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  • The Clash of civilizations

    Nawaat.org, Tunisia
    Feb 5 2005

    The Clash of civilizations.

    By Samuel P. Huntington.

    This article does not argue that civilization identities will replace
    all other identities, that nation states will disappear, that each
    civilization will become a single coherent political entity, that
    groups within a civilization will not conflict with and even fight
    each other.




    THE NEXT PATTERN OF CONFLICT

    World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not
    hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be--the end of
    history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states,
    and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of
    tribalism and globalism, among others. Each of these visions catches
    aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed
    a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the
    coming years.

    It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this
    new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic.
    The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of
    conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most
    powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of
    global politics will occur between nations and groups of different
    civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global
    politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle
    lines of the future.

    Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the
    evolution of conflict in the modern world. For a century and a half
    after the emergence of the modern international system with the Peace
    of Westphalia, the conflicts of the Western world were largely among
    princes--emperors, absolute monarchs and constitutional monarchs
    attempting to expand their bureaucracies, their armies, their
    mercantilist economic strength and, most important, the territory
    they ruled. In the process they created nation states, and beginning
    with the French Revolution the principal lines of conflict were
    between nations rather than princes. In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it,
    "The wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun." This
    nineteenth- century pattern lasted until the end of World War 1.
    Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against
    it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies,
    first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then
    between communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this
    latter conflict became embodied in the struggle between the two
    superpowers, neither of which was a nation state in the classical
    European sense and each of which defined its identity in terms of its
    ideology.

    These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were
    primarily conflicts within Western civilization, "Western civil
    wars," as William Lind has labeled them. This was as true of the Cold
    War as it was of the world wars and the earlier wars of the
    seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the end of the
    Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and
    its center- piece becomes the interaction between the West and
    non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the
    politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western
    civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of
    Western colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of
    history.

    THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATIONS

    During the cold war the world was divided into the First, Second and
    Third Worlds. Those divisions are no longer relevant. It is far more
    meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or
    economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development
    but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.

    What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a
    cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities,
    religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of
    cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy
    may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both
    will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from
    German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural
    features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities.
    Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader
    cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is
    thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level
    of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes
    humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective
    elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions,
    and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have
    levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with
    varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a
    Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he
    belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he
    intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities
    and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations
    change.

    Civilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("a
    civilization pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it), or a
    very small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A
    civilization may include several nation states, as is the case with
    Western, Latin American and Arab civilizations, or only one, as is
    the case with Japanese civilization. Civilizations obviously blend
    and overlap, and may include subcivilizations. Western civilization
    has two major variants, European and North American, and Islam has
    its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilizations are
    nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are
    seldom sharp, they are real. Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and
    fall; they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows,
    civilizations disappear and are buried in the sands of time.

    Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in
    global affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few
    centuries. The broader reaches of human history have been the history
    of civilizations. In A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee identified 21
    major civilizations; only six of them exist in the contemporary
    world.

    WHY CIVILIZATIONS WILL CLASH

    Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future,
    and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions
    among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western,
    Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American
    and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of
    the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these
    civilizations from one another.

    Why will this be the case?

    First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are
    basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history,
    language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. The
    people of different civilizations have different views on the
    relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the
    citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as
    well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and
    responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy.
    These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon
    disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among
    political ideologies and political regimes. Differences do not
    necessarily mean conflict, and conflict does not necessarily, mean
    violence. Over the centuries, however, differences among
    civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent
    conflicts.

    Second, the world is becoming a smaller place. The interactions
    between peoples of different civilizations are increasing; these
    increasing interactions intensify civilization consciousness and
    awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities
    within civilizations. North African immigration to France generates
    hostility among Frenchmen and at the same time increased receptivity
    to immigration by "good" European Catholic Poles. Americans react far
    more negatively to Japanese investment than to larger investments
    from Canada and European countries. Similarly, as Donald Horowitz has
    pointed out, "An Ibo may be ... an Owerri Ibo or an Onitsha Ibo in
    what was the Eastern region of Nigeria. In Lagos, he is simply an
    Ibo. In London, he is a Nigerian. In New York, he is an African." The
    interactions among peoples of different civilizations enhance the
    civilization-consciousness of people that, in turn, invigorates
    differences and animosities stretching or thought to stretch back
    deep into history.

    Third, the processes of economic modernization and social change
    throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local
    identities. They also weaken the nation state as a source of
    identity. In much of the world religion has moved in to fill this
    gap, often in the form of movements that are labeled
    "fundamentalist." Such movements are found in Western Christianity,
    Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam. In most
    countries and most religions the people active in fundamentalist
    movements are young, college-educated, middle- class technicians,
    professionals and business persons. The "unsecularization of the
    world," George Weigel has remarked, "is one of the dominant social
    facts of life in the late twentieth century." The revival of
    religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides
    a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national
    boundaries and unites civilizations.

    Fourth, the growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the
    dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of
    power. At the same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return
    to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations.
    Increasingly one hears references to trends toward a turning inward
    and "Asianization" in Japan, the end of the Nehru legacy and the
    "Hinduization" of India, the failure of Western ideas of socialism
    and nationalism and hence "re-Islamization" of the Middle East, and
    now a debate over Westernization versus Russianization in Boris
    Yeltsin's country. A West at the peak of its power confronts
    non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the
    resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.

    In the past, the elites of non-Western societies were usually the
    people who were most involved with the West, had been educated at
    Oxford, the Sorbonne or Sandhurst, and had absorbed Western attitudes
    and values. At the same time, the populace in non-Western countries
    often remained deeply imbued with the indigenous culture. Now,
    however, these relationships are being reversed. A de-Westernization
    and indigenization of elites is occurring in many non-Western
    countries at the same time that Western, usually American, cultures,
    styles and habits become more popular among the mass of the people.

    Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and
    hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and
    economic ones. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become
    democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor rich, but Russians
    cannot become Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class
    and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you
    on?" and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In
    conflicts between civilizations, the question is "What are you?" That
    is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the
    Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a
    bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates
    sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and
    half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is
    more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.

    Finally, economic regionalism is increasing. The proportions of total
    trade that were intraregional rose between 1980 and 1989 from 51
    percent to 59 percent in Europe, 33 percent to 37 percent in East
    Asia, and 32 percent to 36 percent in North America. The importance
    of regional economic blocs is likely to continue to increase in the
    future. On the one hand, successful economic regionalism will
    reinforce civilization-consciousness. On the other hand, economic
    regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in a common
    civilization. The European Community rests on the shared foundation
    of European culture and Western Christianity. The success of the
    North American Free Trade Area depends on the convergence now
    underway of Mexican, Canadian and American cultures. Japan, in
    contrast, faces difficulties in creating a comparable economic entity
    in East Asia because Japan is a society and civilization unique to
    itself. However strong the trade and investment links Japan may
    develop with other East Asian countries, its cultural differences
    with those countries inhibit and perhaps preclude its promoting
    regional economic integration like that in Europe and North America.

    Common culture, in contrast, is clearly facilitating the rapid
    expansion of the economic relations between the People's Republic of
    China and Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the overseas Chinese
    communities in other Asian countries. With the Cold War over,
    cultural commonalities increasingly overcome ideological differences,
    and mainland China and Taiwan move closer together. If cultural
    commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration, the principal
    East Asian economic bloc of the future is likely to be centered on
    China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into existence. As
    Murray Weidenbaum has observed,

    "Despite the current Japanese dominance of the region, the
    Chinese-based economy of Asia is rapidly emerging as a new epicenter
    for industry, commerce and finance. This strategic area contains
    substantial amounts of technology and manufacturing capability
    (Taiwan), outstanding entrepreneurial, marketing and services acumen
    (Hong Kong), a fine communications network Singapore), a tremendous
    pool of financial capital (all three), and very large endowments of
    land, resources and labor (mainland China).... From Guangzhou to
    Singapore, from Kuala Lumpur to Manila, this influential
    network--often based on extensions of the traditional clans--has been
    described as the backbone of the East Asian economy."(1)

    Culture and religion also form the basis of the Economic Cooperation
    Organization, which brings together ten non-Arab Muslim countries:
    Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
    Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. One impetus to
    the revival and expansion of this organization, founded originally in
    the 1960 by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the
    leaders of several of these countries that they had no chance of
    admission to the European Community. Similarly, Caricom, the Central
    American Common Market and Mercosur rest on common cultural
    foundations. Efforts to build a broader Caribbean-Central American
    economic entity bridging the Anglo-Latin divide, however, have to
    date failed.

    As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they
    are likely to see an "us" versus "them" relation existing between
    themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion. The end of
    ideologically defined states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
    Union permits traditional ethnic identities and animosities to come
    to the fore. Differences in culture and religion create differences
    over policy issues, ranging from human rights to immigration to trade
    and commerce to the environment. Geographical propinquity gives rise
    to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao. Most
    important, the efforts of the West to promote its values of democracy
    and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military
    predominance and to advance its economic interests engender
    countering responses from other civilizations. Decreasingly able to
    mobilize support and form coalitions on the basis of ideology,
    governments and groups will increasingly attempt to mobilize support
    by appealing to common religion and civilization identity.

    The clash of civilizations thus occurs at two levels. At the micro-
    level, adjacent groups along the fault lines between civilizations
    struggle, often violently, over the control of territory and each
    other. At the macro-level, states from different civilizations
    compete for relative military and economic power, struggle over the
    control of international institutions and third parties, and
    competitively promote their particular political and religious
    values.

    THE FAULT LINES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS

    The fault lines between civilizations are replacing the political and
    ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis
    and bloodshed. The Cold War began when the Iron Curtain divided
    Europe politically and ideologically. The Cold War ended with the end
    of the Iron Curtain. As the ideological division of Europe has
    disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western
    Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity and Islam,
    on the other, has reemerged. The most significant dividing line in
    Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern
    boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs
    along what are now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and
    between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and
    Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox
    eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the
    rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly
    along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of
    Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line, of course, coincides with the
    historic boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The
    peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or
    Catholic; they shared the common experiences of European
    history--feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the
    Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution; they
    are generally economically better off than the peoples to the east;
    and they may now look forward to increasing involvement in a common
    European economy and to the consolidation of democratic political
    systems. The peoples to the east and south of this line are Orthodox
    or Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist
    empires and were only lightly touched by the shaping events in the
    rest of Europe; they are generally less advanced economically; they
    seem much less likely to develop stable democratic political systems.
    The Velvet Curtain of culture has replaced the Iron Curtain of
    ideology as the most significant dividing line in Europe. As the
    events in Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line of difference; it is
    also at times a line of bloody conflict.

    Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic
    civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding
    of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and north only ended at
    Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the
    Crusaders attempted with temporary success to bring Christianity and
    Christian rule to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth to the
    seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended
    their sway over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured
    Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and
    early twentieth centuries as Ottoman power declined Britain, France,
    and Italy established Western control over most of North Africa and
    the Middle East.

    After World War 11, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial
    empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic
    fundamentalism manifested themselves; the West became heavily
    dependent on the Persian Gulf countries for its energy; the oil-rich
    Muslim countries became money-rich and, when they wished to,
    weapons-rich. Several wars occurred between Arabs and Israel (created
    by the West). France fought a bloody and ruthless war in Algeria for
    most of the 1950; British and French forces invaded Egypt in 1956;
    American forces went into Lebanon in 1958; subsequently American
    forces returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various
    military encounters with Iran; Arab and Islamic terrorists, supported
    by at least three Middle Eastern governments, employed the weapon of
    the weak and bombed Western planes and installations and seized
    Western hostages. This warfare between Arabs and the West culminated
    in 1990, when the United States sent a massive army to the Persian
    Gulf to defend some Arab countries against aggression by another. In
    its aftermath NATO planning is increasingly directed to potential
    threats and instability along its "southern tier."

    This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is
    unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left
    some Arabs feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and
    stood up to the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and
    resentful of the West's military presence in the Persian Gulf, the
    West's overwhelming military dominance, and their apparent inability
    to shape their own destiny. Many Arab countries, in addition to the
    oil exporters, are reaching levels of economic and social development
    where autocratic forms of government become inappropriate and efforts
    to introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab
    political systems have already occurred. The principal beneficiaries
    of these openings have been Islamist movements. In the Arab world, in
    short, Western democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces.
    This may be a passing phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations
    between Islamic countries and the West.

    Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular
    population growth in Arab countries, particularly in North Africa,
    has led to increased migration to Western Europe. The movement within
    Western Europe toward minimizing internal boundaries has sharpened
    political sensitivities with respect to this development. In Italy,
    France and Germany, racism is increasingly open, and political
    reactions and violence against Arab and Turkish migrants have become
    more intense and more widespread since 1990.

    On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a
    clash of civilizations. The West's "next confrontation," observes M.
    J. Akbar, an Indian Muslim author, "is definitely going to come from
    the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the
    Maghreb to Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order will
    begin." Bernard Lewis comes to a similar conclusion:

    We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of
    issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no
    less than a clash of civilizations--the perhaps irrational but surely
    historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian
    heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of
    both.(2)

    Historically, the other great antagonistic interaction of Arab
    Islamic civilization has been with the pagan, animist, and now
    increasingly Christian black peoples to the south. In the past, this
    antagonism was epitomized in the image of Arab slave dealers and
    black slaves. It has been reflected in the on-going civil war in the
    Sudan between Arabs and blacks, the fighting in Chad between
    Libyan-supported insurgents and the government, the tensions between
    Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the Horn of Africa, and the
    political conflicts, recurring riots and communal violence between
    Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The modernization of Africa and
    the spread of Christianity are likely to enhance the probability of
    violence along this fault line. Symptomatic of the intensification of
    this conflict was the Pope John Paul II's speech in Khartoum in
    February I993 attacking the actions of the Sudan's Islamist
    government against the Christian minority there.

    On the northern border of Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted
    between Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including the carnage of Bosnia
    and Sarajevo, the simmering violence between Serb and Albanian, the
    tenuous relations between Bulgarians and their Turkish minority, the
    violence between Ossetians and Ingush, the unremitting slaughter of
    each other by Armenians and Azeris, the tense relations between
    Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, and the deployment of Russian
    troops to protect Russian interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
    Religion reinforces the revital of ethnic identities and restimulates
    Russian fears about the security of their southern borders. This
    concern is well captured by Archie Roosevelt:

    Much of Russian history concerns the struggle between the Slavs and
    the Turkic peoples on their borders, which dates back to the
    foundation of the Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In
    the Slavs' millennium-long confrontation with their eastern neighbors
    lies the key to an understanding not only of Russian history, but
    Russian character. To understand Russian realities today one has to
    have a concept of the great Turkic ethnic group that has preoccupied
    Russians through the centuries.(3)

    The conflict of civilizations is deeply rooted elsewhere in Asia. The
    historic clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests
    itself now not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India but
    also in intensifying religious strife within India between
    increasingly militant Hindu groups and India's substantial Muslim
    minority. The destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992
    brought to the fore the issue of whether India will remain a secular
    democratic state or become a Hindu one. In East Asia, China has
    outstanding territorial disputes with most of its neighbors. It has
    pursued a ruthless policy toward the Buddhist people of Tibet, and it
    is pursuing an increasingly ruthless policy toward its Turkic-Muslim
    minority. With the Cold War over, the underlying differences between
    China and the United States have reasserted themselves in areas such
    as human rights, trade and weapons proliferation. These differences
    are unlikely to moderate. A "new cold war," Deng Xaioping reportedly
    asserted in 1991, is under way between China and America.

    The same phrase has been applied to the increasingly difficult
    relations between Japan and the United States. Here cultural
    difference exacerbates economic conflict. People on each side allege
    racism on the other, but at least on the American side the
    antipathies are not racial but cultural. The basic values, attitudes,
    behavioral patterns of the two societies could hardly be more
    different. The economic issues between the United States and Europe
    are no less serious than those between the United States and Japan,
    but they do not have the same political salience and emotional
    intensity because the differences between American culture and
    European culture are so much less than those between American
    civilization and Japanese civilization.

    The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to
    which they are likely to be characterized by violence. Economic
    competition clearly predominates between the American and European
    subcivilizations of the West and between both of them and Japan. On
    the Eurasian continent, however, the proliferation of ethnic
    conflict, epitomized at the extreme in "ethnic cleansing," has not
    been totally random. It has been most frequent and most violent
    between groups belonging to different civilizations. In Eurasia the
    great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more
    aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the
    crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to
    central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand,
    and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India,
    Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody
    borders.

    CIVILIZATION RALLYING: THE KIN-COUNTRY SYNDROME

    Groups or states belonging to one civilization that become involved
    in war with people from a different civilization naturally try to
    rally support from other members of their own civilization. As the
    post-Cold War world evolves, civilization commonality, what H. D. S.
    Greenway has termed the "kin-country" syndrome, is replacing
    political ideology and traditional balance of power considerations as
    the principal basis for cooperation and coalitions. It can be seen
    gradually emerging in the post-Cold War conflicts in the Persian
    Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia. None of these was a full-scale war
    between civilizations, but each involved some elements of
    civilizational rallying, which seemed to become more important as the
    conflict continued and which may provide a foretaste of the future.

    First, in the Gulf War one Arab state invaded another and then fought
    a coalition of Arab, Western and other states. While only a few
    Muslim governments overtly supported Saddam Hussein, many Arab elites
    privately cheered him on, and he was highly popular among large
    sections of the Arab publics. Islamic fundamentalist movements
    universally supported Iraq rather than the Western-backed governments
    of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Forswearing Arab nationalism, Saddam
    Hussein explicitly invoked an Islamic appeal. He and his supporters
    attempted to define the war as a war between civilizations. "It is
    not the world against Iraq," as Safar Al-Hawali, dean of Islamic
    Studies at the Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, put it in a widely
    circulated tape. "It is the West against Islam." Ignoring the rivalry
    between Iran and Iraq, the chief Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah
    Ali Khamenei, called for a holy war against the West: "The struggle
    against American aggression, greed, plans and policies will be
    counted as a jihad, and anybody who is killed on that path is a
    martyr." "This is a war," King Hussein of Jordan argued, "against all
    Arabs and all Muslims and not against Iraq alone."

    The rallying of substantial sections of Arab elites and publics
    behind Saddam Hussein caused those Arab governments in the anti-Iraq
    coalition to moderate their activities and temper their public
    statements. Arab governments opposed or distanced themselves from
    subsequent Western efforts to apply pressure on Iraq, including
    enforcement of a no-fly zone in the summer of 1992 and the bombing of
    Iraq in january I993. The Western- Soviet-Turkish-Arab anti-Iraq
    coalition of 1990 had by 1993 become a coalition of almost only the
    West and Kuwait against Iraq.

    Muslims contrasted Western actions against Iraq with the West's
    failure to protect Bosnians against Serbs and to impose sanctions on
    Israel for violating U.N. resolutions. The West, they alleged, was
    using a double standard. A world of clashing civilizations, however,
    is inevitably a world of double standards: people apply one standard
    to their kin- countries and a different standard to others.

    Second, the kin-country syndrome also appeared in conflicts in the
    former Soviet Union. Armenian military successes in 1992 and I993
    stimulated Turkey to become increasingly supportive of its religious,
    ethnic and linguistic brethren in Azerbaijan. "We have a Turkish
    nation feeling the same sentiments as the Azerbaijanis," said one
    Turkish official in 1992. "We are under pressure. Our newspapers are
    full of the photos of atrocities and are asking us if we are still
    serious about pursuing our neutral policy. Maybe we should show
    Armenia that there's a big Turkey in the region." President Turgut
    Ozal agreed, remarking that Turkey should at least "scare the
    Armenians a little bit." Turkey, Ozal threatened again in 1993, would
    "show its fangs." Turkish Air Force jets flew reconnaissance flights
    along the Armenian border; Turkey suspended food shipments and air
    flights to Armenia; and Turkey and Iran announced they would not
    accept dismemberment of Azerbaijan. In the last years of its
    existence, the Soviet government supported Azerbaijan because its
    government was dominated by former communists. With the end of the
    Soviet Union, however, political considerations gave way to religious
    ones. Russian troops fought on the side of the Armenians, and
    Azerbaijan accused the "Russian government of turning 180 degrees"
    toward support for Christian Armenia.

    Third, with respect to the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, Western
    publics manifested sympathy and support for the Bosnian Muslims and
    the horrors they suffered at the hands of the Serbs. Relatively
    little concern was expressed, however, over Croatian attacks on
    Muslims and participation in the dismemberment of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
    In the early stages of the Yugoslav breakup, Germany, in an unusual
    display of diplomatic initiative and muscle, induced the other II
    members of the European Community to follow its lead in recognizing
    Slovenia and Croatia. As a result of the pope's determination to
    provide strong backing to the two Catholic countries, the Vatican
    extended recognition even before the Community did. The United States
    followed the European lead. Thus the leading actors in Western
    civilization rallied behind their coreligionists. Subsequently
    Croatia was reported to be receiving substantial quantities of arms
    from Central European and other Western countries. Boris Yeltsin's
    government, on the other hand, attempted to pursue a middle course
    that would be sympathetic to the Orthodox Serbs but not alienate
    Russia from the West. Russian conservative and nationalist groups,
    however, including many legislators, attacked the government for not
    being more forthcoming in its support for the Serbs. By early 1993
    several hundred Russians apparently were serving with the Serbian
    forces, and reports circulated of Russian arms being supplied to
    Serbia.

    Islamic governments and groups, on the other hand, castigated the
    West for not coming to the defense of the Bosnians. Iranian leaders
    urged Muslims from all countries to provide help to Bosnia; in
    violation of the U.N. arms embargo, Iran supplied weapons and men for
    the Bosnians; Iranian-supported Lebanese groups sent guerriuas to
    train and organize the Bosnian forces. In I993 uP to 4,000 Muslims
    from over two dozen Islamic countries were reported to be fighting in
    Bosnia. The governments of Saudi Arabia and other countries felt
    under increasing pressure from fundamentalist groups in their own
    societies to provide more vigorous support for the Bosnians. By the
    end of 1992, Saudi Arabia had reportedly supplied substantial funding
    for weapons and supplies for the Bosnians, which significantly
    increased their military capabilities vis-a-vis the Serbs.

    In the 1930s the Spanish Civil War provoked intervention from
    countries that politically were fascist, communist and democratic. In
    the 1990s the Yugoslav conflict is provoking intervention from
    countries that are Muslim, Orthodox and Western Christian. The
    parallel has not gone unnoticed. "The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has
    become the emotional equivalent of the fight against fascism in the
    Spanish Civil War," one Saudi editor observed. "Those who died there
    are regarded as martyrs who tried to save their fellow Muslims."

    Conflicts and violence will also occur between states and groups
    within the same civilization. Such conflicts, however, are likely to
    be less intense and less likely to expand than conflicts between
    civilizations. Common membership in a civilization reduces the
    probability of violence in situations where it might otherwise occur.
    In 1991 and 1992 many people were alarmed by the possibility of
    violent conflict between Russia and Ukraine over territory,
    particularly Crimea, the Black Sea fleet, nuclear weapons and
    economic issues. If civilization is what counts, however, the
    likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low.
    They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close
    relationships with each other for centuries. As of early 1993,
    despite all the reasons for conflict, the leaders of the two
    countries were effectively negotiating and defusing the issues
    between the two countries. While there has been serious fighting
    between Muslims and Christians elsewhere in the former Soviet Union
    and much tension and some fighting between Western and Orthodox
    Christians in the Baltic states, there has been virtually no violence
    between Russians and Ukrainians.

    Civilization rallying to date has been limited, but it has been
    growing, and it clearly has the potential to spread much further. As
    the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia continued,
    the positions of nations and the cleavages between them increasingly
    were along civilizational lines. Populist politicians, religious
    leaders and the media have found it a potent means of arousing mass
    support and of pressuring hesitant governments. In the coming years,
    the local conflicts most likely to escalate into major wars will be
    those, as in Bosnia and the Caucasus, along the fault lines between
    civilizations. The next world war, if there is one, will be a war
    between civilizations.

    THE WEST VERSUS THE REST

    The west in now at an extraordinary peak of power in relation to
    other civilizations. Its superpower opponent has disappeared from the
    map. Military conflict among Western states is unthinkable, and
    Western military power is unrivaled. Apart from Japan, the West faces
    no economic challenge. It dominates international political and
    security institutions and with Japan international economic
    institutions. Global political and security issues are effectively
    settled by a directorate of the United States, Britain and France,
    world economic issues by a directorate of the United States, Germany
    and Japan, all of which maintain extraordinarily close relations with
    each other to the exclusion of lesser and largely non-Western
    countries. Decisions made at the U.N. Security Council or in the
    International Monetary Fund that reflect the interests of the West
    are presented to the world as reflecting the desires of the world
    community. The very phrase "the world community" has become the
    euphemistic collective noun (replacing "the Free World") to give
    global legitimacy to actions reflecting the interests of the United
    States and other Western powers.(4) Through the IMF and other
    international economic institutions, the West promotes its economic
    interests and imposes on other nations the economic policies it
    thinks appropriate. In any poll of non-Western peoples, the IMF
    undoubtedly would win the support of finance ministers and a few
    others, but get an overwhelmingly unfavorable rating from just about
    everyone else, who would agree with Georgy Arbatov's characterization
    of IMF officials as "neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other
    people's money, imposing undemocratic and alien rules of economic and
    political conduct and stifling economic freedom."

    Western domination of the U.N. Security Council and its decisions,
    tempered only by occasional abstention by China, produced U.N.
    legitimation of the West's use of force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait
    and its elimination of Iraq's sophisticated weapons and capacity to
    produce such weapons. It also produced the quite unprecedented action
    by the United States, Britain and France in getting the Security
    Council to demand that Libya hand over the Pan Am 103 bombing
    suspects and then to impose sanctions when Libya refused. After
    defeating the largest Arab army, the West did not hesitate to throw
    its weight around in the Arab world. The West in effect is using
    international institutions, military power and economic resources to
    run the world in ways that will maintain Western predominance,
    protect Western interests and promote Western political and economic
    values.

    That at least is the way in which non-Westerners see the new world,
    and there is a significant element of truth in their view.
    Differences in power and struggles for military, economic and
    institutional power are thus one source of conflict between the West
    and other civilizations. Differences in culture, that is basic values
    and beliefs, are a second source of conflict. V. S. Naipaul has
    argued that Western civilization is the "universal civilization" that
    "fits all men." At a superficial level much of Western culture has
    indeed permeated the rest of the world. At a more basic level,
    however, Western concepts differ fundamentally from those prevalent
    in other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism, liberalism,
    constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law,
    democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often
    have little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu,
    Buddhist or Orthodox cultures. Western efforts to propagate such
    ideas produce instead a reaction against "human rights imperialism"
    and a reaffirmation of indigenous values, as can be seen in the
    support for religious fundamentalism by the younger generation in
    non-Western cultures. The very notion that there could be a
    "universal civilization" is a Western idea, directly at odds with the
    particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what
    distinguishes one people from another. Indeed, the author of a review
    of 100 comparative studies of values in different societies concluded
    that "the values that are most important in the West are least
    important worldwide."(5) In the political realm, of course, these
    differences are most manifest in the efforts of the United States and
    other Western powers to induce other peoples to adopt Western ideas
    concerning democracy and human rights. Modern democratic government
    originated in the West. When it has developed in non-Western
    societies it has usually been the product of Western colonialism or
    imposition.

    The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be, in
    Kishore Mahbubani's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the
    Rest" and the responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power
    and values.(6) Those responses generally take one or a combination of
    three forms. At one extreme, non-Western states can, like Burma and
    North Korea, attempt to pursue a course of isolation, to insulate
    their societies from penetration or "corruption" by the West, and, in
    effect, to opt out of participation in the Western-dominated global
    community. The costs of this course, however, are high, and few
    states have pursued it exclusively. A second alternative, the
    equivalent of "band- wagoning" in international relations theory, is
    to attempt to join the West and accept its values and institutions.
    The third alternative is to attempt to "balance" the West by
    developing economic and military power and cooperating with other
    non-Western societies against the West, while preserving indigenous
    values and institutions; in short, to modernize but not to
    Westernize.

    THE TORN COUNTRIES

    In the future, as people differentiate themselves by civilization,
    countries with large numbers of peoples of different civilizations,
    such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, are candidates for
    dismemberment. Some other countries have a fair degree of cultural
    homogeneity but are divided over whether their society belongs to one
    civilization or another. These are torn countries. Their leaders
    typically wish to pursue a bandwagoning strategy and to make their
    countries members of the West, but the history, culture and
    traditions of their countries are non-Western. The most obvious and
    prototypical torn country is Turkey. The late twentieth-century
    leaders of Turkey have followed in the Attaturk tradition and defined
    Turkey as a modern, secular, Western nation state. They allied Turkey
    with the West in NATO and in the Gulf War; they applied for
    membership in the European Community. At the same time, however,
    elements in Turkish society have supported an Islamic revival and
    have argued that Turkey is basically a Middle Eastern Muslim society.
    In addition, while the elite of Turkey has defined Turkey as a
    Western society, the elite of the West refuses to accept Turkey as
    such. Turkey will not become a member of the European Community, and
    the real reason, as President Ozal said, "is that we are Muslim and
    they are Christian and they don't say that." Having rejected Mecca,
    and then being rejected by Brussels, where does Turkey look? Tashkent
    may be the answer. The end of the Soviet Union gives Turkey the
    opportunity to become the leader of a revived Turkic civilization
    involving seven countries from the borders of Greece to those of
    China. Encouraged by the West, Turkey is making strenuous efforts to
    carve out this new identity for itself.

    During the past decade Mexico has assumed a position somewhat similar
    to that of Turkey. Just as Turkey abandoned its historic opposition
    to Europe and attempted to join Europe, Mexico has stopped defining
    itself by its opposition to the United States and is instead
    attempting to imitate the United States and to join it in the North
    American Free Trade Area. Mexican leaders are engaged in the great
    task of redefining Mexican identity and have introduced fundamental
    economic reforms that eventually will lead to fundamental political
    change. In 1991 a top adviser to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari
    described at length to me all the changes the Salinas government was
    making. When he finished, I remarked: "That's most impressive. It
    seems to me that basically you want to change Mexico from a Latin
    American country into a North American country." He looked at me with
    surprise and exclaimed: "Exactly! That's precisely what we are trying
    to do, but of course we could never say so publicly." As his remark
    indicates, in Mexico as in Turkey, significant elements in society
    resist the redefinition of their country's identity. In Turkey,
    European-oriented leaders have to make gestures to Islam (Ozal's
    pilgrimage to Mecca); so also Mexico's North American-oriented
    leaders have to make gestures to those who hold Mexico to be a Latin
    American country (Salinas' Ibero-American Guadalajara summit).

    Historically Turkey has been the most profoundly torn country. For
    the United States, Mexico is the most immediate torn country.
    Globally the most important torn country is Russia. The question of
    whether Russia is part of the West or the leader of a distinct
    Slavic-Orthodox civilization has been a recurring one in Russian
    history. That issue was obscured by the communist victory in Russia,
    which imported a Western ideology, adapted it to Russian conditions
    and then challenged the West in the name of that ideology. The
    dominance of communism shut off the historic debate over
    Westernization versus Russification. With communism discredited
    Russians once again face that question.

    President Yeltsin is adopting Western principles and goals and
    seeking to make Russia a "normal" country and a part of the West. Yet
    both the Russian elite and the Russian public are divided on this
    issue. Among the more moderate dissenters, Sergei Stankevich argues
    that Russia should reject the "Atlanticist" course, which would lead
    it "to become European, to become a part of the world economy in
    rapid and organized fashion, to become the eighth member of the
    Seven, and to put particular emphasis on Germany and the United
    States as the two dominant members of the Atlantic alliance." While
    also rejecting an exclusively Eurasian policy, Stankevich nonetheless
    argues that Russia should give priority to the protection of Russians
    in other countries, emphasize its Turkic and Muslim connections, and
    promote "an appreciable redistribution of our resources, our options,
    our ties, and our interests in favor of Asia, of the eastern
    direction." People of this persuasion criticize Yeltsin for
    subordinating Russia's interests to those of the West, for reducing
    Russian military strength, for failing to support traditional friends
    such as Serbia, and for pushing economic and political reform in ways
    injurious to the Russian people. Indicative of this trend is the new
    popularity of the ideas of Petr Savitsky, who in the 1920s argued
    that Russia was a unique Eurasian civilization.(7) More extreme
    dissidents voice much more blatantly nationalist, anti-Western and
    anti-Semitic views, and urge Russia to redevelop its military
    strength and to establish closer ties with China and Muslim
    countries. The people of Russia are as divided as the elite. An
    opinion survey in European Russia in the spring of 1992 revealed that
    40 percent of the public had positive attitudes toward the West and
    36 percent had negative attitudes. As it has been for much of its
    history, Russia in the early 1990s is truly a torn country.

    To redefine its civilization identity, a torn country must meet three
    requirements. First, its political and economic elite has to be
    generally supportive of and enthusiastic about this move. Second, its
    public has to be willing to acquiesce in the redefinition. Third, the
    dominant groups in the recipient civilization have to be willing to
    embrace the convert. All three requirements in large part exist with
    respect to Mexico. The first two in large part exist with respect to
    Turkey. It is not clear that any of them exist with respect to
    Russia's joining the West. The conflict between liberal democracy and
    Marxism- Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major
    differences, ostensibly shared ultimate goals of freedom, equality
    and prosperity. A traditional, authoritarian, nationalist Russia
    could have quite different goals. A Western democrat could carry on
    an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist. It would be virtually
    impossible for him to do that with a Russian traditionalist. If, as
    the Russians stop behaving like Marxists, they reject liberal
    democracy and begin behaving like Russians but not like Westerners,
    the relations between Russia and the West could again become distant
    and conflictual.(8)

    THE CONFUCIAN-ISLAMIC CONNECTION

    The obstacles to non-Western countries joining the West vary
    considerably. They are least for Latin American and East European
    countries. They are greater for the Orthodox countries of the former
    Soviet Union. They are still greater for Muslim, Confucian, Hindu and
    Buddhist societies. Japan has established a unique position for
    itself as an associate member of the West: it is in the West in some
    respects but clearly not of the West in important dimensions. Those
    countries that for reason of culture and power do not wish to, or
    cannot, join the West compete with the West by developing their own
    economic, military and political power. They do this by promoting
    their internal development and by cooperating with other non-Western
    countries. The most prominent form of this cooperation is the
    Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western
    interests, values and power.

    Almost without exception, Western countries are reducing their
    military power; under Yeltsin's leadership so also is Russia. China,
    North Korea and several Middle Eastern states, however, are
    significantly expanding their military capabilities. They are doing
    this by the import of arms from Western and non-Western sources and
    by the development of indigenous arms industries. One result is the
    emergence of what Charles Krauthammer has called "Weapon States," and
    the Weapon States are not Western states. Another result is the
    redefinition of arms control, which is a Western concept and a
    Western goal. During the Cold War the primary purpose of arms control
    was to establish a stable military balance between the United States
    and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. In the post-Cold
    War world the primary objective of arms control is to prevent the
    development by non-Western societies of military capabilities that
    could threaten Western interests. The West attempts to do this
    through international agreements, economic pressure and controls on
    the transfer of arms and weapons technologies.

    The conflict between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states
    focuses largely, although not exclusively, on nuclear, chemical and
    biological weapons, ballistic missiles and other sophisticated means
    for delivering them, and the guidance, intelligence and other
    electronic capabilities for achieving that goal. The West promotes
    nonproliferation as a universal norm and nonproliferation treaties
    and inspections as means of realizing that norm. It also threatens a
    variety of sanctions against those who promote the spread of
    sophisticated weapons and proposes some benefits for those who do
    not. The attention of the West focuses, naturally, on nations that
    are actually or potentially hostile to the West.

    The non-Western nations, on the other hand, assert their right to
    acquire and to deploy whatever weapons they think necessary for their
    security. They also have absorbed, to the full, the truth of the
    response of the Indian defense minister when asked what lesson he
    learned from the Gulf War: "Don't fight the United States unless you
    have nuclear weapons." Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and missiles
    are viewed, probably erroneously, as the potential equalizer of
    superior Western conventional power. China, of course, already has
    nuclear weapons; Pakistan and India have the capability to deploy
    them. North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Algeria appear to be
    attempting to acquire them. A top Iranian official has declared that
    all Muslim states should acquire nuclear weapons, and in 1988 the
    president of Iran reportedly issued a directive calling for
    development of "offensive and defensive chemical, biological and
    radiological weapons."

    Centrally important to the development of counter-West military
    capabilities is the sustained expansion of China's military power and
    its means to create military power. Buoyed by spectacular economic
    development, China is rapidly increasing its military spending and
    vigorously moving forward with the modernization of its armed forces.
    It is purchasing weapons from the former Soviet states; it is
    developing long-range missiles; in 1992 it tested a one-megaton
    nuclear device. It is developing power-projection capabilities,
    acquiring aerial refueling technology, and trying to purchase an
    aircraft carrier. Its military buildup and assertion of sovereignty
    over the South China Sea are provoking a multilateral regional arms
    race in East Asia. China is also a major exporter of arms and weapons
    technology. It has exported materials to Libya and Iraq that could be
    used to manufacture nuclear weapons and nerve gas. It has helped
    Algeria build a reactor suitable for nuclear weapons research and
    production. China has sold to Iran nuclear technology that American
    officials believe could only be used to create weapons and apparently
    has shipped components of 300-mile-range missiles to Pakistan. North
    Korea has had a nuclear weapons program under way for some while and
    has sold advanced missiles and missile technology to Syria and Iran.
    The flow of weapons and weapons technology is generally from East
    Asia to the Middle East. There is, however, some movement in the
    reverse direction; China has received Stinger missiles from Pakistan.

    A Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus come into being,
    designed to promote acquisition by its members of the weapons and
    weapons technologies needed to counter the military power of the
    West. It may or may not last. At present, however, it is, as Dave
    McCurdy has said, "a renegades' mutual support pact, run by the
    proliferators and their backers." A new form of arms competition is
    thus occurring between Islamic-Confucian states and the West. In an
    old-fashioned arms race, each side developed its own arms to balance
    or to achieve superiority against the other side. In this new form of
    arms competition, one side is developing its arms and the other side
    is attempting not to balance but to limit and prevent that arms
    build-up while at the same time reducing its own military
    capabilities.

    IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WEST

    This article does not argue that civilization identities will replace
    all other identities, that nation states will disappear, that each
    civilization will become a single coherent political entity, that
    groups within a civilization will not conflict with and even fight
    each other. This paper does set forth the hypotheses that differences
    between civilizations are real and important; civilization-
    consciousness is increasing; conflict between civilizations will
    supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as the dominant
    global form of conflict; international relations, historically a game
    played out within Western civilization, will increasingly be
    de-Westernized and become a game in which non-Western civilizations
    are actors and not simply objects; successful political, security and
    economic international institutions are more likely to develop within
    civilizations than across civilizations; conflicts between groups in
    different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained and
    more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization;
    violent conflicts between groups in different civilizations are the
    most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead
    to global wars; the paramount axis of world politics will be the
    relations between "the West and the Rest"; the elites in some torn
    non-Western countries will try to make their countries part of the
    West, but in most cases face major obstacles to accomplishing this; a
    central focus of conflict for the immediate future will be between
    the West and several Islamic- Confucian states.

    This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between
    civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypotheses as to what
    the future may be like. If these are plausible hypotheses, however,
    it is necessary to consider their implications for Western policy.
    These implications should be divided between short-term advantage and
    long- term accommodation. In the short term it is clearly in the
    interest of the West to promote greater cooperation and unity within
    its own civilization, particularly between its European and North
    American components; to incorporate into the West societies in
    Eastern Europe and Latin America whose cultures are close to those of
    the West; to promote and maintain cooperative relations with Russia
    and Japan; to prevent escalation of local inter-civilization
    conflicts into major inter-civilization wars; to limit the expansion
    of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states; to moderate
    the reduction of Western military capabilities and maintain military
    superiority in East and Southwest Asia; to exploit differences and
    conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states; to support in other
    civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests; to
    strengthen international institutions that reflect and legitimate
    Western interests and values and to promote the involvement of
    non-Western states in those institutions.

    In the longer term other measures would be called for. Western
    civilization is both Western and modern. Non-Western civilizations
    have attempted to become modern without becoming Western. To date
    only Japan has fully succeeded in this quest. Non-Western
    civilizations will continue to attempt to acquire the wealth,
    technology, skills, machines and weapons that are part of being
    modern. They will also attempt to reconcile this modernity with their
    traditional culture and values. Their economic and military strength
    relative to the West will increase. Hence the West will increasingly
    have to accommodate these non-Western modern civilizations whose
    power approaches that of the West but whose values and interests
    differ significantly from those of the West. This will require the
    West to maintain the economic and military power necessary to protect
    its interests in relation to these civilizations. It will also,
    however, require the West to develop a more profound understanding of
    the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other
    civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see
    their interests. It will require an effort to identify elements of
    commonality between Western and other civilizations. For the relevant
    future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world
    of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to
    coexist with the others.




    Notes:

    (1) Murray Weidenbaum, Greater China: The Next Economic Superpower?,
    St. Louis: Washington University Center for the Study of American
    Business, Contemporary Issues, Series 57, February 1993, pp. 2-3.

    (2) Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," The Atlantic Monthly,
    vol. 266, September 1990, p. 6o; Time, June 15, 1992, pp. 24-28.

    (3) Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing, Boston: Little, Brown,
    i988, PP 332-333.

    (4) Almost invariably Western leaders claim they are acting on behalf
    of "the world community." One minor lapse occurred during the run-up
    to the Gulf War. In an interview on "Good Morning America," Dec. 21,
    1990, British Prime Minister John Major referred to the actions "the
    West" was taking against Saddam Hussein. He quickly corrected himself
    and subsequently referred to "the world community." He was, however,
    right when he erred.

    (5) Harry C. Triandis, The New York Times, Dec. 2S, 1990, p. 41, and
    "Cross-Cultural Studies of Individualism and Collectivism," Nebraska
    Symposium on Motivation, vol. 37, 1989, pp. 41-133.

    (6) Kishore Mahbubani, "The West and the Rest," The National
    Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 3-13.

    (7) Sergei Stankevich, "Russia in Search of Itself," The National
    Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 47-51; Daniel Schneider, "A Russian
    Movement Rejects Western Tilt," Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 5,
    1993, pp. 5-7.

    (8) Owen Harries has pointed out that Australia is trying (unwisely
    in his view) to become a torn country in reverse. Although it has
    been a full member not only of the West but also of the ABCA military
    and intelligence core of the West, its current leaders are in effect
    proposing that it defect from the West, redefine itself as an Asian
    country and cultivate dose ties with its neighbors. Australia's
    future, they argue, is with the dynamic economies of East Asia. But,
    as I have suggested, close economic cooperation normally requires a
    common cultural base. In addition, none of the three conditions
    necessary for a torn country to join another civilization is likely
    to exist in Australia's case.




    Samuel P. Huntington is the Eaton Professor of the Science of
    Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic
    Studies at Harvard University. This article is the product of the
    Olin Institute's project on "The Changing Security Environment and
    American National Interests."

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