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Old Friday, April 13, 2007
KHAN AMMAR ALI KHAN's Avatar
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Default The Clash of civilizations & Remaking of World Order

AOA. i've prepared a synopsis of Samuel P Huntington's thesis named as 'The Clash of Civilizations & Remaking of World Order'. for further reading, u should read the entire book.
THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
A.INTRODUCTION:
The theory of the Clash of Civilizations, as described by Samuel Huntington is:
“In the emerging world, the relations between states and groups from different civilizations will not be close and will often be antagonistic. Yet some inter-civilization relations are more conflict prone than others. At the micro level, the most violent fault lines are between Islam and its Orthodox, Hindu, African, and Western Christian 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. The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness.”
“In this new world the most pervasive, important and dangerous conflicts will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations, however, carries with it the potential for escalation as other states and groups from these civilizations rally to the support of their ‘kin countries’.”
Civilizations are the ultimate human tribes, and the Clash of Civilizations is tribal conflict on a global scale. In the emerging world, states and groups from two different civilizations may form limited, ad hoc, tactical connections and coalitions to advance their interests against entities from the third civilization or for other shared purposes. Relations between groups from different civilizations however will be almost never close, usually cool, and often antagonistic. Connections between states of different civilizations inherited from the past, such as Cold War military alliances, are likely to attenuate or evaporate. Hopes for close inter-civilizational partnerships, such as were once articulated by their leaders for Russia and America, will not be realized. Emerging inter-civilizational relations will normally vary from distant to violent, with most falling in between. In many cases they are likely to approximate the “cold peace” that Boris Yaltsin warned could be the future of relations between Russia and the West. Other inter-civilizational relations would approximate a condition of “cold war”. The term la Guerra fria was coined by 13th century Spaniards to describe their “uneasy coexistence” with Muslims in the Mediterranean, and in the 1990s many saw a civilizational cold war again developing between Islam and the West. In a world of civilizations, it will not only be the relationship characterized by that term. Cold peace, cold war, trade war, quasi war, uneasy peace, troubled relations, intense rivalry, competitive coexistence, arms race: these phrases are the most probable descriptions of relations between entities from different civilizations. Trust and friendship will be rare.
One grim Weltaschauung for this new era was well expressed by Michael Dibdin’s novel, Dead Lagoon:
“There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their nuclear race. The ultimate mission of the West is to establish its hegemony over the entire Islamic world in which, up to some extent, they are very successful.

Along with this, promoting the spread of democracy has become a priority goal for the westerners. As defined by President Bush:

“Our new mission is to be the promotion and consolidation of democracy and beyond containment lies democracy.”

To implement it, they are trying to establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq and, up to some extent, are successful. But the question arises that “Will this democracy in theses Muslim countries wipe up the terrorists and terrorist groups? To a lesser degree and in less obvious ways, the promotion of human rights and democracy also assumed a prominent role in the foreign policies of the western countries and in the criteria used by the western-controlled international economic institutions for loans and grants to developing countries.

The West has significant influence over the Islamic as well as the Eastern countries that one intellectual of the west believes that the world’s language is English. It could mean that an increasing proportion of the world’s population speaks English. No evidence exists to support this proposition. In one sense, a language foreign to 92 per cent of the people in the world cannot be the world’s language. In this sense, English is the world’s way of communicating inter-culturally just as the Christian calendar is the world’s way of tracking time; Arabic numbers are the world’s way of measuring. It is a tool of communication not a source of identity and community.

The under lying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam, a different society whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for the Islamic countries is not the CIA or the US department of State or Moseyed. It is the West, a different society whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superiors, if declining, power imposes on them. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.

Asia, China and America:

The economic changes in Asia, particularly East Asia, are one of the most significant developments in the world in the second half of the 20th century. The 1990s this economic development had generated economic euphoria among many observers who saw East Asia and the entire Pacific Rim linked together in ever-expanding commercial network that would insure peace and harmony among nations. The optimism was based on the highly dubious assumption that commercial interchange is invariably a force for peace. Such, however, is not he case. Economic growth creates political instability within countries and regions. Economic exchange brings people into contact; it does not bring them onto agreement. Historically it has often produced a deeper awareness of the differences between people and stimulated mutual fears. Trade between the countries produces conflicts as well as profit. If past experiences hold, the Asia of economic sunshine will generate an Asia of political shadows, an Asia of instability and conflict.

With six civilizations, eighteen countries, rapidly growing economies, and major political, economic and social differences among its societies, East Asia could develop any one of several patterns of international relations in the early 21st century. Conceivably an extremely complex set of cooperative and conflictual relations could emerge involving lost of the major and middle-level powers of the region. Or a major power, Multipolar international system could take shape with China, Japan, the US, Russia and possibly India balancing and competing with each other. Alternatively, East Asian politics could be dominated by a sustained bipolar rivalry between China and Japan or between China and the US, with other countries aligning themselves with one side or the other or opting for nonalignment.

With an average annual growth of 9.5 per cent for almost three decades, China has not only managed to lift a large section of its population out of poverty. It has also emerged as an economic, political and military force to reckon with. Against the backdrop of the global balance of power in which China figure prominently, the United Sates’ major concern has been its enormous trade deficit with China amounting to 200 billion dollars in 2005. This has created some friction between the two countries as the US, which finds itself at a disadvantage, accuses China of manipulating its currency rate to boost its export and of running a blind eye to the piracy of goods. The US has also tried to pin down China by calling on it to allow more freedoms and human rights to its people. Unsurprisingly, Beijing has brushed aside the American call for freedom, since it is confident about its own standing and refuses to be bullied around by a state which is the sole superpower in the world and which has many of its human rights abuses to answer for.

The fact is that China is playing an important role in the world affairs, especially in the region on its periphery. Thus it was instrumental in brokering a compromise on the nuclear issue between Pyongyang and Washington. As the champion of the developing countries, China is acting as the countervailing force to neutralize American dominance. This has been pretty obvious in the case of Iran’s nuclear imbroglio. Its improving relationships with India have also created another center of power in international politics. To neutralize China, President Bush has propped up Taiwan and Japan as models of democracy and economic development in Asia.

FROM TRANSITION WARS TO FAULT LINE WARS:
Transition Wars: Afghanistan and the Gulf:

“La premiere guerre civilisationnelle,” the distinguished Moroccan scholar, Mahdi Elmandjra called the Gulf War as it was being fought. In fact it was the second. The first was the Soviet Afghan War of 1979 – 1989. Both wars began as straightforward invasion of one country by another but were transformed into and in large part redefined as civilization wars. They were, in effect, transition wars to an era dominated by ethnic conflict and fault line wars between groups from different civilizations.

The Afghan war became a civilization war because Muslims everywhere saw it as such nd rallied against the Soviet Union. The Gulf War became a civilization war because the West intervened militarily in a Muslim conflict, Westerners overwhelmingly supported that intervention, and Muslims throughout the world came to see that intervention as a war against them and rallied against what they saw as one more instance of Western imperialism.

Characteristics of the Fault line Wars:
Wars between clans, tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, and nations have been prevalent in every era and in every civilization because they are rooted in the identities of people. These conflicts tend to be particularistic, in that they do not involve broader ideological or political issues of direct interest to nonparticipants, although they may arose humanitarian concerns in outside groups. They also tend to be vicious and bloody, since fundamental issues of identity are at stake.

Fault line conflicts are communal conflicts between states or groups from different civilizations. Fault lines wars are conflicts that have become violent. Such wars may occur between states, between nongovernmental groups, and between states and nongovernmental groups. Fault line conflicts within states may involve groups which are predominantly located in geographically distinct areas, in which case the group which does not control the government normally fights for independence and may or may not be willing to settle for something less than that. Fault line conflicts are sometimes are struggles for control over people. More frequently the issue is control of territory.

THE DYNAMICS OF FAULT LINE WARS:
Identity: The Rise of Civilization Consciousness:
Fault line wars go through processes of intensification, expansion, containment, interruption, and, rarely, resolution. These processes usually begin sequentially, but they also often overlap and may be repeated. Once started, fault line wars, like other communal conflicts, tend to take on a life of their own and to develop in an action-reaction pattern. Identities which ahs previously been multiple and casual become focused hardened; communal conflicts are appropriately termed “identity wars”.

The strengthening of civilizational identities has occurred among fault line war participants from other civilizations but was particularly prevalent among Muslims. A fault line war may have its origin in family, clan, or trial conflicts, but because identity in the Muslim world tend to be U-shaped, as the struggle progresses the Muslim participants quickly seek to broaden their identity and appeal to all of Islam.

Halting Fault Line Wars:

“Every war must end.” Such is the conventional wisdom. Is it true of fault line wars? Yes and no. Fault line violence may stop entirely for a period of time, but it rarely ends permanently. Fault line wars are marked by frequent truces, cease-fires, armistices, but not by comprehensive peace treaties that resolve central political issues. They have this off-again-on-again quality because they are rooted in deep fault line conflicts involving sustained antagonistic relations between the groups of different civilizations. The conflicts in turn stem from the geographical proximity, different religions and cultures, separate social structures, and historical memories of the two societies.

Producing even a temporary halt in the fault line war usually depends on two developments. The first is exhaustion of the primary participants. At some point when the casualties have mounted into tens of thousands, refugees into the hundreds of thousands and cities – Beirut, Grozny – reduced to rubble, people cry “madness, madness, enough is enough”, the radicals on both sides are no longer able to mobilize popular fury, negotiations which have sputtered along unproductively for years come to life, and moderates reassert themselves and reach some sort of agreement for a halt to a carnage.

Fault line wars are ended not by disinterested individuals, groups, or organizations but by interested secondary and tertiary parties who have rallied to the support of their kin and have the capability to negotiate agreements with their counterparts, on the one hand, and to induce their kin to accept those agreements, on the other.

Robert Putnam has highlighted the extent, in “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The logic of Two Level Games”, to which the negotiations between states are “two level games” in which diplomats negotiate simultaneously with constituencies within their country and with their counterparts from the other country.

Achieving a halt in the fighting in a “full model” war thus is likely to require:

• Active involvement of secondary and tertiary parties;
• Negotiation by the tertiary parties of the broad terms for stopping the fighting;
• Use by the tertiary parties of carrots and sticks to get the secondary parties to accept these terms and to pressure the primary parties to accept them;
• Withdrawal of support from and, in effect, the betrayal of the primary parties by the secondary parties; and
• As a result of this pressure, acceptance of the terms by the primary parties, which, of course, they subvert when they see it in their interest to do so.

An agreement to halt a fault line war will be successful, even if only temporarily, to the extent that it reflects the local balance of power among the primary parties and the interests of the tertiary and secondary parties.
THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATIONS
History ends at least once and occasionally more often in the history of every civilization. As the civilization’s universal state emerges, its people become blinded by what Toynbee called “the mirage of immortality” and convinced that theirs in the final form of human society. So it was with the Roman Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Societies that assume that their history has ended, however, are usually societies whose history is about to decline. The overriding lesson of the history of civilizations is that many things are probable but nothing is inevitable. Civilizations can and have reformed and renewed themselves. As Mizzani said:“Nations like individual, live and die; but civilization cannot die.The most important and inevitable manifestations of moral decline, as Huntington observed, include; as far as the Western societies are concerned:
• Increases in antisocial behaviour, such as crime, drug abuse and violence generally.
• Family decay, including increase rates of divorce, illegitimacy, teen-age pregnancy, and single parent families.
• At least in the US, a decline in ‘social capital;, that is, membership in voluntary associations and the interpersonal trust with such membership.
• General weakening of the work ethic and the rise of cult of personal indulgence.
• Decreasing commitment to learning and intellectual activity, manifested in the US in lower levels of scholastic achievement.
The future health of the West and its influence on other societies depends in considerable measure on its success in copping with those trends, which, of course, give rise to the assertions of moral superiority by Muslims and Asians.
2. Civilizational War and Order:
As far as a Civilizational War and Order is concerned, a global war involving the core states of the world’s major civilizations is highly improbable but not impossible. Such a war could come about from the escalation of a fault line war between groups from different civilizations, most likely involving Muslims on one side and non-Muslims on the other. Escalation is made more likely if aspiring Muslim core states compete to provide assistance to their embattled coreligionists. It is made less likely by the interests which secondary and tertiary kin countries nay have in not becoming deeply involved in the war themselves. A more dangerous source of a global intercivilizational war is the shifting balance of power among civilizations and their core states. If it continues, the rise of china and the increasing assertiveness of this “biggest player in the history of man” will place tremendous stress on international stability in the early 21st century. The emergence of China as a dominant power in East and Southeast Asia would be contrary to American interests, as they have been historically constructed.
FINAL
In the coming era, the avoidance of major intercivilizational wars requires core states to refrain from intervening in conflicts in other civilizations. This is a truth which some states, particularly the US, will undoubtedly find difficult to accept. The abstention rule that core states abstain from intervention in conflicts in other civilizations is the first requirement of peace in a multicivilizational, Multipolar world. The second requirement is the joint mediation rule that core states negotiate with each other to contain or to halt fault line wars between states or groups from their civilizations. “The future of both peace and Civilization depend upon understanding and cooperation among the political, spiritual, and intellectual leaders of the world’s major civilizations. In the Clash of Civilizations, Europe and America will hang together or hang separately. In the greater clash, the global ‘real clash’, between civilizations and barbarism, the world’s great civilizations, with their rich accomplishments in religion, art, literature, philosophy, science, technology, morality, and compassion, will also hang together, or hang separately. In the emerging era, Clashes of Civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war.”

Last edited by Aarwaa; Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 06:51 PM. Reason: .
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