As
the Cold War was drawing to an end, various intellectuals had undertaken the
task of explaining and predicting post-Cold War global politics. Fukuyama and
Samuel P Huntington were such eminent scholars. Fukuyama wrote his thesis, End
of History, declaring the triumph of the ideologies of Liberal democracy
forever. According to him, now the war of ideologies is over and there is no
rival ideology of liberal democracy. His argument becomes susceptible to
criticism today when the whole Western world is at war with the ideology of
“terrorism”.
Some
years later in 1993, Samuel P Huntington wrote his article, “The Clash of
Civilization?” in the magazine Foreign Affairs. It was the most reputed and
thought-provoking piece of writing published in that distinguished magazine
since George Kennan’s article, The sources of Soviet conduct, published in July
1947. Huntington later on elaborated those very arguments in his book titled,
the clash of Civilizations and the remaking of World order.
Huntington
observes that for a century and a half following the nailing down of the Treaty
of Westphalia in 1648, conflicts used to occur largely among princes and these
conflicts led to the creation of nation states. After the French Revolution,
the principle lines of conflict shifted between nations rather than princes.
The end of this 19th century pattern coincides with the end of the
First World War. Then in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the
conflict of nation states yielded to the conflict of ideologies. Since the
demise of the communist ideology, the configuration of global politics along
cultural lines in underway. Huntington says, “In the 20th century,
the relations among civilizations have thus moved from a phase dominated by the
unidirectional impact of one civilization on all others to one of intense,
sustained and multi-directional interactions among all civilizations.” He
contends that local politics is the politics of ethnicity, global politics is
the politics of civilization and the rivalry of superpower is replaced by the
clash of civilizations.
According
to Huntington, a civilization is a cultural entity. Huntington designates
religion to be the most important of the entire objective elements that define
a civilization, to a very large degree, the major civilizations in human
history have been closely identified with the world’s greatest religion and
people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter
each other, as happened in Lebanon and the Subcontinent. Huntington divides
civilizations, Hindu, Islamic, Western, Latin American and African. Some
analysis does not recognize the Japanese and African civilizations as distinct
civilizations. He puts forward the following reasons for the inter-civilization
conflict.
The
increasing interactions among people of different civilizations are
intensifying civilization consciousness and awareness of differences and
commonalities amongst civilizations. According to Huntington, the enhancement
of civilization consciousness of people due to interactions among people of
different civilizations, in turn, invigorates differences and animosities stretching
back deep into history.
During
the Cold War a country could be non-aligned or it could change its alignment
from one side to the other. The leaders of countries could make these choices
in terms of their perceptions of their security interests, their calculation of
the balance of power, and their ideological preferences. In the new world that
emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cultural identity is the
central factor in shaping a country’s associations and antagonisms. The
question asked during the Cold War, “which side are you on?” has been replaced
by a more fundamental question now, “Who are you? Every state has to have an
answer. The 1990s have witnessed the eruption of the global identity crises. In
coping with the identity crises what counts for the people are blood and
belief, faith and family? Modernization taking place in non-Western societies
is leading towards cultural resurgence in those societies. Modernization brings
changes at the individual’s level, as well as social level. At the societal
level, it increases the economic, military and potential power while at the
individual level it leads to alienation and identity crises. Both of these
changes contribute in bringing religious, as well as cultural resurgence.
Huntington observes that spurred by modernization, global politics is
reconfigured along cultural lines. People and countries with similar cultures
are coming together and those with different cultures are coming apart.
Alignment defined by ideology and superpower relations is given way to
alignments defined by culture and civilizations.
The
fundamental clash, according to Huntington, will be between the West on one
side and the Sinic and Islamic civilization on the other. The conflict along
the fault lines between Western and Islamic civilization has been going on for
1300 years. There are various factors that have contributed in intensifying the
Islam-West conflict in the late 20th century.
· A surge in population growth in the Muslim
countries led to unemployment in these societies and the youth became recruits
to Islamist causes.
· Islamic resurgence – an offshoot of “back to
the roots” phenomenon created culture consciousness among the Muslims more vigorously
than at any other time in history.
· The west is trying to universalize its value
and impose them on other countries, including Muslims, while relaxing its
economic and military muscles, but at the same time the West is not realizing
the decline in its capability to do so or increase in the power of other
societies to resist any such attempt.
But
if we take a down –to-earth analysis of this theory, we will find various flaws
that render its validity and application in the present era in doubt. But while
comparing these two situations, he over looked the basic point that the period
of the Allies. Soviet pact was the period of “ideologies” that today is over.
Besides this, his contention of Islamic Chinese cooperation negates his very
thesis that now there is grouping in the world along cultural lines.
Second,
MK palat observes that the weakest point of ‘clashing civilizations’ theory is
the confusion of civilization as power bloc. Akbar S Ahmad said, “The Muslim
world seems to be torn between those who would shake heaven and earth to get a
green card and become Americans and those shake heaven and the earth to damage
and destroy American. Thus why were the relations between Islam and the West
stormy in the 11th century when there was no modernization process
and thus culture consciousness?
Fourth,
Huntington himself concedes the fact that there is no core state in the
“Islamic World”. Thus the absence of leadership will be followed by the absence
of organization to act in concert against the Western civilization.
Fifth,
according to Samuel, religion is the most significant of all the objective
elements defining civilization. But Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan was
connected with language and politics and not religion.
Sixth,
Amartya Sen in his essay titled “A world not neatly divided” attacks
Huntington’s theory by giving the example of movements that involve people
without any distinction of culture, language or politics. He cites an example
of anti globalization protesters whose movement includes all the poor people
across borders, regardless of territorial boundaries or any other barrier.
