The death of Huntington and the Clash of Civilisations
Posted by Theo Zhang on January 8th, 2009
Samuel P. Huntington died on the December 24th 2008, aged 81; one of the most controversial figures in the history of international relations, whose legacy is a chilling reminder about the complexity of political science.
In the plurality of thought marking the end of the Cold War in 1989, Huntington’s book on the “Clash of Civilisations” was perhaps the most thought-provoking and terrifying; a vision which has to an extent been realised in the events which have led to the current state of world affairs – with war and death being at the heart of the conduction of international relations.
Immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union the prevalent thought within political science was that democracy and capitalism had triumphed in the world. In what was an incredibly self-indulgent and arrogant attitude towards politics, the neo-conservative movement declared liberal democracy to be the victor in the battle of ideas, and that this was a perpetual and teleological trend towards a hegemony of political thought in the world, based around the Western model.
Huntington challenged this status-quo. He rightly asserted that it was irresponsible to believe that the collapse of the USSR left no active challenge in the fight for ideological supremacy. In his text “The Clash of Civilisations”, he brought politics back to what it really ultimately is – a brutal, bitter war of passions.
Huntington outlined several of the major ideological battles which will occur in the world in the coming future.
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He saw the rise of China as a great threat to liberal democracy. He questioned for what logical reason people believed China would ultimately adopt the Western model of development. Indeed as we see in the current state of the economy, the world is now relying on China to drag it out of its depression.
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He predicted Russia’s reassertion in the world stage. There was no good reason to believe a nuclear power with such a commanding presence in Eastern Europe would simply adopt Western political values and practices, and Russia is still a maverick in world affairs.
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Most importantly, he predicted the rise of a sect of radical Islam. This has been the most terrifying of his predictions, and is the most conclusive evidence against the “perpetual peace” attitude of writers such as Francis Fukuyama.
While Huntington will be remembered for being quite the cynic – a “party-pooper” so to speak, there is no doubt that he injected a sense of reality back in to international relations, and challenged the smug arrogance that the Western model was “superior” and that it would ultimately be adopted universally.
Indeed one notices in a time of economic hardship a greater degree of introspection. For the Western ideology to survive it needs to view itself as a work in progress, and address the pressing issues of a crisis of democratic legitemacy and representation.
If we claim the Cold War as a triumph of ideological supremacy then it seemingly follows that ideology will be crucial in winning the pressing “war” on “terror”.
Filed under: 9/11, foreignpolicy on January 8th, 2009
The link between economic slowdown and ideological introspection (inevitably mostly in the area of economics) is interesting….If global recession continues to bite and countries start defaulting it will be a crucial time to see which economic models parts of the developing world choose to follow.
A large part of the world’s economic growth in the past decade has been in non or barely democratic governments- China, Middle East, Russia and there are already signs that developing nations in South America and Africa, are seeing the political systems of China as the model for development and not the free-market…
Theo, I haven’t read any of Huntington’s writing myself (so I could be getting this all wrong!), but I have a few questions based on the things I’ve read about him:
How exactly is Huntington a reminder of the “complexity of political science”? His Clash of Civilisations theory was famous for its generalisations and oversimplifications. His seven or eight “civilisations” simply reduced the world into “neat logical categories” (to use his phrase). Francis Wheen once criticised the Clash of Civilisations as being “noisy with the sounds of sawing and stretching as the facts are forced into the bed that has been prepared for them.” For example, Huntington argued that Greece “is not part of Western Civilisation” on the basis of its Orthodox Christianity. To bolster this dubious argument, he added that Greece also does not belong as it was ruled by a military junta from 1967-1974. How then, does he include Spain as part Western Civilisation when it was ruled by Franco’s dictatorship for almost 40 years? Do such artificial classifications really reflect the complexity of political science?
Didn’t he also criticise Australian politicians for “cultivating close ties with its Asian neighbours” as “successful economic association needs a commonality of civilisation”? Perhaps I’ve oversimplified his argument (like I said, I haven’t read the Clash of Civilisations myself) but doesn’t this argument fly in the face of international economic cooperation?
Isn’t his theory of monolithic civilisations undermined by the fact that most conflict is not between civilisations but within them? Hutu v Tutsi, Shia v Sunni, Catholic v Protestant etc?
By contrasting Western civilization with “Islamic civilization,” “Hindu civilization,” “Buddhist civilization,” and so on, doesn’t Huntington overlook the many identities that any human being has and try to classify individuals according to a single identity? Amartya Sen criticized this approach for animating dangerous divisiveness.
In “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity”, Huntington claimed that Latino immigrants have “a “lack of ambition” and an “acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entry into Heaven”. He also identified multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and bilingualism as threats to American society. What do you make of this?
Like I said, I might have this all wrong as I haven’t actually read any Huntington, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
re: JC
As a point in political science it’s quite easy to find faults in any prolific argument. For me, his significance is in the way he reinterpreted the post-war political landscape. A lot of what he wrote was absolute bollocks and I can’t say I am a fan either of his attitude or his method.
I claim his writing reaffirmed the complexities of interpreting the state of affairs, not that his writings were complex in themselves or that he claimed them to be. The reference point for this is the incessant dichotomous view of the world propagated by many since the time of “Liberal democracy vs Fascism”, “Liberal democracy vs Communism”. Even now a popular conception of politics is “Liberal democracy vs dictatorship or faction” - Huntington’s writing reminds us that you can’t see our role in the world in such a way.
I wasn’t aiming to address his writing in a broader perspective, I think to do so would require more than a 300 word blog post; yet simply on the point of predicting what is a reasonbly accurate state of affairs in the 21st Century I think he deserves some credit.
I don’t know why you contrast Huntington with the neocons. Isn’t Huntington’s picture often seen as underwriting neoconservatism?
After all, neocons don’t see a “perpetual and teleological trend” towards the triumph of liberal democracy. They think the opposite: that any triumph of liberal democracy will require a great deal of effort, and that the project must be undertaken actively by the United States.
The neocon’s axiom is that the adoption of liberal democracy around the world ought to happen, irrespective of whether it has or will.
I disagree with you on this point. Huntington was very much seen as the antithesis to neo-conservative thought and continues to be so. Huntington didn’t support the war in Iraq and did not believe the battle would be won with active intervention in other states.
The neoconservative movement is about forcing a model of development upon other countries. Huntongton thought this attitude would further draw them away from the Western tradition of thought.
On the point of the teleological nature of neo-conservatism, the reason they are so happy to impose the physical manifestation of democracy is because they believe it is honed to such an extent that it’s “superior” and hence “for their own good” and the greater good. Fukuyama is an example of a writer who espouses this type of argument.
Huntington may have disagreed with the neocons’ methods, but they saw the world along similar lines and saw the threat of Islamist ideology in similar terms — I don’t quite see how one can be the “antithesis” of the other. I suppose this is a matter of individual interpretation.
I’m also still puzzled about the “teleology” of neoconservatism. Of course they have a goal — the triumph of liberal democracy — but they have no presupposition that progress towards this goal is natural or inevitable. Progress must be hard won.
The claim that liberal democracy is “superior” and “for their own good” when compared to rival systems (e.g. Ba’athist totalitarianism) strikes me as a moral claim that transition to democracy is right, not a teleological claim that progress towards democracy is natural or inevitable. While the latter claim would be foolish, the former claim strikes me as sound. One can say that the democratic rights we enjoy ought to be enjoyed by everyone in the world, even though this ideal is pie in the sky.
The fact that something is inevitable is often a justification for doing something. Marx believed the communist world state was inevitable too but nevertheless advocated intervening to make it happen.
On your final point, I don’t believe Huntington would see the world in such terms, and that’s what I claim contrasts with the neoconservatives. Huntington wouldn’t see democracy as any better or worse than another system, nor would he advocate political action on this basis.
On the teleological point - the basis for this can be seen in Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” - one of the most influential texts in neo-conservative thought, and an opinion which was very popular at the time (I doubt people still see the world like this now).
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” - Fukuyama
He speaks on behalf of mankind when declaring democracy as the inevitable and ultimately universal philosophy of government.
Contrast that with “The Clash of Civilisations” where he responds to this argument directly:
“Societies that assume history has ended are societies that whose history is about to decline” (p301, Touchstone books)
I suppose Fukuyama (like Marx) does practise a kind of “normative history” — history that says “this ought to happen because history shows us it’s inevitable”. I don’t think this is ever a correct line of reasoning.
But I don’t think it’s quite fair to say neoconservatism as a whole is committed to or built upon this view. As you say, the Bush administration wanted to spread democracy on the basis that it’s “superior” and “for their own good,” which doesn’t presuppose any theory about history.
I think the neoconservative movement had to change in the face of 9/11. Before they were happy just to pay/bribe states to adopt certain political practices but in the last few years they have become particularly militant, possibly influenced by Huntington’s pessimism about the nature of democracy in the future.
I agree I don’t think the inevitability of democracy is particularly relevant any more, especially in the motivations for going to Iraq, but I see that as the success of Huntington in changing Neoconservatism (not in a way he would have wanted).
Perhaps a good phrase for the Bush neocons would be “moral Huntingtonians”. They combine Fukuyama’s faith in the rightness of democracy with Huntington’s scepticism that democracy can spread without “clash”.