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Samuel P. Huntington’s death has once again brought to the fore the debate on whether his hypothesis about an impending "clash of civilisations" holds the candle to the emerging world order.
A heady sense of euphoria had swept the world as the great Communist empire collapsed in the early 1990s. Since only one superpower remained, the dominant view was that there could be no major conflict in the future. Nuclear weapons were suddenly perceived as extravagantly redundant. Some scholars had even predicted that war itself would soon be out of date. Events that have unfolded since then, particularly the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, have belied these hopes. Today, the scourge of terrorism and local conflagrations across the globe continue to threaten world peace and have considerably eroded the "peace dividend" which was expected to accrue at the end of the Cold War. Out of this chaos, a new kind of political entity, being described as the "post-national" state, is emerging gradually. Many scholars and intellectuals have offered their own visions of the emerging world order. Of all these, Francis Fukayama’s 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man and Samuel Huntington’s 1993 article in Foreign Affairs entitled "The Clash of Civilisations" (developed in 1996 into a book The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order), have become modern day classics in the genre of international relations. Fukayama theorised that the world is witnessing the end of ideological conflict between democracy and totalitarianism and that the decisive defeat of totalitarianism will be the likely outcome. This, in turn, will bring about the end of conflict in the developed countries. However, the Third World would continue to suffer wars as it is "mired in history" and still in the process of resolving its ideological conflicts.
Perhaps no other writing on international affairs has attracted as much critical analysis as Huntington’s essay on the possibility of a clash between civilisations. His hypothesis is simple and straightforward: "The fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or 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 in global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations. The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics. The (cultural) fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future." Huntington postulated that a clash will occur because differences between civilisations are not only real, they are basic; the world is becoming a smaller place; the processes of economic modernisation and social change throughout the world are separating people from longstanding local identities; the growth of civilisation-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West; cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and, hence, less easily compromised than political and economic ones and economic regionalism is increasing. Thus, Huntington challenges the geo-economic school, which sees global competition for markets and trade shares as the main source of political rivalries. Many analysts perceive the Afghanistan conflict as the first conflict along civilisational fault lines. In his essay entitled "The End of Progressivism", Eisuke Sakakibara disagrees with the projections of both Fukayama and Huntington. In his view, "The Cold War was nothing but a conflict between two extreme versions of progressivism — socialism and neo-classical capitalism." He avers that civilisations do indeed rise and fall and often clash with each other, but more important, they have interacted and coexisted throughout most of history. It is clear that the "end of history", in Francis Fukayama’s misleading phrase, is not at hand. Civilisations will continue to coexist and, if at all they do clash, it will only be sometime in the distant future. As recent events have shown conflicts are more likely to occur between terrorist organisations and nation-states and, in some cases, between nation-states themselves to correct the aberrations of history. The real competition among nations will be in the arena of trade and commerce. Environmental and ecological issues will play a major role in the interaction between nations. Non-adherence to the principles of tolerance and moderation and the lack of maturity in the global discourse will certainly lead to an escalation in tensions between nations and, eventually, between civilisations. Whichever way the winds of change eventually blow, the contours of the emerging world order will remain blurred for a long time to come. (The writer is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi.)
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Fukayama’s argument
suffers from the fallacy of a single alternative, as the end of
totalitarianism and communism does not necessarily mean the automatic
emergence of liberal democracy. Recent events in Zimbabwe are pointers.
Fukayama’s paradigms are limited in their applicability mainly to the
Western world and tend to ignore the rest. With the emergence of many
new forms of authoritarianism, ethnic nationalism and religious
fundamentalism, it is extremely unlikely that ideological and physical
conflicts will end and the world will witness the "end of
history". Besides Fukayama, economic historian Robert L. Heilbroner
also pronounced the "end of history and the victory of
capitalism". Bernard Lewis, writing about the interaction between
the West and the rest of the world, has also emphasised the predominance
of democracy and free markets as the core Western values that entice the
rest of the world.