Clash of Civilizations

In class this week, we were introduced to the book "Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. The section we read interested me so I decided that my blog post for today would focus on that. The basic message that Huntington attempts to get across is that peoples religious and cultural identities will cause conflict and tension. Huntington identifies a major shift of economic, military, and political power from the West to the other civilizations of the world. He goes on to explain that there are two civilizations that challege this and they are Islam and the East Asian Sinic civilization. He predicts that Korea and Vietnam will back East Asia, more specifically China, because of its history of hierarchical command structures. China will be the most powerful long-term threat to the West.

Now, to focus on how the Arab Region ties into the picture, I will go over what Huntington says about the Islamic civilization and the conflict its experiencing. Islam has gone through a massive population explosion which is causing conflict because fundamentalist movements are becoming increasingly popular and the Islamic Resurgence is springing forth once again. Huntington believes that the Islamic civilization is another potential ally to China and he predicts that the Western-Islamic clash could become the biggest conflict of the early 21st century.

Huntington concludes to say that in the future "there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others."



Huntington, S.P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Elliot, M. (1996, Dec 1). When Cultures Collide. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com