A well-known, extremely influential political scientist of global importance, one of the most advanced in the last fifty years. To the great regret of scientists and political scientists on the planet, Samuel passed away at the end of December 2008.
Samuel Huntington was born on April 18, 1927 in New York. At the age of eighteen, he graduated with honors from Yale University. Afterwards, it happened in the American army.
Upon completion of his service, Samuel Phillips Huntington entered the University of Chicago and, after graduating, was awarded a master's degree. After some time, Samuel received an honorary diploma from Harvard University and, at the age of 23, began teaching at this educational institution. By the way, it was Hamtington who was a member of the Harvard State Department from 1950 until the last day of his life.
Samuel Huntington published his first global book in the late fifties of the last century. It was called “The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations,” and it really made an impression on society. Then Samuel began to be considered one of the most prominent political scientists, with progressive views on the economic and social development of society. In total, the scientist created seventeen works, including co-authorship with other prominent figures. Huntington's books focused primarily on US government, democracy, politics, and society.
Since 1967, Samuel Phillips Huntington has worked in State Department United States and served as a consultant. In 1977 and 1978, Huntington worked with the Jimmy Carter administration, coordinating security issues and other matters in the White House.
Political scientist Samuel Phillips Huntington gained worldwide fame after the publication of his book “Clash of Civilizations” in 1996. The work of the political scientist caused a lot of noise and caused a sea of controversy about the confrontation between Islamic and Western societies.
The scientist worked until the last day of his life, most recently at home.
HUNTINGTON, PHILLIPS SAMUEL(Huntington, Samuel P.) (1927-2008) - American political scientist, creator of the geopolitical concept of the “clash of civilizations.”
Received a good education by studying political philosophy. In 1946 he received a bachelor's degree from Yale University, and in 1948 a master's degree from the University of Chicago. Served in the army. In 1951 he received his PhD from Harvard University.
Huntington's biography is typical of modern highly qualified Western intellectuals who combine teaching, scientific work, government activities and management of scientific centers.
From 1950 to 1958 he taught at Harvard, then from 1959 to 1962 he worked as deputy director of the Institute for the Study of War and Peace at Columbia University. During this period, his first monograph was published, which caused very mixed reviews - The soldier and the state: theory and practice of relations between civil authorities and the military (The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, 1957).
Having established himself as a qualified theoretician, Huntington began to actively work in the US government apparatus. From 1967–1969 and 1970–1971 he chaired the Department of Political Science at Harvard University.
During this period, his monograph became very famous Political order in changing societies (Political Order in Changing Societies, 1968), which became one of the classic works devoted to the analysis political systems developing countries. In an effort to consolidate the community of American political scientists, he founded the journal Foreign Policy in 1970. Foreign policy"). Until 1977, Huntington was co-editor of the journal, which became one of the world's most authoritative political science publications.
In 1973 he worked as deputy director of the Center for International Relations; in 1977–1978 – coordinator of the planning department at the US National Security Council; in 1978–1989 – director of the Center for International Relations.
Since 1989, Huntington has returned to primarily scientific and administrative work, taking up the post of director of the Institute for Strategic Studies. John Olin at Harvard University. Since 1996 he has headed the Harvard Academy of International and Regional Studies.
His main interests include issues of national security, strategy, relationships between civilian population and military, problems of democratization and economic development developing countries, cultural factors in world politics, problems of American national identity.
Among political scientists of the 21st century. Huntington is known primarily as the author of the concept of the “clash of civilizations,” which polemicizes the concept of the “end of history” by F. Fukuyama. Huntington first outlined his view on geopolitical socio-political problems in 1993 in an article Clash of civilizations? Published in Foreign Policy, it caused a worldwide stir and became the basis for a book The Clash of Civilizations and the Rethinking of World Order (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996), which became a global scientific bestseller.
If Fukuyama proposed to consider the main factor determining modern world politics, complete victory liberal ideology, Huntington considered this approach overly optimistic. In his opinion, at the end of the 20th century. The geopolitical balance of power is determined by ideologies that go beyond the traditional opposition between liberalism and authoritarianism. The main opposing forces are civilizations that unite groups of countries with similar mental values.
Following A. Toynbee, Huntington argues that “human history is the history of civilizations.” According to Huntington, in the modern world there is a clash of 7 or 8 civilizations - Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, Latin American and, possibly, African. Within a civilization there is usually a core country that organizes a unified policy for the entire group of countries with similar cultural norms (such as the USA in modern Western civilization). Every civilization strives to expand its influence or at least maintain its identity from pressure from other civilizations. Instead of the ideological confrontation of the 20th century. In the 21st century, intercultural conflicts will play a major role.
In the 16th - first half of the 20th centuries. the main dominant force was Western civilization, imposing its values on everyone else. However, in the 20th century. the world becomes first bipolar (the confrontation between the West and Soviet Russia), and then multipolarity gradually forms. Western civilization is gradually losing its leadership, but the independence of the Far Eastern civilizations and the civilization of Islam is growing. In the modern world, the main thing has become the division into “the West and everyone else,” with the most aggressive anti-Western struggle being waged by Islamic civilization. Conflicts are growing along “fault lines” where protracted local wars are taking place (as, for example, in the Middle East). In this new world, the West must abandon claims to the universality of its values and attempts to impose them by force in European countries.
After the events of September 11, 2001, Huntington began to be called a “seer” who predicted the escalation of Islamic extremism. Following his concept, he protested against the US invasion of Iraq in 2004, believing that this would only lead to widespread aggravation of relations between the West and the Islamic world.
If in Clash of Civilizations Huntington analyzed intercivilizational conflicts mainly as confrontation between groups of states, then in his monograph Who are we? Challenges to American National Identity (Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, 2004) he focused on the problems associated with international migration. According to Huntington, flows of migrants from developing countries create enclaves of a different culture in developed Western countries. As a result, a “clash of civilizations” is no longer occurring only between countries, but also within multi-ethnic countries that are in danger of losing their cultural identity. Thus, for the United States, the greatest danger, Huntington believes, is the flow of Latin American migrants, most of whom do not share the basic values of Protestant Anglo-Saxon culture.
Huntington's ideas are very popular not only among social scientists, but also among the general public. This is largely facilitated by the deliberate polemics and popular style of presentation of his scientific works, which often cause a kind of scientific scandals and provoke heated discussions.
This historical and philosophical treatise is devoted to the structure of the world after cold war. The author substantiates the idea of a multipolar world, including 8 civilizations: Western, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American and African. The book became a bestseller in the 90s and is widely quoted. A recent book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson views Huntington's work as laying the foundation for a cultural studies approach to explaining the world. The author also dwells on the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, and says that a conflict is unlikely. He rather predicts a cultural split in Ukraine into western (Uniate) and eastern (Orthodox) parts.
Samuel Huntington. Clash of Civilizations. – M.: AST, 2016. – 640 p.
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PART I. WORLD OF CIVILIZATIONS
Chapter 1. New era of world politics
The main idea of this work is that in the post-Cold War world, culture and different kinds cultural identification is determined by patterns of cohesion, disintegration and conflict. In five parts of the book, consequences are drawn from this main premise.
- For the first time in history, global politics is both multipolar and multicivilizational; modernization is separated from “Westernization” - the spread of Western ideals and norms does not lead to the emergence of a universal civilization in the strict sense of the word, nor to the Westernization of non-Western societies.
- The balance of influence between civilizations is shifting: the relative influence of the West is declining; the economic, military and political power of Asian civilizations is growing; the population explosion of Islam has destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors; non-Western civilizations reaffirm the value of their cultures.
- A world order based on civilizations emerges: societies with cultural similarities cooperate with each other; attempts to transfer societies from one civilization to another are fruitless; countries are grouped around the leading or core countries of their civilizations.
- The universalist claims of the West are increasingly leading to conflicts with other civilizations, the most serious with Islam and China; at the local level of war on fault lines, for the most part- between Muslims and non-Muslims, cause a “rallying of kindred countries”, the threat of further escalation of the conflict and, consequently, the efforts of the main countries to stop these wars.
- The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identification and accepting their civilization as unique rather than universal, and on them uniting to preserve civilization against the challenges of non-Western societies. A global war of civilizations can be avoided only when world leaders accept the multicivilizational nature of global politics and begin to cooperate to maintain it.
“The international system of the twenty-first century,” observed Henry Kissinger, “will consist of at least six major powers—the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Russia, and perhaps India—as well as many medium and small states.” Kissinger's six powers belong to five different civilizations, and in addition there are also important Islamic countries whose strategic location, large population and oil reserves make them very influential figures in world politics. In this new world, local politics are ethnic or racial politics; global politics is the politics of civilizations. Superpower rivalry has given way to a clash of civilizations.
In this new world, the biggest, most important, and most dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, poor and rich, and between peoples of different cultural identifications. Violence between countries and groups and groups from different civilizations, however, carries with it the potential for escalation, as other countries and groups from these civilizations call for help from their “brother countries”.
Countries with Western Christian roots are achieving success in economic development and the establishment of democracy; economic and political development in Orthodox countries they are vague; The prospects for Muslim countries are completely bleak.
It is simplistic to think that the landscape of post-Cold War world politics is determined solely by cultural factors. But for a thoughtful analysis of the situation in the world and effective influence on it, some kind of simplified map of reality, some kind of theory, model, paradigm is needed. Intelligent and cultural progress, as Thomas Kuhn showed in his classic work, consists of the replacement of one paradigm, which has ceased to find explanations for new or new open facts, another paradigm that interprets these facts more satisfactorily.
By the end of the Cold War, several maps, or paradigms, of world politics had been developed. One widely voiced paradigm was based on the premise that the end of the Cold War meant the end of large-scale conflict in global politics and the emergence of one relatively harmonious world. The illusion of harmony during the end of the Cold War was soon dispelled by numerous ethnic conflicts. The harmonious peace paradigm is too divorced from reality to be a useful guide in the post-Cold War world.
Two worlds: us and them. The most common division, which appears under many names, is the contrast between rich (modern, developed) countries and poor (traditional, undeveloped or developing) countries. The historical counterpart to this economic division has been the cultural division between East and West, where the emphasis is less on differences in economic wealth and more on differences in underlying philosophy, values, and lifestyle.
The economic development of Asia and Latin America makes the simple “have-have-not” dichotomy unclear. Rich countries can wage trade wars with each other; poor countries can lead bloody wars together; but an international class war between the poor South and the prosperous West is as far from reality as a harmonious world. The world is too complex to be, in most cases, simply divided economically into North and South and culturally into East and West.
The third post-Cold War world map was generated by international relations theory, which is often called "realist". According to this theory, states are the main, even the only important players on the international stage, relations between countries are complete anarchy, therefore, in order to ensure survival and security, all states without exception are trying to strengthen the two powers. This approach is called statistical. However, government authorities have largely lost the ability to control the flow of money into and out of their countries and are finding it increasingly difficult to control the flow of ideas, technology, goods and people. State borders have become as transparent as possible. All these changes led many to witness the gradual withering away of the solid “billiard ball” state and the emergence of a complex, diverse and multi-layered international order.
The weakening of states and the emergence of “bankrupt countries” suggests global anarchy as the fourth model. The main ideas of this paradigm: extinction state power; collapse of states; increased intertribal, ethnic and religious conflicts; the emergence of international criminal mafia structures; increase in the number of refugees. And yet, the picture of general and undifferentiated anarchy gives us few clues to understanding the world and does not help us to order events and assess their importance, to foresee trends in this anarchy, to distinguish between types of chaos and their possible causes and consequences, or to develop guidelines for state politicians.
These four paradigms are incompatible with each other. Either the world is one, or there are two of them, or there are 184 states, or there is an infinite number of tribes, ethnic groups and nationalities. By viewing the world in terms of seven or eight civilizations, we avoid many of these complexities. This model does not sacrifice reality to theorization.
Various paradigms allow predictions to be made, the accuracy of which is a key test of the performance and suitability of a theory. The statistical approach, for example, allowed John Mearsheimer to suggest that “the relationship between Russia and Ukraine has developed in such a way that both countries are ready to engage in competition on security issues. Great powers that share a long and insecure border are often drawn into confrontations over security issues. Russia and Ukraine can overcome these dynamics and coexist in harmony, but this will be a very unusual development of the situation.”
The multicivilizational approach, on the contrary, places emphasis on the very close cultural and historical ties between Russia and Ukraine. This long-known key historical fact is completely ignored by Mearsheimer, in full accordance with the “realist” concept of states as integral and self-determining entities, focusing on the civilizational “fault line” that divides Ukraine into the Orthodox eastern and Uniate western parts. While the statistical approach highlights the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian war, the civilizational approach reduces it to a minimum and emphasizes the possibility of a split in Ukraine. Considering cultural factor, we can assume that with this division there will be more violence than with the collapse of Czechoslovakia, but it will be much less bloody than the collapse of Yugoslavia (let me remind you that the book was written in 1996).
Chapter 2. History and today of civilizations
Human history is the history of civilizations. Throughout history, civilizations have provided the highest level of identification for people. As a result of this, the origins, emergence, rise, interaction, achievements, decline and fall of civilizations were studied in detail by outstanding historians, sociologists and anthropologists, among whom were: Max Weber (see), Emile Durkheim, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, Arnold Toynbee (see . ) and etc.
The idea of civilization was developed by eighteenth-century French philosophers as a counterpoint to the concept of “barbarism.” A civilized society differs from a primitive society in that it is sedentary, urban and literate. But at the same time, people increasingly spoke of civilizations in the plural. The concept of "civilization" has "lost the properties of a label" and one of many civilizations may actually be quite uncivilized in the old sense of the word.
The major civilizations in human history have been identified to a great extent with the great religions of the world; and people of a common ethnicity and language, but different religions, can wage bloody fratricidal wars, as happened in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia and Hindustan.
While civilizations resist the onslaught of time, they evolve. Quigley sees seven stages through which civilizations pass: mixture, maturation, expansion, time of conflict, universal empire, decline and conquest. Toynbee believes that civilization arises in response to challenges and then goes through a period of growth, including increased control over the environment by the creative elite, followed by a time of unrest, the emergence of a universal state, and then collapse.
After reviewing the literature, Melko concludes that there is "reasonable agreement" regarding twelve major civilizations, of which seven have already disappeared (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Cretan, Classical, Byzantine, Central American, Andean) and five continue to exist (Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic and Western). To these five civilizations it is advisable to add Orthodox, Latin American and, possibly, African civilizations.
Some scholars identify a separate Orthodox civilization centered in Russia, distinct from Western Christianity due to its Byzantine roots, two hundred years Tatar yoke, bureaucratic despotism and the limited influence on it of the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and other significant events that took place in the West.
The relationship between civilizations has already evolved through two phases and is now in the third. For more than three thousand years after civilizations first emerged, contact between them, with a few exceptions, was either non-existent and limited, or intermittent and intense.
European Christianity began to emerge as a separate civilization in the 8th–9th centuries. For several centuries, however, it lagged behind many other civilizations in terms of its level of development. China under the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties, the Islamic world from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, and Byzantium from the eighth to the eleventh centuries were far ahead of Europe in accumulated wealth, size of territory and military power, as well as artistic, literary and scientific achievements. By 1500, the revival of European culture was already in full swing, and social pluralism, expanding trade and technological advances laid the foundation for a new era of global politics. Random, short-lived and varied contacts between civilizations have given way to the continuous, all-consuming, unidirectional influence of the West on all other civilizations.
For four hundred years, the relationship between civilizations has been to subjugate other societies to Western civilization. The reasons for this unique and dramatic development lay in social structure and interclass relations in the West, the rise of cities and trade, the relative dispersion of power between vassals and monarchs and secular and religious authorities, the emerging sense of national identity among Western peoples and the development of state bureaucracies. The West did not conquer the world because of the superiority of its ideas, values or religion (to which only a few a large number of representatives of other civilizations), but rather superiority in the use of organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners will never forget this.
In the twentieth century, the relationship between civilizations moved from a phase characterized by the unidirectional influence of one civilization on all others, to a stage of intense, continuous and multidirectional relationships between all civilizations.
In 1918, Spengler dispelled the myopic view of history prevailing in the West with its clear division into ancient, medieval and modern periods. He spoke of the need to establish instead of "the empty fiction of one linear history - the drama of several powerful powers." Twentieth century illusions have blossomed into the widespread and inherently limited concept that European civilization The West is the universal civilization of the world.
Chapter 3. Universal civilization? Modernization and Westernization
Some believe that today's world is becoming a "universal civilization." This term implies the cultural unification of humanity and the increasing acceptance by people all over the world of common values, beliefs, practices, traditions and institutions.
The central elements of any culture or civilization are language and religion. If a universal civilization is now emerging, then there must be tendencies towards the emergence universal language and universal religion. However, this is not the case (Figures 1 and 2).
Rice. 1. Speakers of the most common languages (% of world population)
At the end of the twentieth century, the concept of a universal civilization helps justify Western cultural dominance over other societies and the need for those societies to copy Western traditions and institutions. It is naive stupidity to think that collapse Soviet communism means the final victory of the West throughout the world, a victory that will cause Muslims, Chinese, Indians and other peoples to rush into the arms of Western liberalism as the only alternative.
Does trade increase or decrease the likelihood of conflict? The facts do not support the liberal, internationalist assumption that commerce brings peace (Thomas Friedman in the book believes otherwise. He cites as an example the conflict between India and Pakistan, during which the Indian commercial lobby, fearing losses, was able to influence the government As a result, the conflict did not enter the military phase).
The global religious revival, the “return to the sacred,” is a response to the tendency to perceive the world as “one whole.”
The expansion of the West entailed the modernization and Westernization of non-Western societies. The response of the political and intellectual leaders of these societies to the influence of the West can be attributed to one of three options: rejection of both modernization and Westernization (Japan until the mid-19th century); accepting both with open arms (Kemal Ataturk's Turkey); acceptance of the first and rejection of the second (Japan at the beginning of the 20th century). As Braudel put it, it would be naive to think that modernization or “the triumph of civilization can lead to the end of the multiplicity of historical cultures that have embodied over the centuries into the world's greatest civilizations. Modernization, on the contrary, strengthens these cultures and reduces the relative influence of the West. On fundamental level the world is becoming more modern and less Western.
PART 2. THE MIXED BALANCE OF CIVILIZATIONS
Chapter 4. The Decline of the West: Power, Culture and Indigenization
The West's dominance is now undeniable, and it will remain number one in terms of power and influence well into the twenty-first century. However, gradual, inevitable and fundamental changes are also taking place in the balance of power between civilizations, and the power of the West relative to that of other civilizations will continue to decline.
Western control of resources peaked in the 1920s and has declined irregularly but significantly since then. In the 2020s, a hundred years after the peak, the West will likely control about 24% of the world's territory (instead of 49% at the peak), 10% of the world's population (instead of 48%), and perhaps about 15–20% of social mobilized population, about 30% of the world's economic output (at peak - about 70%), perhaps 25% of manufacturing output (at peak - 84%) and less than 10% of the total number of military personnel (was 45%).
The distribution of cultures in the world reflects the distribution of power. American hegemony is fading. What follows is the collapse of Western culture. The increasing power of non-Western societies brought about by modernization is leading to the resurgence of non-Western cultures around the world. As Western power declines, so too does the West's ability to impose Western ideas about human rights, liberalism, and democracy on other civilizations, and the attractiveness of these values to other civilizations also diminishes.
Chapter 5: Economy, Demography, and Challenging Civilizations
The revival of religion is a global phenomenon. However, it has manifested itself most clearly in the cultural affirmation of Asia and Islam, and the challenges it poses to the West. These are the most dynamic civilizations of the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Islamic challenge is expressed in a comprehensive cultural, social and political Islamic revival in the Muslim world and the accompanying rejection of Western values and institutions. The Asian challenge is common to all East Asian civilizations - Xing, Japanese, Buddhist and Muslim - and emphasizes their cultural differences from the West.
Each of these challenges has a highly destabilizing effect on global politics and will continue to do so into the twenty-first century. However, the nature of these challenges varies significantly. The economic development of China and other Asian countries gives their governments the incentive and means to be more demanding in their relations with other states. Population growth in Muslim countries, especially the increase age group from 15 to 24 years old, provides people for the ranks of fundamentalists, terrorists, rebels and migrants. Economic growth gives strength to Asian governments; demographic growth poses a threat to both Muslim governments and non-Muslim countries.
For residents East Asia economic success is proof moral superiority. If at some point India snatches the title of the fastest growing region in the world from East Asia, then the world must be prepared for a comprehensive study on the superiority of Hindu culture, the contribution of the caste system to economic development and how to return to roots and abandon the destructive The Western legacy left by British imperialism finally helped India take its rightful place among the leading civilizations. Cultural affirmation follows material success; hard power gives birth to soft power.
The Islamic revival, in its scope and depth, is the last phase in the adaptation of Islamic civilization to the West, an attempt to find a “solution” not in Western ideologies, but in Islam. It consists of accepting modernity, rejecting Western culture and returning to Islam as a guide in life and in the modern world. Islamic "fundamentalism", which is often perceived as political Islam, is just one component in a much more comprehensive process of revival of Islamic ideas, customs and rhetoric, and the return of Muslim populations to Islam. Islamic revival is the mainstream, not extremism.
PART 3. THE EMERGING ORDER OF CIVILIZATIONS
Chapter 6. Cultural restructuring of the structure of global politics
Under the influence of modernization, global politics is now being built in a new way, in accordance with the direction of cultural development. Peoples and countries with similar cultures unite, peoples and countries with different cultures fall apart. Associations with common ideological guidelines or those united around superpowers are leaving the scene, giving way to new alliances united on the basis of a common culture and civilization. Cultural communities are replacing Cold War blocs, and fault lines between civilizations are becoming central conflict lines in global politics.
Four degrees of economic integration can be distinguished (in increasing order): free trade zones; customs unions; common markets; economic unions.
In detail, tribes and nations, civilizations have a political structure. Participating country is a country that, culturally, completely identifies itself with one civilization, like Egypt with the Arab-Islamic civilization, and Italy with the European-Western civilization. Civilizations usually have one or more places that are regarded by its members as the primary source or sources of that civilization's culture. Such sources are usually located in one core country or countries of civilization, that is, the most powerful and culturally central country or countries.
Deep division can arise in divided country, Where large groups belong to different civilizations: India (Muslims and Hindus), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus), Malaysia and Singapore (Malay Muslims and Chinese), Yugoslavia and Soviet Union before their collapse.
A torn country has one dominant culture, which relates it to one civilization, but its leaders strive for another civilization. Russia has been a torn country since the time of Peter the Great. The classic broken country is that of Mustafa Kemal, which since the 1920s has been trying to modernize, westernize and become part of the West.
For a torn country to redefine its civilizational identity, at least three conditions must be met. First, the country's political and economic elite must enthusiastically perceive and support this aspiration. Second, society must at least tacitly accept (or strive for) the redefinition of identity. Third, the dominant elements in the receiving civilization (in most cases the West) must at least be willing to accept the convert. To date, this process has not been successful anywhere.
Chapter 7. Core states, concentric circles and civilizational order
The core countries of civilizations are sources of order within civilizations, and also influence the establishment of order between civilizations through negotiations with other core states. The absence of a core Islamic state that could officially and legitimately support the Bosnians, as Russia did the Serbs and Germany did the Croats, forced the United States to try to play this role. The absence of core states in the African and Arab world has greatly complicated the problem of ending the ongoing civil war in Sudan.
Definition eastern border The West in Europe has become one of the most important issues facing the West since the Cold War. This border should be between the Catholic and Protestant regions on the one hand, and Orthodoxy and Islam on the other (Fig. 3).
In the West, the pinnacle of political loyalty was the nation state. Groups outside the nation-state - linguistic or religious communities, or civilizations - do not inspire as much trust and loyalty. The centers of loyalty and devotion in Islam have always been small groups and great faith, and the nation state has not been so important. In the Arab world existing states have problems with legitimacy because they are largely the result of European imperialism. The borders of Arab countries do not always coincide with the borders of ethnic groups such as Berbers or Kurds.
The absence of an Islamic core state is the main reason for the ongoing internal and external conflicts inherent in Islam. Awareness without cohesion is the source of Islam's weakness and the source from which a threat to other countries comes. Six countries have been mentioned from time to time as likely Islamic leaders, but none currently have what it takes to truly become a pivotal state: Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The latter has a history, population, average level of economic development, national unity, military traditions and competence to become the core state of Islam. However, Ataturk, having clearly defined Turkey as secular country. At some point, Turkey may abandon its oppressive and humiliating role as a supplicant begging the West for EU membership and return to a more impressionable and exalted historical role as the main Islamic representative and antagonist of the West. It may require a leader of Ataturk's caliber to bring together religious and political heritage to transform Turkey from a broken country into a core state.
PART 4. CLASHES OF CIVILIZATIONS
Chapter 8. The West and the rest: intercivilizational issues
The most dangerous clashes in the future are likely to stem from Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance and Sinish self-confidence. As the relative influence of other civilizations increases, the appeal of Western culture is lost, and non-Westerners become increasingly trusting and devoted to their original cultures. As a result, the main problem in relations between the West and the rest has become the discrepancy between the desire of the West - especially the United States - to impose a universal Western culture and the diminishing ability to do so.
America believes that non-Western peoples must adopt Western values of democracy, free markets, controlled government, human rights, individualism, the rule of law and then must embody all these values in their institutions. But in non-Western cultures, a different attitude towards these values prevails, ranging from widespread skepticism to fierce opposition. What is universalism for the West is imperialism for the rest.
The West is trying and will continue to try to maintain its high position and defend its interests, calling them the interests of the “world community.” This expression has become a euphemism (replacing “free world”) and is intended to give the illusion of legitimacy in the eyes of the whole world to actions reflecting the interests of the United States and other Western powers.
Non-Westerners are also quick to point out the discrepancies between Western principles and practices. Hypocrisy, double standards, the favorite expression “yes, but...” - this is the price of claims to universalism. Yes, we support democracy, but only if it does not bring Islamic fundamentalism to power; yes, the principle of non-proliferation should apply to Iran and Iraq, but not to Israel; Yes, free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not in agriculture; yes, human rights are an issue in China, but not in Saudi Arabia; Yes, there is an urgent need to repel aggression against oil-possessing Kuwait, but not an attack on the oil-deprived Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the inevitable price of universal standard principles.
Islam and China have great cultural traditions, very different from those of the West and, in their eyes, far superior to those of the West. The power and self-confidence of both civilizations vis-à-vis the West are growing, and the conflicts between their values and interests and those of the West are becoming more numerous and intense.
Issues that divide the West and other societies are increasingly on the agenda in international relations. Three similar question include Western attempts to: (1) maintain military superiority through a policy of nonproliferation and counterproliferation in relation to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, as well as their means of delivery; (2) to spread Western values and institutions, forcing other societies to respect human rights as understood in the West and to accept Western-model democracy; (3) protect the cultural, social and ethnic integrity of Western countries by limiting the number of residents of non-Western societies entering them as refugees or immigrants. In all three of these areas, the West faces, and will likely continue to face, challenges in defending its interests vis-à-vis non-Western societies.
The West presents the principle of non-proliferation as reflecting the interests of all nations in international order and stability. However, other nations view nonproliferation as serving the interests of Western hegemony. As of 1995, the United States and the West remain committed to a policy of containment that is bound to fail in the end. The proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction is a central component of the slow but inevitable dissipation of power in a multi-civilizational world.
The growth of Asian economies is making them increasingly immune to Western pressure on human rights and democracy. For example, in 1990, Sweden, on behalf of twenty Western countries, introduced a resolution condemning the military regime in Myanmar, but the opposition, consisting of Asian and some other countries, “buried” this initiative. Resolutions condemning Iraq for human rights abuses were also voted down, and for a good five years in the 1990s China was able to mobilize Asian help to defeat Western-led resolutions expressing concern about human rights abuses in the country. Other countries where killings have taken place have also gotten away with it: Turkey, Indonesia, Colombia and Algeria have all escaped criticism.
Nineteenth-century Europeans were the dominant race in demographic terms. From 1821 to 1924, about 55 million Europeans migrated overseas, about 35 million of them to the United States. Westerners conquered and sometimes destroyed other peoples, explored and settled less densely populated lands. The export of people was perhaps the most important aspect of the rise of the West from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The end of the twentieth century was marked by another, even greater wave of migration. In 1990, the number of legal international migrants was 100 million.
In 1990, there were about 20 million first-generation immigrants in the United States, 15.5 million in Europe, and another 8 million in Australia and Canada. The number of immigrants relative to the native population in major European countries has reached 7-8 percent. In the United States, immigrants made up 8.7% of the population in 1994 (up from twice that amount in 1970), and their share in California and New York was 25% and 16%, respectively. New immigrants come mainly from non-Western societies.
Residents of Europe are increasingly afraid that “they are being invaded not by armies and tanks, but by migrants who speak different languages, pray to different gods, belong to different cultures, and there is a fear that they will take away the jobs of Europeans and occupy their lands , will eat up all their Social Security money and threaten their way of life.” Immigrants account for 10% of newborns in Western Europe, and in Brussels 50% of children are born to Arab parents. Muslim communities - be they Turkish in Germany or Algerian in France - have not integrated into their host cultures and are doing virtually nothing about it.
Chapter 9. Global politics of civilizations
Intercivilizational conflict takes two forms. At the local level, conflicts arise along fault lines: between neighboring states belonging to different civilizations, and within one state between groups from different civilizations. On global level Conflicts arise between core states - between core states belonging to different civilizations.
The dynamism of Islam is the constant source of many relatively local wars along fault lines; and the rise of China is a potential source of a major intercivilizational war between core countries. Some Westerners, including President Bill Clinton, have argued that the West is not at odds with Islam in general, but only with violent Islamic extremists. Fourteen centuries of history indicate otherwise. Relations between Islam and Christianity - both Orthodoxy and Catholicism in all its forms - have often been very turbulent. For almost a thousand years, from the first landing of the Moors in Spain until the second siege of Vienna by the Turks, Europe was under constant threat from Islam. Islam is the only civilization that has questioned the survival of the West, and this has happened at least twice.
By the fifteenth century, however, the tide had turned to ebb. Gradually, the Christians reclaimed the Iberian Peninsula, completing this task in 1492 at the walls of Granada. At the same time, the Russians put an end to two hundred years of Mongol-Tatar rule. In subsequent years, the Ottoman Turks made a final push and again laid siege to Vienna in 1683. Their defeat marked the beginning of a long retreat that entailed fighting Orthodox peoples in the Balkans for liberation from Ottoman rule, the expansion of the Habsburg Empire and the dramatic Russian advance towards the Black Sea and the Caucasus. As a result of the First World War, Great Britain, France and Italy delivered the final blow and established their direct or indirect rule over the remaining lands of the Ottoman Empire, with the exception of the territory of the Turkish Republic.
According to statistics, between 1757 and 1919 there were ninety-two acquisitions of Muslim territories by non-Muslim governments. By 1995, sixty-nine of these territories were again under Muslim rule.
Economic changes in Asia, especially in East Asia, represent the most important events that occurred in the world in the second half of the twentieth century. By the 1990s, this economic boom had generated economic euphoria among many observers who viewed East Asia and the entire Pacific region as an ever-expanding trading network that would guarantee peace and harmony among nations. This optimism was based on the extremely dubious assumption that trade reciprocity was invariably a guarantor of peace. However, economic growth generates political instability within countries, as well as in relations between them, changing the existing balance of power between countries and regions.
In the post-Cold War world, the action zone has shifted from Europe to Asia. In East Asia alone there are countries belonging to six civilizations - Japanese, Chinese, Orthodox, Buddhist, Muslim and Western - and when South Asia is taken into account, Indian is also added to them. The core countries of the four civilizations - Japan, China, Russia and the USA - are the main actors in East Asia; South Asia also gives India; and Indonesia is a rising Muslim state. The result is a highly complex pattern of international relations, much like that which existed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and fraught with the unpredictability that characterizes multipolar situations.
In the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, relations between the United States and Asian countries became increasingly antagonistic. Especially in relations with China and Japan.
China's history, culture, customs, size, economic dynamism and self-image all motivate China to assume a hegemonic position in East Asia. This goal is a natural result of rapid economic development. For two thousand years, China was the preeminent power in East Asia. Now the Chinese are increasingly declaring their intentions to regain this historical role and end the too long period of humiliation and dependence on the West and Japan, which began with the Treaty of Nanjing imposed by Great Britain in 1842.
The emergence of new great powers is always an extremely destabilizing process, and if this happens, China’s entry into the international arena will eclipse any comparable phenomena. “The scale of the change in China's position in the world,” Lee Kwan Yew noted in 1994, “is such that the world will find a new balance of power within 30 or 40 years. It is impossible to pretend that this is just another leading player. This is the biggest player in all of human history.”
Perhaps Europe's past is Asia's future. It is more likely that Asia's past will turn out to be Asia's future. The choice is this: either a balance of power at the cost of conflict, or peace, the guarantee of which is the hegemony of one country. Western states could choose between conflict and balance. History, culture and the realities of power strongly suggest that Asia must choose peace and hegemony. The era that began with the rise of the West in the 1840s and 1850s is coming to an end, China is once again taking its place as the regional hegemon, and the East is beginning to play its rightful role.
The end of the Cold War required a redefinition of the balance of power between Russia and the West; both sides also needed to agree on fundamental equality and division of spheres of influence. In practice this would mean that:
- Russia agrees to the expansion of the European Union and NATO, with the inclusion of Western Christian countries of Central and of Eastern Europe, and the West undertakes not to expand NATO further east unless Ukraine splits into two states;
- Russia and NATO are entering into a partnership agreement that will commit to respecting the principle of non-aggression, holding regular consultations on security issues, joint efforts to prevent an arms race and negotiating arms limitation agreements that would meet security requirements in the post-Cold War era;
- The West agrees with the role of Russia as a state, responsible for maintaining security among Orthodox countries and in those areas where Orthodoxy dominates;
- The West recognizes the security concerns, real and potential, that Russia has in its relations with the Muslim peoples on its southern borders, and expresses its readiness to renegotiate the Conventional Armed Forces Treaty in Europe, as well as to be positive about other steps that Russia may need to take go in the face of such threats;
- Russia and the West are concluding an agreement on parity cooperation in resolving problems like Bosnia, where both Western and Orthodox interests are affected.
(What a pity that this remained only good intentions. – Note Baguzina)
Chapter 10. From transitional wars to fault line wars
The Soviet-Afghan War of 1979–1989 and the Gulf War were wars transition period- a period of transition to an era when ethnic conflicts and wars along fault lines between groups from different civilizations will prevail.
The Soviet Union was defeated due to a combination of three factors that they could not resist: American technology, Saudi money and Muslim fanaticism. The legacy of the war was well-trained and experienced fighters, training camps and training grounds, a logistics service, extensive trans-Islamic networks of personal and organizational relationships, a large amount of military equipment, including from 300 to 500 missiles for Stinger launchers, and that most importantly, an intoxicating feeling of strength and self-confidence, pride from accomplished deeds and an ardent desire for new victories.
The Gulf War became a war of civilizations because the West intervened militarily in the Muslim conflict, Westerners overwhelmingly supported the intervention, and Muslims around the world perceived the intervention as a war against Islam and presented a united front against Western imperialism. From the Muslim point of view, Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was a family matter that should be settled within the family circle, and those who intervene in it under the guise of some theory of international justice do so to protect their own selfish interests and maintain Arab dependence on the West.
The Gulf War was the first war over resources between civilizations since the Cold War. The question at stake was whether most of the world's largest oil reserves would be controlled by the Saudis and Emirati governments, whose security depends on Western military power, or by independent anti-Western regimes that could use the "oil weapon" against the West? The West failed to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but achieved some success by demonstrating the security dependence of the Gulf states on itself and increasing its military presence in the Persian Gulf region. Before the war, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf Council and the United States vied for influence in the region. After the war, the Persian Gulf became an “American lake.”
Muslims make up about one fifth of the total population globe, but in the 1990s they participated in much more intergroup violence than people from any other civilization (Figure 4). The borders of Islam are indeed bloody. The degree of militarism of Muslim states also leads to the conclusion that Muslims are predisposed to violence in conflicts.
Rice. 4. Militarism of Muslim and Christian countries; * – number of military personnel per 1000 people; Muslim and Christian countries are those countries in which more than 80% of the population adheres to a particular religion.
The history of on-again, off-again carnage cannot on its own explain why violence began again at the end of the twentieth century. After all, as many have pointed out, Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived quietly together in Yugoslavia for decades. One factor was changes in the demographic balance. The numerical growth of one group creates political, economic and social pressure on other groups. Crash in the early 1970s of a thirty-year-old constitutional order in Lebanon was largely the result of a sharp increase in the Shiite population relative to the Maronite Christians. In Sri Lanka, as Gary Fuller has shown, the peak of the Sinhalese nationalist insurgency in the 1970s and the Tamil uprising in the late 1980s coincided precisely with the years when the "youth wave" of people aged fifteen to twenty-four in these groups outnumbered 20 percent off total number groups (Fig. 5). Likewise, the fault line wars between Russian and Muslim peoples in the south were fueled by large differences in population growth. In the 1980s, the Chechen population increased by 26 percent, and Chechnya was one of the most densely populated places in Russia; The high birth rate in the republic led to the emergence of migrants and militants.
Rice. 5. Sri Lanka: “youth peaks” of the Sinhalese and Tamils
What is the reason for Islam's militancy? First, it must be remembered that Islam has been a religion of the sword from the beginning and that it glorifies military prowess. The origins of Islam are among the “warlike tribes of Bedouin nomads,” and this “origin in an environment of violence is imprinted on the foundation of Islam. Muhammad himself is remembered as a seasoned warrior and a skilled military leader.” The same cannot be said about either Christ or Buddha. The Koran and other provisions of the Muslim faith contain isolated prohibitions of violence, and the concept of non-use of violence is absent in Muslim teaching and practice.
Secondly, from its origins in Arabia, the spread of Islam throughout North Africa and much of the Middle East, and later into Central Asia, across the Hindustan Peninsula and the Balkans brought the Muslims into close contact with many peoples who were conquered and converted, and the legacy of this process continues. Thus, overland Muslim and retaliatory non-Muslim expansions have resulted in Muslims and non-Muslims living throughout Eurasia in close physical proximity to each other. Conversely, Western maritime expansion did not typically bring Western peoples to live in territorial proximity to non-Western peoples.
Third possible source conflict – “indigestibility” of Muslims and non-Muslims. Islam, even more than Christianity, is an absolutist religion. It brings together religion and politics and draws a clear line between those in Dar Alislam and those in Dar Algharb. As a result, followers of Confucianism, Buddhists, Hindus, Western Christians and Orthodox Christians have less difficulty adjusting to living with each other than those who have to adjust to living with Muslims.
Another factor that explains both intra-Islamic conflicts and conflicts outside its borders is the absence of one or more core countries in Islam. Finally, and most importantly, the population explosion in Muslim countries and a significant proportion of the total population of men aged fifteen to thirty, often unemployed, is a natural source of instability and violence both within Islam itself and against non-Muslims .
Chapter 11. Dynamics of wars along fault lines
Once started, fault line wars, like other communal conflicts, tend to live on own life and develop according to the “action-response” pattern. Identities that were previously multiple and contingent become focused and rooted; communal conflicts are appropriately called “identity wars.” As violence escalates, the original issues at stake are usually re-evaluated in purely "us" versus "them" terms, the group becomes more united and beliefs strengthen.
As revolutions progressed, the moderates, Girondins and Mensheviks lost to the radicals, Jacobins and Bolsheviks. Similar processes usually occur in wars along fault lines. Moderates, who have narrow goals such as autonomy rather than independence, do not achieve their goals through negotiation - which almost always fails initially - and are complemented or supplanted by radicals who seek to achieve much more distant goals through violence way.
In the ongoing standoff between Israelis and Arabs, as soon as the majority-backed Palestine Liberation Organization took a few steps towards negotiations with the Israeli government, the radical group Hamas questioned its loyalty to the Palestinians.
A dramatic rise in civilizational identities occurred in Bosnia, especially in the Muslim community. Historically, communal differences were not given much importance in Bosnia; Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived peacefully as neighbors; Intergroup marriages were common; Religious self-identification was also weak. However, no sooner had the broader Yugoslav identity disintegrated than these contingent religious identities took on new significance, and no sooner had clashes begun than new ties were strengthened. Multicommunity evaporated and each group increasingly identified itself with the larger cultural community and defined itself in religious terms.
Strengthening religious identity caused by war and ethnic cleansing, the preferences of the country's leaders, and the support and pressure exerted by others Muslim states, slowly but surely transformed Bosnia from Balkan Switzerland into Balkan Iran.
The levels of involvement of countries and groups in wars along fault lines vary. At the main level there are those participants who actually fight and kill each other. These conflicts may at the same time involve secondary participants; These are usually states directly linked to the main actors, such as the governments of Serbia and Croatia in the former Yugoslavia and the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. Even more distantly related to the conflict are tertiary participants who are located much further from the real battles, but have civilizational ties with its participants; these, for example, are Germany, Russia and Islamic countries in relation to the former Yugoslavia (Fig. 6).
Wars along fault lines are characterized by frequent periods of calm, ceasefire agreements, truces, but not at all comprehensive peace agreements that are designed to resolve fundamental political issues. Such wars have such a changeable character because they are rooted in a deep conflict along a fault line, which leads to long-term hostile relations between groups belonging to different civilizations. Over the course of centuries they can evolve, and the underlying conflict can disappear without a trace. Or the conflict will be settled quickly and brutally - if one group destroys the other. However, if none of the above happens, the conflict will continue, as will repeated periods of violence. Fault line wars are periodic, flaring up and then dying out; and conflicts along fault lines are never-ending.
PART V. THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATIONS
Chapter 12. West, civilizations and civilization
For every civilization, at least once, and sometimes more often, history ends. The people are convinced that their state is the last form of human society. This was the case with the Roman Empire, with the Abbasid Caliphate, with the Mughal Empire, with Ottoman Empire. However, states that assume that history is over for them are usually those whose history is beginning to decline.
Civilizations grow, Quigley argued in 1961, “because they have an ‘instrument of expansion,’ namely a military, religious, political, or economic organization that accumulates surplus and invests it in productive innovation.” Civilizations decline when they stop using their surplus for new modes of production. This is because the social groups that control the surplus have a privileged elite who use it for “unproductive but ego-satisfying purposes... who distribute the surplus for consumption but do not provide more.” effective methods production. New religious movements are beginning to spread widely in society. There is a growing reluctance to fight for the state or even support it through taxes.”
The decay then leads to the invasion stage, “when a civilization, no longer able to defend itself because it no longer wants to defend itself, finds itself defenseless against “barbarian invaders,” who often come from “another, younger, stronger civilization.” However, the most important lesson of the history of civilizations is that many events are probable, but nothing is inevitable.
In a world where cultural identities are central, the West in general and the United States in particular should base their policies on three foundations. Firstly, only by accepting and understanding the real world, statesmen capable of constructively changing it. However, the US government has had an exceptionally difficult time adjusting to an era in which global politics is shaped by cultural and civilizational trends. Second, American foreign policy thinking was plagued by an unwillingness to change and sometimes revise policies that responded to Cold War needs. Third, cultural and civilizational differences challenge Western and especially American belief in the universal validity of Western culture.
The belief in the universality of Western culture suffers from three problems: it is incorrect; she is immoral and she is dangerous. Western universalism is dangerous for the world because it can lead to a major intercivilizational war between core states, and it is dangerous for the West because it can lead to the defeat of the West. Western civilization is valuable not because it is universal, but because it is truly unique. Therefore, the main responsibility of Western leaders is not to try to change other civilizations in the image and likeness of the West - which is beyond its declining power - but to preserve, protect and renew the unique qualities of Western civilization. It must be realized that Western interference in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multi-civilizational world.
A global war in which the core countries of the world's main civilizations will be drawn in, although extremely unlikely, is not excluded. Such a war, we have suggested, could result from an escalation of a fault-line war between groups belonging to different civilizations, most likely involving Muslims on one side and non-Muslims on the other.
To avoid major intercivilizational wars in the future, core countries must refrain from interfering in conflicts occurring in other civilizations. The second condition is that the core countries need to agree among themselves in order to contain or end wars along fault lines between states or groups of states belonging to their civilizations.
If humanity ever evolves into a universal civilization, it will emerge gradually, through the identification and dissemination of the key values of these communities. In a multi-civilizational world, the third rule must be fulfilled - community rules: People of all civilizations should seek and strive to propagate the values, institutions and practices that are common to them and to people belonging to other civilizations.
Indigenization (literally, nativeization) is a term in theoretical anthropology that denotes local trends towards cultural isolation and civilizational independence. Indigenization is the opposite of such integral processes as assimilation, globalization, westernization, proselytism, etc. Historically, it has been a constant companion of growing and collapsing empires and states. One example of indigenization can be considered Africanization.
Sociology and political science clearly do not belong to the category exact sciences. It is difficult to find provisions in them that have the status of immutable truths. The reasoning of the most authoritative scientists with such a specialization seems abstract and divorced from real life." little man" But there are theories on the basis of which the foreign and domestic policies of individual states and global international communities are formed. That is why they become relevant.
Samuel Huntington is an American writer, sociologist and political scientist - the author of many such theories. His books often contained thoughts that at first seemed too radical, but then turned out to be an objective commentary on what was happening.
Childhood and youth
He was born in New York in the spring of 1927, into a family associated with literary activities. His father, Richard Thomas Huntington, was a journalist, his mother, Dorothy Sanborn Phillips, a writer, and his maternal grandfather, John Phillips, a famous publisher. Choosing a profession related to intellectual activity Therefore it seems natural. Samuel Phillips Huntington became a worthy successor family traditions, having written a total of 17 books and more than 90 voluminous scientific articles.
The places chosen for Sam’s education also seem to be standard for families of this level. First, it was Stuyvesant High School in New York, then an undergraduate course at Yale University in New Haven - 1946, then a master's degree in political science at the University of Chicago (1948) and, finally, Harvard, where Samuel Huntington received his PhD in political science in 1951.
The only unusual thing was that he successfully coped with curriculum universities in much less time than usual. So, having entered Yale at the age of 16, he graduated not in four years, but in 2.5. A break in his studies was a short-term service in the US Army in 1946, before entering the master's program.
Professor and consultant
After receiving scientific degree he takes a job as a teacher at his alma mater - Harvard. He worked there intermittently for almost half a century - until 2007. Only from 1959 to 1962 did he serve as deputy director of the Institute for Coverage of War and Peace at another famous American university, Columbia.
There was a period in his life when he came into close contact with current high-level politicians. In 1968, he was a foreign policy consultant to presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey, and from 1977 to 1978, Samuel Huntington served in the administration of President Jimmy Carter as the planning coordinator for the National Security Council. Many presidents and secretaries of state listened carefully to his opinion, and Henry Kissinger considered Huntington his personal friend.
Prolific writer
He devoted all his time free from teaching and social activities to writing books. They are filled with an analysis of the current foreign and domestic policies of the leading countries of the world and a forecast for the development of both regional and global processes. Originality of thinking, enormous erudition and high personal qualities earned him authority and respect among his colleagues. An indicator of this was that leading US political scientists and sociologists elected him to the post of president of the American Political Science Association.
In 1979, he founded the Foreign Policy magazine, which has become one of the most authoritative publications in the field of international relations. It remains so today, published every two months, including the annual “Globalization Index” and “Rating of Failed Governments.”
The book that made the name
The first book that established Huntington's reputation as an original thinker and thoughtful scholar was The Soldier and the State, published in 1957. Theory and politics of civil-military relations." In it he examined the problem of implementing effective public, civilian control over the armed forces.
Huntington analyzes the moral and social state of the officer corps, he studies military-historical experience of the past - first worldwide - since the 17th century, then that acquired during armed conflicts in the United States and overseas, where the American expeditionary force was sent. The book also reflected the then political situation the outbreak of the Cold War. The scientist’s conclusion: effective control over the army by society should be based on its professionalization, on the every possible improvement in the status of people who have dedicated their lives to serving in the army.
Like many other publications, this book caused fierce controversy, but soon many of its ideas formed the basis for the army reforms carried out in the country.
"Political Order in Changing Societies" (1968)
In this study, the American political scientist conducts detailed analysis socio-political situation that developed in the world by the end of the 60s of the XX century. It was characterized, among other things, by the emergence of a whole community of countries, mainly from former colonies, which escaped the control of the metropolises and chose their own path of development against the backdrop of the confrontation between global ideological systems, the leaders of which were the USSR and the USA. This situation led to the emergence of the term “third world countries”.
This book is now considered a classic of comparative political science. And after its release, it was subjected to severe criticism from apologists of the modernization theory, popular at that time among Western political scientists. Huntington in his work buries this theory, showing it as a naive attempt to propagate developing countries democratic path of development through the promotion of progressive views.
"The Third Wave: Democratization at the End of the 20th Century" (1991)
Most of the book is occupied by the justification of the sinusoidal nature of the global process of movement of countries towards democratic forms of state. After the rise in such a movement (Huntington counted three waves: 1828-1926, 1943-1962, 1974-?), there follows a decline (1922-1942, 1958-1975).
The concept is based on the following provisions:
- Democratization is global process having general trends and special cases.
- Democracy has the character of an intrinsic value that does not have pragmatic goals.
- Diversity of forms of democratic order.
- Democratization does not end at the end of the 20th century; a rollback of some countries is possible and the onset of the 4th wave in the next century.
Theory of civilizations
The book "The Clash of Civilizations" (1993) made Huntington's name famous throughout the world, causing particularly fierce controversy that extended beyond the borders of the United States. According to the scientist, in the coming 21st century, the determining factor for the world order will be the interaction of different cultures or civilizations formed by a common language and lifestyle.
In addition to Western civilization, Huntington counts eight more similar formations: the Slavic-Orthodox led by Russia, the Japanese, Buddhist, Hindu, Latin American African, Xing (Chinese) and Islamic civilizations. The scientist assigns the borders of these formations the role of the main lines of future conflicts.
Tragedy as an argument in discussion
Having published the book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Restructuring of the World Order” three years later, the writer raised the intensity of the discussion around his theory even higher. In the events of the tragic day of September 11, 2001, many, especially Americans, saw additional confirmation of the correctness of the predictions of the famous political scientist, the personification of the beginning of the confrontation between different civilizations.
Although many political scientists report negative attitude to Huntington's theory on the part of US academic circles, there is an opinion that after the terrorist attacks, accompanied by Islamic slogans, swept across the world, the “theory of civilizations” was finally adopted by the US ruling circles.
Happy family man
A man who sometimes spoke very decisively on the pages of his books and was able to persistently and adamantly defend his opinion in public disputes, Samuel Huntington in Everyday life was very modest and balanced. He lived for more than half a century with his wife Nancy, raising two sons and four grandchildren.
The last major work of the scientist was published in 2004. In the book "Who Are We? Challenges to American National Identity," he analyzes the origins and characteristics of this concept and tries to predict what challenges await American national identity in the future.
In 2007, Huntington was forced to end his professorship at Harvard due to deteriorating health due to complications from diabetes. He worked at his desk until his last day, until he passed away at the end of December 2008 in the town of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
His earthly existence was put to an end, but the discussions generated by his books around the world will not subside for a very long time.
By what laws do civilizations develop and why do they decline? What influences the political situation in the world? What does the future hold for us? People have asked these questions before, and they still think about them now. In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington examines these questions and presents his hypotheses. This work arose from an article on the topic of international relations, which caused a great resonance in society. The author describes the political reality of the late 20th century. Even though the book was written quite a long time ago, it is interesting to read. And in a sense, it is even more interesting than a few years ago, because you can see where the author was right when making his predictions.
The author of the book talks about everything that happened in the world after the Cold War. He conducts analysis, draws conclusions from statistical data, based on facts from history. At the same time, he talks about what he believes will happen in the future. The main idea is that in the future there will be a struggle of cultures, civilizations, and not individual countries. People's religion and worldview will be more important.
While reading this book you will find answers to many questions. For example, it becomes clear why Islamic extremism - big threat for the whole world, why the annexation of Crimea to the territory of Russia took place, why western culture comes to decline. And the more similarities you see between the author’s hypotheses and forecasts, the more interesting it is to read and delve into the essence of what is happening in the world. The book will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, historians, and it will also be suitable for anyone who wants to better understand politics and know what is really happening in the world.
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