Gambia-L:

The essay below is reproduced/reprinted from today's issue of the U.K based
"Sunday Times" Newspaper. It was written in 1993 by Professor Samuel P.
Huntington of Harvard University when he predicted the present conflict that
our world is witnessing today.

By the way, for those of you who do not know Samuel Huntington - well, he is
one of most respected Political Scientists in the the world. He has written
numerous books on International Politics. In fact, one doesn't study Third
World or International Politics without coming across his many works.

So read on!

Ebrima Ceesay

_____________________________________________________________________


In an uncannily prescient essay in 1993, Samuel P Huntington predicted the
present conflict:


THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS (By Professor Samuel P. Huntington)


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

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new
world will not be primarily ideological nor primarily economic. The great
divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be
cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world
affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between
nations and groups of different civilisations. The fault lines between
civilisations will be the battle lines of the future.

Conflict between civilisations will be the latest phase in the evolution of
conflict in the modern world. For a century and a half after the emergence
of the modern international system with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the
conflicts of the western world were largely among princes-emperors, absolute
monarchs and constitutional monarchs attempting to expand their
bureaucracies, their armies, their mercantilist economic strength and, most
important, the territory they ruled. In the process they created nation
states, and beginning with the French revolution the principal lines of
conflict were between nations rather than princes. In 1793, as R. R. Palmer
put it, "The wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun."

This 19th-century pattern lasted until the end of the first world war. Then,
as a result of the Russian revolution and the reaction against it, the
conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among
communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then between communism
and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this latter conflict became
embodied in the struggle between the two superpowers, neither of which was a
nation state in the classical European sense and each of which defined its
identity in terms of its ideology.

These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarily
conflicts within western civilisation. "Western civil wars," as William Lind
has labeled them. This was as true of the cold war as it was of the world
wars and the earlier wars of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. With the end
of the cold war, international politics moves out of its western phase and
its centrepiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-western
civilisations and among non-western civilisations. In the politics of
civilisations, the peoples and governments of non-western civilisations no
longer remain the objects of history as targets of western colonialism but
join the West as movers and shapers of history.

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

What do we mean when we talk of a civilisation? A civilisation is a cultural
entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups,
all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity.
The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a
village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture
that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn,
will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese
communities. Arabs, Chinese and westerners, however, are not part of any
broader cultural entity. They constitute civilisations.

A civilisation is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the
broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which
distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common
objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs,
institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People
have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying
degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a
European, a westerner. The civilisation to which he belongs is the broadest
level of identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and
do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and
boundaries of civilisations change.

Civilisations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("a
civilization pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it) , or a small
number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A civilisation may
include several nation states, as is the case with western, Latin American
and Arab civilisations, or only one, as is the case with Japanese
civilisation.

Civilisations obviously blend and overlap, and may include subcivilisations.
Western civilisation has two big variants, European and North American, and
Islam has its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilisations are
nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom
sharp, they are real. Civilisations are dynamic: they rise and fall, they
divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civiliszations
disappear and are buried in the sands of time.

Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in global
affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few centuries. The broader
reaches of human history have been the history of civilisations. In A Study
of History, Arnold Toynhee identified 21 major civilizations; only six of
them exist in the contemporary world. Civilisation identity will be
increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large
measure by the interactions among seven or eight main civilisations. These
include western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin
American and possibly African civilisation. The most important conflicts
will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilisations
from one another.

Why will this be the case? First, differences among civilisations are not
only real, they are basic. Civilisations are differentiated from each other
by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. The
people of different civilisations have different views on the relations
between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the
state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of
the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and
authority, equality and hierarchy.

These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon
disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among political
ideologies and political regimes. Differences do not necessarily mean
conflict, and conflict does not necessarily mean violence. Over the
centuries, however, differences among civilisations have generated the most
prolonged and violent conflicts.

Second, the world is becoming a smaller place. The increasing interactions
between peoples of different civilisations are increasing; and these
increasing interactions intensify civilisation-consciousness and awareness
of differences between civilisations and of commonalities within
civilisations. North African immigration to France generates hostility among
Frenchmen and at the same time increases receptivity to immigration by
"good" European Catholic Poles. Americans react far more negatively to
Japanese investment than to larger investments from Canada and European
countries.

As Donald Horowitz has pointed out, 'An Ibo may be ... an Owerri Ibo or an
Onitsha Ibo in what was the Eastern region of Nigeria. In Lagos, he is
simply an Ibo. In London, he is a Nigerian. In New York, he is an African."
The increasing interactions among peoples of different civilizations enhance
the increased civilisation-consciousness of people that which, in turn,
invigorates invigorates differences and animosities stretching, or thought
to stretch, back deep into history.

Third, the processes of economic modernisation and social change throughout
the world are separating people from long-standing local identities. They
also weaken the nation state as a source of identity. In much of the world
religion has moved in to fill this gap, often in the form of movements that
are labelled "fundamentalist". Such movements are found in western
Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam. In most
religions the people active in fundamentalist movements are young,
college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and business
persons.

The "unsecularization of the world," George Weigel has remarked, "is one of
the dominant social facts of life in the late twentieth century." The
revival of religion , "Ia revanche de DieuP as Gilles Kepel labeled it,
provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national
boundaries and unites civilisations.

Fourth, the growth of civilisation-consciousness is enhanced by the dual
role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the
same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return-to-the-roots
phenomenon is occurring among non-western civilisations. Increasingly one
hears references to trends towards a turning inward and "Asianisation" in
Japan, the end of the Nehru legacy and the "Hinduisation" of India, the
failure of western ideas of socialism and nationalism and hence
"re-Islamisation" of the Middle East. And now a debate over westernisation
versus Russianisation in Moscow. A West at the peak of its power confronts
non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to
shape the world in non-western ways.

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

Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence
less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones. In
the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can
become poor and the poor rich, but Russians cannot become Estonians and
Azeris cannot become Armenians.

In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was: "Which side are
you on?" and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In
conflicts between civilisations, the question is: "What are you?" That is a
given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the Caucasus to
Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a bullet in the head. Even
more than ethnicity; religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among
people. A person can be half-French and half-Arab and, simultaneously, even
a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and
half-Muslim.

Finally, economic regionalism is increasing. The proportions of total trade
that were intraregional rose between 1980 and 1989 from 51% percent to 59%
percent in Europe, 33% perccnt to 37% percent in East Asia, and 31% to 36
percent in North America. The importance of regional economic blocs is
likely to continue to increase. On the one hand, successful economic
regionalism will reinforce civilisation-consciousness.

On the other hand, economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted
in a common civilisation.

The European Community rests on the shared foundation of European culture
and western Christianity. The success of the North American Free Trade Area
depends on the convergence now under way of Mexican, Canadian and American
cultures. Japan, in contrast, faces difficulties in creating a comparable
economic entity in east Asia because Japan is a society and civilisation
unique to itself. However strong the trade and investment links Japan may
develop with other east Asian countries, its cultural differences with those
countries inhibit and perhaps preclude its promoting regional economic
integration like that in Europe and North Amenca.

Common culture, in contrast, is clearly facilitating the rapid expansion of
the economic relations between the People's Republic of China, Taiwan,
Singapore and the overseas Chinese communities in other Asian countries.
With the Cold War over, cultural cornmonalities increasingly overcome
ideological differences, and mainland China and Taiwan move closer together.
If cultural commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration, the
principal east Asian economic bloc of the future is likely to be centred on
China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into existence. As Murray
Weidenbaum has observed, culture and religion also form the basis of the
Economic Cooperation Organization, which brings together ten non-Arab Muslim
countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkeys Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyastan,
Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Uzbeldstan and Afghan-istan. The impetus to the
revival and expansion of this organization, founded originally in the 1960s
by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the leaders of several
of these countries that they had no chance of admission to the European
Community Similarly, Caricom, the Central American Common Market and
Mercosur rest on common cultural foundations. Efforts to build a broader
Caribbean-Central American economic entity bridging the Anglo-Latin divide,
however, have to date failed.

As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are
likely to see an us-versus-them relationship existing between themselves and
people of different ethnicity or religion. The end of ideologically defined
states in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union permits traditional
ethnic identities and animosities to come to the fore. Differences in
culture and religion create differences over policy issues, ranging from
human rights to immigration to trade and commerce to the environment.
Geographical propinquity gives rise to conflicting territorial claims from
Bosnia to Mindanao.

Most important, the efforts of the West to promote its values of democracy
and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military predominance
and to advance its economic interests engender countering responses from
other civilisations. Decreasingly able to mobilise support and form
coalitions on the basis of ideology, governments and groups will
increasingly attempt to mobilise support by appealing to common religion and
civilisation identity.

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

The fault lines between civilisations are replacing the political and
ideological boundaries of the cold war as the flash points for crisis and
bloodshed. The cold war began when the Iron Curtain divided Europe
politically and ideologically. The cold war ended with the fall of the Iron
Curtain. As the ideological division of Europe has disappeared, the cultural
division between western Christianity and Orthodox Christianity and Islam
has re-emerged.

The most significant dividing line in Europe, as William Wallace has
suggested, may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the
year 1500. This line runs along what are now the boundaries between Finland
and Russia and between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus
and Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox
eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of
Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly along the line now
separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans
this line, of course, coincides with the historic boundary between the
Hapsburg and Ottoman empires.

The peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or Catholic,
they shared the common experiences of Euro-pean histoxy-feudalism, the
rennaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the
Industrial Revolution; they are generally economically better off than the
peoples to the east; and they may now look forward to increasing involvement
in a common European economy and to the consolidation of democratic
political systems. The peoples to the east and south of this line are
Orthodox or Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist
empires and were only lightly touched by the shaping events in the rest of
Europe; they are generally less advanced economically; they seem much less
likely to develop stable democratic political systems.

The Velvet Curtain of culture has replaced the Iron Curtain of ideology as
the most significant dividing line in Europe. As the events in Yugoslavia
show, it is not only a line of difference; it is also at times a line of
bloody conflict.

Conflict along the fault line between western and Islamic civilisations has
been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding of Islam, the Arab and
Moorish surge west and north only ended at Tours in 732. From the eleventh
to the thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary success to
bring Christianity and Christian rule to the Holy Land. From the 14th to the
17th century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended their sway
over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople, and twice
laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as
Ottoman power declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western
control over most of North Africa and the Middle East.

After World War II, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial
empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism
manifested themselves; the West became heavily dependent on the Persian Gulf
countries for its energy; the oil-rich Muslim countries became money-rich
and, when they wished to, weapons-rich. Several wars occurred between Arabs
and Israel (created by the West). France fought a bloody and ruthless war in
Algeria for most of the 1950s; British and French forces invaded Egypt in
1956; American forces went into Lebanon in 1958; subsequently American
forces returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various military
encounters with Iran; Arab and Islamic terrorists, supported by at least
three Middle Eastern governrnents, employed the weapon of the weak and
bombed Western planes and installations and seized Western hostages.

This warfare between Arabs and the West culminated in 1990, when the United
States and its western allies sent a massive army to the Persian Gulf to
defend some Arab countries against aggression by another. In its aftermath,
Nato planning is increasingly directed to potential threats and instability
along its "southern tier".

This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is
unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf war left some
Arabs feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and stood up to
the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and resentful of the West's
military presence in the Persian Gulf, the West's overwhelming military
dominance, and their apparent inability to shape their own destiny.

Many Arab countries are reaching levels of economic and social development
where autocratic forms of government become inappropriate and efforts to
introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab political systems
have already occurred. The principal beneficiaries of these openings have
been Islamist movements. In the Arab world, in short, western democracy
strengthens anti-western political forces. This may be a passing phenomenon,
but it surely complicates relations between Islamic countries and the West.

Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular
population growth in Arab countries, particularly in north Africa, has led
to increased migration to western Europe. The movement within western Europe
towards minimising internal boundaries has sharpened political sensitivities
with respect to this development. In Italy, France and Germany racism is
increasingly open, and violence against Arab and Turkist migrants has become
more intense and more widespread.

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

Bernard Lewis, the pre-eminent western historian of Islam, comes to a
similar conclusion: "We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending
the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them.

"This is no less than a clash of civilisations - the perhaps irrational but
surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian
heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both."
Historically the other great antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic
civilisation has been with the pagan, animist and now increasingly Christian
black peoples to the south. In the past, this antagonisim was epitomised in
the image of Arab slave dealers and black slaves. It has been reflected in
the ongoing civil war in the Sudan between Arabs and blacks, the fighting in
Chad between Libayan-supported insurgents and the government, the tensions
between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the Horn of Africa, and the
political conflicts, recurring riots and communal violence between Muslims
and Christians in Nigeria. The modernization of Africa and the spread of
Christianity are likely to enhance the probability of violence along this
fault line. Symptomatic of the intensification of this conflict was the Pope
John Paul II's speech in Khartoum in February 1993 attacking the actions of
the Sudan's Islamist government against the Christian minority there.

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


"Much of Russian history concems the struggle between the Slavs and the
Turkic peoples on their borders, which dates back to the foundation of the
Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In the Slays' millennium-long
confrontation with their eastern neighbors lies the key to an understanding
not only of Russian history, but Russian character. To understand Russian
realities today one has to have a eonccpt of the great Turkic ethnic group
that has preoccupicd Russians through the centuries."
The conflict of civilizations is deeply rooted elsewhere in Asia. The
historic clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests itself
now not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India but also in
intensifying religious strife within India between increasingly militant
Hindu groups and India's substantial Muslim minority. The destruction of the
Ayodhya mosque in December 199Z brought to the fore the issue of whether
India will remain a secular democratic state or become a Hindu one. In East
Asia, China has outstanding territorial disputes with most of its neighbors.
It has pursued a ruthless policy toward the Buddhist people of Tibet, and it
is pursuing an increasingly ruthless policy toward its Turkic-Muslim
minority. With the Cold War over, the underlying differences between China
and the United States have reasserted themselves in areas such as human
rights, trade and weapons proliferation. These differences are unlikely to
moderate. A "new cold war," Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991 is
under way between China and America.

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


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

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

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

The rallying of substantial sections of Arab elites and publics behind
Saddam Hussein caused those Arab governments in the anti-Iraq coalition to
moderate their activities and temper their public statements. Arab
governments opposed or distanced themselves from subsequent Western efforts
to apply pressure on Iraq, including enforcement of a no-fly zone in the
summer of 1991 and the bombing of Iraq in January 1993. The
Western-Soviet-Turkish-Arab anti-Iraq coalition of 1990 had by 1993 become a
coalition of almost only the West and Kuwait against Iraq. Muslims
contrasted Western actions against Iraq with the West's failure to protect
Bosnians against Serbs and to impose sanctions on Israel for violating UN
resolutions. The West, they alleged, was using a double standard. A world of
clashing civilizations, however, is inevitably a world of double standards:
people apply one standard to their kin-countries and a different standard to
others.

Islamic governments and groups, on the other hand, castigated the West for
not coming to the defense of the Bosnians. Iranian leaders urged Muslims
from all countries to provide help to Bosnia; in violation of the U.N. arms
embargo, Iran supplied weapons and men for the Bosnians; Iranian-supported
Lebanese groups sent guerrillas to train and organize the Bosnian forces. In
1993 up to 4000 Muslims from over two dozen Islamic countries were reported
to be fighting in Bosnia. The governments of Saudi Arabia and other
countries felt under increasing pressure from fundamentalist groups in their
own societies to provide more vigorous support for the Bosnians. By the end
of 1992, Saudi Arabia had reportedly supplied substantial funding for
weapons and supplies for the Bosnians, which sjgnificantly increased their
military capabilities vis a vis the Serbs.

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

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

The West is now at an extraordinary peak of power in relation to other
civilizations. Its superpower opponent has disappeared from the map.
Military conflict among Western states is unthinkable, and Western military
power is unrivaled. Apart from Japan, the West faces no economic challenge.
It dominates international political and security institutions and with
Japan international economic institutions. Global political and security
issues are effectively settled by a directorate of the United States,
Britain and France, world economic issues by a directorate of the United
States, Germany and Japan, all of which maintain extraordinarily close
relations with each other to the exclusion of lesser and largely non-Western
countries. Decisions made at the U.N. Security Council or in the
International Monetary Fund that reflect the interests of the West are
presented to the world as reflecting the desires of the world community.

The very phrase "the world community" has become the euphemistic collective
noun (replacing "the Free World") to give global legitimacy to actions
reflecting the interests of the United States and other western powers.
Through the IMF and other international economic institutions, the West
promotes its economic interests and imposes on other nations the economic
policies it thinks appropriate. In any poll of non-Western peoples, the 1MF
undoubtedly would win the support of finance ministers and a few others, but
get an overwhelmingly unfavorable rating from just about everyone else, who
would agree with Georgy Arbatov's characterization of IMF officials as
"neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other people's money, imposing
undemocratic and alien rules of economic and political conduct and stifling
economic freedom."

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

That at least is the way in which non-Westerners see the new world, and
thcre is a significant element of truth in their view. Differences in power
and struggles for military, economic and institutional power are thus one
source of conflict between the West and other civilizations.

Differences in culture, that is basic values and beliefs, are a second
source of conflict. V. S. Naipaul has argued that Western civilization is
the "universal civilization" that "fits all men." At a superficial level
much of Western culture has indeed permeated the rest of the world. At a
more basic level, however, Western concepts differ fundamentally from those
prevalent in other civilizations. Western ideas of individualism,
liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of
law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have
little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist or
Orthodox cultures.

Western efforts to propagate such ideas produce instead a reaction against
"human rights imperialism" and a reaffirmation of indigenous values, as can
be seen in the support for religious fundamentalism by the younger
generation in non-Western cultures. The very notion that there could be a
"universal civilization" is a Western idea, directly at odds with the
particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what
distinguishes one people from another. Indeed, the author of a review of 100
comparative studies of values in different societies concluded that "the
values that are most important in the West arc least important worldwide."5
In the political realm, of course, these differences are most manifest in
the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to induce other
peoples to adopt Western ideas concerning democracy and human rights. Modern
democratic government originated in the West. When it has developed in
non-Western societies it has usually been the product of Western colonialism
or imposition.

The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be, in Kishore
Mahbubani's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest" and the
responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values.

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

The conflict between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states focuses
largely, although nor exclusively, on nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons, ballistic missiles and other sophisticated means for delivering
them, and the guidance, intelligence and other electronic capabilities for
achieving that goal. The West promotes nonproliferation as a universal norm
and nonproliferation treaties and inspections as means of realizing that
norm. It also threatens a variety of sanctions against those who promote the
spread of sophisticated weapons and proposes some benefits for those who do
not. The attention of the West focuses, naturally, on nations that are
actually or potentially hostile to the West.

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

Centrally important to the development of counter-West military capabilities
is the sustained expansion of China's military power and its means to create
military power. Buoyed by spectacular economic development, China is rapidly
increasing its military spending and vigorously moving forward with the
modernization of its armed forces. It is purchasing weapons from the former
Soviet states; it is developing long-range missiles; in 1992 it tested a
one-megaton nuclear device. It is developing power-projection capabilities,
acquiring aerial refueling technology, and trying to purchase an aircraft
carrier. Its military buildup and assertion of sovereignty over the South
China Sea are provoking a multilateral regional arms race in East Asia.
China is also a major exporter of arms and weapons technology. It has
exported materials to Libya and Iraq that could be used to manufacture
nuclear weapons and nerve gas. It has helped Algeria build a reactor
suitable for nuclear weapons research and production. China has sold to Iran
nuclear technology that American officials believe could only be used to
create weapons and apparently has shipped components of 3oo-mile-range
missiles to Pakistan. North Korea has had a nuclear weapons program under
way for some while and has sold advanced missiles and missile technology to
Syria and Iran. The flow of weapons and weapons technology is generally from
East Asia to the Middle East. There is, however, some movement in the
reverse direction; China has received Stinger missiles from Pakistan.

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

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

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

In the longer term other measures would be called for. Western civilization
is both Western and modern. Non-Western civilizations have attempted to
become modern without becoming Western. To date only Japan has fully
succeeded in this quest. Non-Western civilizations will continue to attempt
to acquire the wealth, technology, skills, machines and weapons that are
part of being modern. They will also attempt to reconcile this modernity
with their traditional culture and values. Their economic and military
strength relative to the West will increase. Hence The West will
increasingly have to accommodate these non-Western modern civilisations
whose power approaches that of the West but whose values and interests
differ significantly from those of the West. This will require the West to
maintain the economic and military power necessary to protect its interests
in relation to these civilizations. It will also, however, require the West
to develop a more profound understanding of the basic religious and
philosophical assumptions underlying other

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