A review by David Orton
The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order
by Samuel P. Huntington. Simon & Schuster, 1996,
367 pages, softcover, ISBN 0-684-84441-9, Ca$23.
"The revolt against the
West was originally legitimated by asserting the
universality of Western values; it is now legitimated by
asserting the
superiority of non-Western values." p. 93
"The West is...attempting to integrate the economies of
non-Western societies
into a global economic system which it dominates." p. 184
Introduction
This is a complex, erudite and thoughtful book, which has changed how
I look at the international social and
political order. It is required as
a post-September 11th, 2001 insightful reading, even though it was published
several years before this wake-up
event. The author, a US political scientist, was "the director of security
planning for the National Security
Council" in the White House regime of Jimmy Carter. So Huntington has had
access to a lot of very interesting
behind-the-scenes data denied to lesser mortals. The ideas in this book were
first presented in a lecture at the
Washington "American Enterprise Institute." It is strange for this reviewer
to urge
others to read a book which has on
its cover endorsements by people (reactionaries from my perspective) like
Henry Kissinger, Zbrigniew Brzezinski,
and newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post,
and The Wall Street Journal.
This also is a book which has been denounced by some on the Left as written
by a right-winger and therefore, presumably,
of no significance. The negative references to
this book which I seem
to frequently encounter in post September
11th readings, perhaps have to do with the thesis advanced that the
West is in a period of increasing
tension, particularly with two civilizations: the Islamic and the Sinic
world (China
and countries in close geographic
orbit/influence). Huntington is no liberal or left winger, he accepts the
West
"restraining" the military power of
Islamic ("Islam has bloody borders") and Sinic countries, and "maintaining"
technological/military superiority
over other civilisations. (p. 312)
I believe the endorsements by the US Establishment can be understood
because of the author's "realism" and
the provision of what is seen as sage
interventionist advice: "The preservation of the United States
and the
West requires a renewal of Western
identity. The security of the world requires acceptance of global
multiculturality." (p. 318) By Western civilization/identity, I am following Huntington's
analysis, and speaking of
that civilization which arose around
700 or 800 AD, and whose components today include Western Europe
(NATO membership), North America,
the settler countries of Australia and New Zealand and possibly Latin
America, although this area of the
world is yet to determine its ultimate orientation.
As someone who had been shaped in my past thinking by an engagement
with Marxism, where religion is
essentially defined as an "opiate",
I have come to see, since September 11th, that various religions, including
Islam,
are far more important in the consciousness
of people than I had previously believed. Religions, mediated by
cultures, help shape how people engage
with the social world and with the natural world. (The natural
world
concern is, unfortunately, not to
be found in this book.) But Huntington's book has helped my understanding
of
how "Civilizations" appear to thrust
humans towards the re-sacralizing of human societies. For deeper greens, this
is not the re-sacralizing (making
sacred in an animistic sense) of the natural world, necessary to stop the
Earth's
despoliation through capitalist commodification.
Also, theocratic or religion-based societies seem to need "out"
groups for self-definition purposes.
Not everyone, it seems, can be "chosen", and we have such words as "heathen",
"infidel" and "goy" to help define
the religiously unwashed. In Huntington's book, true friends require true
enemies:
"For peoples seeking identity
and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential, and the potentially most
dangerous enmities occur across the
fault lines between the world's major civilizations." (p. 20)
Civilizations and discontent
Huntington is saying that today in global politics it is civilizations,
not ideologies or nation states, that become the
driving force of what passes for social
order/disorder. The countries in this world are grouping themselves around
or in alliance with the core or leading
states of the various civilizations with which they identify. Some civilizations,
e.g. Islamic and African, have yet
to see the definite emergence of "core" states. The author speaks of seven
or
eight major civilizations in our world:
Western, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, African, Latin American (?), Orthodox -
Russian, Buddhist and Japanese. The
end of the Cold War has come to mean that peoples are not divided along
ideological lines but along civilizational
lines. In these civilizational self-identities, there is little room for ecology
(which is not discussed in this book),
but there seems to be an increasingly central role for religion: "To a very
large degree, the major civilizations
in human history have been closely identified with the world's great
religions..." (p. 42)
As Huntington points out, the war in Bosnia was a war between representative
states allying themselves with
three distinct civilizations and religions:
"Western governments and elites backed the Croats, castigated
the
Serbs, and were generally indifferent
to or fearful of the Muslims." (p. 289) On the other hand,
the Spanish
Civil War in the 30s was a struggle
between ideologies and political systems.
This is how the author describes the evident resurgence of religions which we see around us:
"The religious resurgence throughout
the world is a reaction against secularism, moral relativism,
and self-indulgence, and a reaffirmation of the values of order, discipline,
work, mutual help, and
human solidarity. Religious groups meet social needs untended by state bureaucracies...
The
breakdown of order and of civil society creates vacuums which are filled by
religious, often
fundamentalist groups." (p. 98)
Civilizational identity increasingly guides the orientation of nation
states. This book is about how we now define
ourselves and what this means for
contemporary political activity. The author has a conventional US anti-
communist view, "democracy" is capitalist-style
democracy, and he sees NATO as "the security organization of
Western civilization" (p. 161)
in the aftermath of the Cold War. Reading this book, whether or not we "like"
the
analysis, shows, for those who seek
a deep green world with Earth-centered values which are also socially just,
what we have to contend with and understand.
Cultural or civilizational definitions have come to the foreground.
Huntington seems to be saying that the
United States should not fight battles
it cannot ultimately win (the current Bush Administration does not seem to
be listening), but that interventions
in world political affairs should be to assist Western civilization. This,
from
someone who takes it for granted that
the US is the leader of Western civilization, even though this civilization,
arguably the most powerful at the
present time, is in decline relative to other, ascending, civilizations.
For
Huntington, the underlying assumption
is that "Western" civilization is in some sense "the best" and other
civilizations also need this Western
heritage. Yet there is not an out-and-out Western arrogance in this book,
because the author opposes the "parochial
conceit that the European civilization of the West is now the universal
civilization of the world." (p.
55) Any claims to Western "universalism" for Huntington are self-delusions,
"pretensions"
and "dangerous." Western civilization
should be seen as unique but not universal. He differentiates between
"Westernization" and "modernization"
and says that other civilizations through their various nation states are
seeking to modernize, not westernize.
Huntington also believes that each major civilization should be represented
on the Security Council of the United
Nations with at least one seat. The present Council reflects only post-World
War II reality.
Contradictions and disagreement
1. Ecological ignorance. This would be my primary criticism of this
book and its enormous weakness. The
author shows absolutely no awareness
of the ecological impact of increased economic growth on the Earth and
non human life forms. More economic
growth/strength simply leads to more influence for a nation and increased
military spending for Huntington.
He is totally anthropocentric in orientation. (Huntington is aware of the
population pressure resulting from
the pro-natalist Islamic religion.) His basic ecological limitation is shown
when
the author defines "self" solely in
social and cultural terms, with world citizens ending up in one civilization
or another.
While this is, I believe, unfortunately
the existing social reality, as deep greens we are first and foremost
"Earthlings." The Earth is our basic
reference and the carrier of primary values. It is this ecocentric world view
which gives basic meaning to our lives,
not support for a religion, a state, a civilization, a cultural community,
an
extended family, etc. All humans,
irrespective of their religious beliefs or civilizational allegiance, need
to come to
think of themselves first as Earthlings.
This must come to fundamentally shape their basic self- identity before
anything else. Given this, we need
for our social identities to draw from all civilizations, not just the West.
2. There is an absence of any class analysis or any consideration of
the role played by trans-national corporations
in this book.
3. Huntington seems to accept a multicivilizational world but not apparently
for the United States. This is a policy
of exclusivity for large minorities
of US citizens: "A multicivilizational United States will not
be the United
States; it will be the United Nations."
(p. 306)
"The futures of the United States and of the West depend
upon Americans reaffirming their commitment
to Western civilization. Domestically
this means rejecting the divisive calls of multiculturalism.
Internationally it means rejecting
the elusive and illusory calls to identify the United States with Asia...
Americans are culturally part of the
Western family; multiculturalists may damage and even destroy that
relationship but they cannot replace
it. When Americans look for their cultural roots, they find them in
Europe." (p. 307)
Conclusion
I have found this book very helpful, with its focus on the new role
played by civilizations and world religions in
contemporary politics. One can say
that Marxism has paid little attention to cultural factors but where this
"Western" ideology has had ongoing
longevity, is where it has engaged with what seem to be compatible Confucian
and Taoist values!
I do find the analysis in The Clash of Civilizations
as "too inevitable." If Huntington's views hold out, then there
is little hope to exit the environmental
quagmire which we are into. Yet as well as raising the deep ecology flag,
all
of us need to address the role of
religious fundamentalisms: Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, etc. and how
to
undercut them. This book is useful
in this latter regard. Living in any theocratic state, no matter which religion
it is
based on, would be very bad news for
most of us, as for fellow non human Earthlings. We cannot overcome
religious fundamentalism, if we ignore
social injustice and also attempt to impose on others our "own" Western
economic fundamentalism.
I think it is necessary to try and outline, for those of us in the
West, what are the positive accomplishments of
this civilization which need upholding.
It is a civilization which has accomplishments as well as crimes to its history.
If we do not do this, then the capitalist
economic fundamentalists will put forward their paradigm, e.g. free markets,
rule of law, individualism, competition,
etc. as the "legacy" of the West which we should defend and, if necessary,
if those in the White House have their
way, what we should be prepared to die for.
January 6, 2003
Printed in the online journal The
Trumpeter, Vol. 19.2: http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v19.2/
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