The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (88 page)

LAMB: I know you‘ve just finished this book. Do you have another book you‘re working on?

HUNTINGTON: Not—no. Not at the moment, no.

LAMB: And you‘ve been—over the years, when you write, you get criticized. I mean, you clash with people.

HUNTINGTON: That‘s right.

LAMB: How do you like that?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I don‘t particularly like the criticism, but as I indicated earlier, it seems to me that with several of my previous books which were heavily criticized, in the end, they came to—to receive the recognition which they deserved and were hailed as very important works. So—and as I said, I think that‘s because what I tend to do is to try to—is to look at things and see them somewhat differently than other people do and see things that people want to avoid.

I wrote a book called “Political Order in Changing Society” in the 1960s which said, Hey, this whole idea that modernization and development are proceeding apace in the third world countries isn‘t holding up. We‘re not having political development, we‘re having political decay. And that book was criticized greatly when it first came out, but then in a few years, it became the most widely used back book in comparative politics courses in the United States and it was heralded as the book you had to read on that subject.

LAMB: We‘re out of time. Here‘s the cover of the book. “Who Are We?: The Challenge to America‘s National Identity.” Our guest has been Dr. Samuel P. Huntington. We thank you very much.

HUNTINGTON: Well, thank you. Delighted to be here.

END

Philip Seib.
Parameters
. Carlisle Barracks: Winter 2004/2005. Vol.34, Iss. 4;  pg. 71, 15 pgs.

Abstract (Document Summary)

Seib uses Samuel Huntington’s thesis regarding the clash of civilizations to analyze how the news media might better shape its coverage of world events. He sees the clash theory as a means for focusing media resources following the Cold War era. The ability to have a geographic region and a bad guy will permit the media to be more efficient [in] their application of resources.

Full Text (6572 words)

Copyright U.S. Army War College Winter 2004/2005

The “call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered,” reported
The New York Times
in April 2004. The
Times
story quoted a Muslim cleric in Britain touting the “culture of martyrdom,” an imam in Switzerland urging his followers to “impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West,” and another radical Islamist leader in Britain predicting that “our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here, and then we will live under Islam in dignity.”
[1]

For those who believe that a clash of civilizations—particularly between Islam and the non-Islamic West—is under way or at least approaching, the provocative comments in the Times article were evidence that “the clash” is not merely a figment of an overheated political imagination. Ever since Samuel Huntington presented his theory about such a clash in a Foreign Affairs article in 1993, debate has continued about whether his ideas are substantive or simplistic. For the news media, this debate is important because it helps shape their approach to covering the world.

In Huntington’s article, which he refined and expanded in his 1996 book,
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
, he argued that “the clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
[2]
In the book, Huntington said that “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world.” Huntington’s corollaries to this proposition, in summary form, are these:

 
•
  “For the first time in history, global politics is both multipolar and multicivilizational.”

 
•
  As the balance of power among civilizations shifts, the relative influence of the West is declining.

 
•
  A world order is emerging that is civilization-based.

 
•
  “Universalist pretensions” are increasingly bringing the West into conflict with other civilizations, especially the Islamic world and China.

 
•
  If the West is to survive, America must reaffirm its Western identity and unite with other Westerners in the face of challenges from other civilizations.
[3]

One reason that Huntington’s clash theory initially had appeal was that policymakers, the news media, and others were moving uncertainly into the post-Cold War era without much sense of how the newest world order was taking shape. They were receptive to a new geopolitical scheme, particularly one that featured identifiable adversarial relationships that would supersede those being left behind.

The us-versus-them alignment of the Cold War’s half-century had been convenient for the news media as well as for policymakers. The American perspective was that the bad guys operated from Moscow and its various outposts, while the good guys were based in Washington and allied countries. Not all the world accepted such a facile division, but those who did found it tidy and easy to understand. Many American news organizations shaped their coverage to conform to this worldview; there was Cold War journalism just as there was Cold War politics.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Soviet Union, and other events marking the end of the Cold War, the news media found themselves searching for new ways to approach international coverage.
New York Times
foreign editor Bernard Gwertzman sent a memo to his staff in December 1992 calling for adjustments in coverage: “In the old days, when certain countries were pawns in the Cold War, their political orientation alone was reason enough for covering them. Now with their political orientation not quite as important, we don’t want to forget them, but we have an opportunity to examine different aspects of a society more fully.”
[4]

But absent the Cold War’s principal threat—possible nuclear conflict between the two superpowers—interest in international news became less acute. Those “different aspects of a society” that Gwertzman cited were important, but news about them lacked urgency. New villains could be found from time to time—Saddam Hussein was one who filled the bill nicely—but they were not part of a grand scenario such as that of the Cold War.

Even the 1991 Gulf War seemed to take place in a narrow context. In response to an act of aggression that the American government judged to be against its interests, the United States built a coalition and smashed the aggressor. It was a fine showcase for America in its unipolar moment, but it seemed little more than a response to a singular aberrant act. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was not seen as representing any larger cultural or political force.

Nevertheless, something was percolating. In 1993, a car bomb killed seven and injured hundreds at the World Trade Center in New York. In 1995, an alleged plot to blow up a dozen US aircraft was foiled. In 1995 and 1996, truck bombs were used in attacks on American training and residential facilities in Saudi Arabia. In 1998, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were attacked with car bombs. In 2000, USS
Cole
was attacked by suicide bombers in Yemen.

These and other terrorist incidents received heavy news coverage, but primarily as isolated events. Neither the government nor the news media connected the dots. Although the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 represented a staggering escalation, they were part of this continuum of terrorism. The attacks on American targets throughout the 1990s, as well as incidents directed at non-American targets (such as a 1995 assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak), were parts of a radical Islamist agenda designed by Osama bin Laden and others. Bin Laden himself was a shadowy presence, but not invisible. He had been indicted for the embassy bombings, and he granted interviews to American news organizations. He told CNN in 1997, “We declared jihad against the US government,” and ABC in 1998, “We anticipate a black future for America.”
[5]

Bin Laden does not in himself constitute a “civilization” that is clashing with the West. He can be dismissed as a murderer who has merely proclaimed himself to be a defender of Islam. There is, however, more to a decade of terrorism than one man’s persistence. Whether Huntington’s theory is validated by these terrorist events and whether Huntington’s view of conflict should guide the planning of news coverage remains debatable.

Critics of Huntington’s theory abound, focusing on a variety of issues, such as the idea that “civilizations” are superseding states. Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami has said that Huntington “underestimated the tenacity of modernity and secularism.”
[6]
Terrorism expert Richard Clarke has said that rather than there being a straightforward Islam-versus-West conflict,

We are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam—not a “clash of civilizations” between East and West—is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so.
[7]

Scholars Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit take a broader view. They have written that “radical Islamists no longer believe in the traditional Muslim division of the world between the peaceful domain of Islam and the war-filled domain of infidels. To them the whole world is now the domain of war. . . . The West is the main target.”
[8]
Buruma and Margalit add that this radicalism is not going unchallenged and that “the fiercest battles will be fought inside the Muslim world.”
[9]
International relations scholar Charles Kupchan has said that “the ongoing struggle between the United States and Islamic radicals does not represent a clash of civilizations,” but rather is the result of extremist groups preying upon discontent within Islamic states. “The underlying source of alienation,” writes Kupchan, “is homegrown—political and economic stagnation and the social cleavages it produces.”
[10]

Along similar lines, Zbigniew Brzezinski has written:

The ferment within the Muslim world must be viewed primarily in a regional rather than a global perspective, and through a geopolitical rather than a theological prism. . . . Hostility toward the United States, while pervasive in some Muslim countries, originates more from specific political grievances—such as Iranian nationalist resentment over the US backing of the Shah, Arab animus stimulated by US support for Israel, or Pakistani feelings that the United States has been partial to India—than from a generalized religious bias.
[11]

Journalist Thomas Friedman disagrees with Huntington’s approach on different grounds, arguing that Huntington did not appreciate the effects of globalization on cultural interests and behavior. Huntington, according to Friedman, “vastly underestimated how the power of states, the lure of global markets, the diffusion of technology, the rise of networks, and the spread of global norms could trump [his] black-and-white (mostly black) projections.”
[12]

Some observers, while not embracing Huntington’s theory, do not write it off altogether. They note a gravitation toward “civilizational” interests. Friedman, for instance, wrote in early 2004: “9/11 sparked real tensions between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim East. Preachers on both sides now openly denounce each other’s faith. Whether these tensions explode into a real clash of civilizations will depend a great deal on whether we build bridges or dig ditches between the West and Islam in three key places—Turkey, Iraq, and Israel-Palestine.”
[13]
University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami noted a shift in self-identification in the Arab world. “Historically,” he wrote, “Arabs have three political options: Islam, pan-Arabism, or nationalism linked to individual states.” But a survey Telhami conducted in six Arab countries in June 2004 found that “more and more Arabs identify themselves as Muslims first.” This trend is not uniform. Telhami noted that in Egypt and Lebanon, people identified themselves as Egyptians and Lebanese more than as Arabs or Muslims, while in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, majorities or pluralities cited their Islamic identity above others.
[14]

The debate about Huntington’s clash theory continues, with Islam-related issues receiving the most attention, at least for now. Some observers see new fault lines that may contribute to cultural clashes. Niall Ferguson points to the declining population of current European Union members—it is projected to shrink by about 7.5 million by 2050, the most sustained drop since the Black Death in the 14th century—which will leave a vacuum that might be filled by Muslim immigrants. Concerning the consequences of this, Ferguson wrote, “A creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom is one conceivable result: while the old Europeans get even older and their religious faith weaker, the Muslim colonies within their cities get larger and more overt in their religious observance.” Other possibilities, said Ferguson, include a backlash against immigration or perhaps “a happy fusion between rapidly secularized second-generation Muslims and their post-Christian neighbors.” Each of the three could occur in various places, he added.
[15]

In response to the initial wave of criticism that his Foreign Affairs article stimulated, Huntington stood his ground. In late 1993 he wrote:

What ultimately counts for people is not political ideology or economic interest. Faith and family, blood and belief, are what people identify with and what they will fight and die for. And that is why the clash of civilizations is replacing the Cold War as the central phenomenon of global politics, and why a civilizational paradigm provides, better than any alternative, a useful starting point for understanding and coping with the changes going on in the world.
[16]

The supply of theories—and theories about theories—is inexhaustible. Fortunately for journalists, they need not—and should not—adopt just one as the foundation for building their approach to coverage. They should, however, become familiar with the diverse array of ideas about how the world is changing. The news media must go somewhere; they cannot simply remain at a standstill while yearning for the return of their neat Cold War dichotomy.

In news coverage, as in politics, a vacuum exists if there is no “enemy.” Professor Adeed Dawisha wrote that “in the wake of the demise of international communism, the West saw radical Islam as perhaps its most dangerous adversary.”
[17]
Thus, an enemy, and so a vacuum no more. This was apparent immediately after the 2001 attacks, when mainstream American newspapers featured headlines such as these: “This Is a Religious War”; “Yes, This Is About Islam”; “Muslim Rage”; “The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror”; “Kipling Knew What the US May Now Learn”; “Jihad 101”; “The Revolt of Islam”; and so on. Several discussed the Crusades and were illustrated with pictures of Richard the Lion Heart.
[18]

Events have pushed many in the news media toward a de facto adoption of the Huntington theory, regardless of its many critics. The 9/11 attacks, the resulting Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War begun in 2003 all lend themselves to political and journalistic shorthand: We have a new array of villains, and they have Islam in common. That must mean that a clash of civilizations is under way.