Clash of civilizations
Clash of civilizationsThe Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington is an extremely well written and insightful book. Samuel P. Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University, director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, the chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the president of the American Political Science Association. During the Carter administration, Huntington was the director of security planning for the National Security Council. He is also the founder and coeditor of the highly regarded international affairs publication, Foreign Policy.
In 1993 Samuel P. Huntington wrote an article for the respected journal Foreign Affairs titled �The Clash of Civilizations?�. This article was very controversial and stirred up much debate among scholars, politicians, and anyone interested in the future of international affairs. His book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is a more detailed exploration of the ideas and predictions put forth in his article.
Huntington believes that with the end of the Cold War, the world is divided along the borders of civilizations and religion rather than the boundaries of countries. He identifies eight clearly distinct civilizations: Western (the United States and western Europe), Islamic, Sinic (primarily China), Orthodox (primarily Russia), Japanese, Hindu, Latin American, and African. A pervasive presumption in the Western world is that with the fall of communism, the West has �won� and that the rest of the world will now embrace democracy and Western culture. Huntington disagrees with this presumption. In his book, Huntington shows us how civilizations and cultural identities are shaping the post-Cold War world.
In the first part of the book, Huntington describes how the world has gone from being bipolar during the Cold War, to being multipolar in the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War the world was basically divided along the lines of the �democracy vs. communism� conflict. Now that the Cold War is over, lines are being drawn along various ethnic and religious lines. Huntington uses many diverse examples such as the fighting between tribes and clans in Rwanda and Somalia, the clash of ethnic groups in Bosnia, and the conflicts in Sri Lanka, India, and Sudan. Throughout his book, for each concept put forth, Huntington gives detailed examples and illustrations.
Huntington goes on to explain in Part II how the West is declining in power and influence. He emphasizes that although the West is still strong and growing in many areas, other civilizations are growing at a faster rate. Asian civilizations are booming both economically and in their military strength and the Muslim culture is spreading demographically, while the West is becoming increasingly preoccupied with its own internal problems such as crime, government deficits, drug abuse, and a declining work ethic. Huntington uses graphs and charts very effectively in this section of...
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