Clashes between or within civilizations? Meeting of cultures in Anatolia and Western Europe

Abstract

Samuel Huntington’s thesis of a clash of civilizations, formulated in the early 1990s, has gained renewed popularity in the wake of September 11 and America’s declaration of war on terror. This thesis came out of a research project that aimed to search for the likely sources of major conflict after the end of the Cold War and to identify America’s future enemies. Huntington argued that the major fault lines of the future, across which there are likely to be conflicts, are the boundaries between different civilizations. Civilizations — such as Western Christendom, Eastern Christendom, Islam, the Indic and ‘Confucian’ civilizations of Asia — have, in this view, a more lasting permanence and stability than individual states and political alliances. The great heterogeneity within each of these civilizations is ignored. The greatest threat is Islam, which, Huntington claims, ‘has bleeding borders;’ the worst nightmare is an alliance of Confucianism with Islam against the West. Years before Bush’ ‘axis of evil’ speech, Huntington hinted at North Korean arms deliveries to Iran as the beginning of this most threatening scenario.