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace in the future. An international order based on civilizations can safeguard against world war.
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