How “civilizational” Are Modern Clashes.

How “civilizational” are modern clashes.

Conflicts are as old as the universe. They occurred in the past and will continue to occur in the future. As R. Lee put it – “Society without conflicts is a dead society”. Some political thinkers, L. Coser in particular, even consider the conflicts to have a number of positive fallouts. They draw attention to the problem, make people search for the ways to solve the deadlock, warn about stagnation and thus, they promote the world development. Indeed, we hardly are able to avoid conflicts. What we do manage – is to learn the nature of contemporary conflicts and predict where and on what basis they will occur. In this way we will be able to devise best ways of resolving them.  

In 1993 Foreign Affairs published a thesis by a political analyst and Harvard professor Samuel Huntington called “The clash of civilizations?” which swept away traditional perception of conflicts and became the worlds most debated article.  Greeting the end of the Cold War Huntington argued that the generation of ideological conflicts and conflicts between nation-states is over. The Post-Cold War conflicts will be the conflicts between civilizations where culture and identity will replace ideology and territory as the sources of disputes.

After 22 years Huntington’s “The clash of civilizations” outlived its time, however not totally lost its topicality. The world of now is interconnected due to the globalization and national interests today to some extent may overshadow cultural differences. Nevertheless, many of the recent conflicts are reminiscent of Huntington’s hypothesis about new conflicts.

Published three years after the end of the Cold War, Huntington’s hypothesis was deluged with criticism.  Shocking events of 9/11 however, were the first hit to Huntington’s critics. As he predicted, the first clash of civilizations between the West in the face of Christian Catholic USA and the Non-West in the face of Islamic fundamentalists started.

Huntington narrated about a so called double trend with the West being at its peak of power and striving to pose its identities and values to non-westerners and the Non-West returning to their roots and trying to block the western type of the world order. Huntington argued that western ideas of liberalism, individualism and human rights have little support in non-western societies. Thus, propagating these believes triggers a “reaction against human rights” and a “reaffirmation of indigenous values”^[1] which in result reinforces the support for religious fundamentalism in non-western countries. Consequently, the focal point of world politics in the future will be the conflict between “the West and the Rest” and the challenge of non-Westerners against western power and values – warned Huntington.