The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order

The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order
By Samuel P. Huntington
Simon & Schuster. 367 pages. £16.99

Samuel Huntington is one of the West's most eminent political scientists. His recent book, The Clash of Civilisations, has been described by Henry Kissinger as 'one of the most important books to have emerged since the end of the Cold War', and by Francis Fukuyama as 'dazzling in its scope and grasp of the intricacies of contemporary global politics'.
If Christian leaders are to understand the dangers and challenges of the next decades, and if they are to prepare evangelical Christians in different parts of the world to face the crushing forces which are already well on the move, then we must, I believe, read books like this.
Huntington's thesis is that: 'In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions are not ideological, political or economic. They are cultural. People and nations are attempting to answer the most basic of questions that humans can face: who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations and, at the broadest level, civilisations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to 'define their identity' (p.21).
In this new world, 'local politics is the politics of ethnicity; global politics is the politics of civilisations. The rivalry of the superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilisations' (p.28).

Civilisations and religions

The major contemporary civilisations are Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Western ('Euro-american'), Latin American and African ('possibly'). Some scholars would add Russian Orthodox to the list. Most of these command loyalties across nation-states and other divides. Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilisations.
Far from seeing the withering away of religion, the second half of the 20th century has seen a global religious revival. 'Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Orthodoxy have all experienced new surges in commitment, relevance and practice by erstwhile casual believers' (p.96).
Huntington sees the Islamic resurgence as 'an extremely important event affecting one fifth or more of humanity' and being 'at least as significant as the American Revolution, French Revolution or Russian Revolution' and 'comparable to the Protestant Reformation in Western society' (p.109). In Islam, the trend to secularisation went into reverse in the mid-1970s. After that, 'the aim was no longer to modernise Islam but to Islamise modernity' (p.96).

Prosperity and identity

Economic prosperity and the spread of technology, far from making for 'one world', has had the opposite effect.
As Western technology has been taken up by increasingly prosperous non-Western societies and civilisations (notably Asian), so a sense of independence, equality and even superiority has grown. Political leaders in Asia are saying with increasing directness to the West: 'We have your technology, we don't want your decadence.'
So, for instance, the Western stress on the place of the individual is countered with the Confucian stress on the place of the group, the family, the society and the culture, with their expectations, order and discipline. To refuse to put these first before one's own preferences (e.g. for a particular religion or politics or lifestyle) is not seen as praiseworthy but contemptible. In such ways, what is a human right in one civilisation may be seen as a human wrong in another!

The clash

Over the next 50 years, says Huntington, we are going to see the patterns of cohesion, disintegration and conflict on the world scene shaped not by old political and economic forces but by civilisational identities. Already, for example, we have seen in former Yugoslavia, Russia backs Orthodox Serbia, Germany promotes Catholic Serbia and Muslim countries rally to the support of the Bosnian government. We have seen the Russian army fight Muslim nationalists in Chechnya while former Soviet republics which are Muslim develop closer economic and political links with other Muslim countries. In East Asia, home to people of six different civilisations, we are seeing relations between Muslims, Chinese and Christians become increasingly tense and at times violent.
We hear more and more trans-national terms such as 'Greater China', 'Greater Russia', 'Greater Serbia', 'Greater Iran', etc. Outside Japan and Korea, the East Asian economy is basically a Chinese economy. The combination of growing economic power and shared Chinese culture have led Taiwan and Singapore increasingly to involve themselves with the Chinese homeland, and Chinese of the 'Diaspora' in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines have increasingly articulated the concept of 'cultural China', and made 'the mirror test' the test of who they are: 'Go look in the mirror.'
In the emerging world, says Huntington, 'At the micro level, the most violent fault lines are between Islam and its Orthodox, Hindu, African and Western neighbours. At the macro level, the dominant division is between 'the West and the rest' with the most intense conflicts occurring between Muslim and Asian societies on the one hand and the West on the other.' He adds: 'The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance and Sinic assertiveness.' (p.183).
Huntington comments: 'The issue is not whether Europe and America will be Islamicised or the United States Hispanicised. It is whether Europe and America will become cleft societies encompassing two distinct and hugely separate communities from two different civilisations, which in turn depends on the numbers of immigrants and the extent to which they are assimilated into the Western cultures prevailing in Europe and America' (p.204).

The art of the possible

Civilisations are the ultimate human tribes, and the clash of civilisations is tribal conflict on a global scale, says Huntington (p.207). There may be limited, tactical connections and coalitions but, he says, relations between groups from different civilisations will be almost never close, usually cool, and often hostile. For the West, this will usually mean a careful balancing in coalition with other states against the economic and political power of great rivals (e.g. China).
In the mid-1990s, the West has many characteristics of a mature civilisation on the brink of decay, most critically: moral decline, cultural suicide and political disunity. Much depends on American resisting the 'small but influential number of intellectuals and publicists' who 'in the name of multiculturalism' have 'attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilisation' (p.305). However, 'if North America and Europe renew their moral life, build on their cultural commonality and develop close forms of economic and political integration to supplement their security collaboration in NATO, they could generate a third Euro-american phase of Western economic affluence and political influence' (p.308).
No civilisation is universal, insists Huntington at the end of this book. Indeed, belief in the universality of Western culture is, he says, 'false, immoral and dangerous'. It is false because the world is multi-civilisational; it is immoral because only major inter-civilisational wars could bring it about (or lead to the defeat of the West); and it is dangerous because it is 'probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multi-civilisational world' (p. 312).
Instead, he thinks: 'The requisites for cultural co-existence demand a search for what is common to most civilisations. In a multi-civilisational world, the constructive course is to renounce universalism, accept diversity, and seek commonalities.' (p. 319).

God beyond the possible

Here, I think, Huntington does not sufficiently give weight to the Christian influence behind the development of Western civilisation and the implications of this for the world at large. The Reformation in Europe, with its understanding of man and women made in the image of God and the priesthood of all believers, led to democracy, the dignity of women as equal, the rights of workers and a new view of work. Its insistence on honesty led to trust in financial institutions, new investment and greatly expanded trade. Its belief in our God the creator led to a belief in the unity of natural laws, an orderly, rational and stable creation - the foundation of the scientific method - and, politically, the judges and rulers who were not corrupt.
Huntington does not recognise that the power behind Western civilisation is a faith which applies to all nations, tribes, people and languages. Only God knows the future effect of Christianity in Africa and in China for instance. The art of the possible does not take into account the God of the impossible!

The church's witness

What does all this augur for the church of Christ? Does it mean that believers will be crushed between the tectonic plates of shifting, clashing civilisations? Certainly there will be hard times ahead for the Christian church in many lands and for believers who have become 'the enemy' of their culture and civilisations. Many Christians, however, will insist in service and suffering that they are far from the betrayers of their culture and people, seeking only to bring Christ into it, that what is good may be affirmed and the people God loves may be reconciled to him.
I will have more to say on this in my review, coming soon, of Miroslav Volf's important book Exclusion and Embrace.