Name: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
ISBN: 9780743231497

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

From the Preface... In the summer of 1993 the journal Foreign Affairs published an article of mine titled "The Clash of Civilizations?". That article, according to the Foreign Affairs editors, stirred up more discussion in three years than any other article they had published since the 1940s. It certainly stirred up more debate in three years than anything else I have written. The responses and comments on it have come from every continent and scores of countries. People were variously impressed, intrigued, outraged, frightened, and perplexed by my argument that the central and most dangerous dimension of the emerging global politics would be conflict between groups from differing civilizations. Whatever else it did, the article struck a nerve in people of every civilization. Given the interest in, misrepresentation of, and controversy over the article, it seemed desirable for me to explore further the issues it raised. One constructive way of posing a question is to state an hypothesis. The article, which had a generally ignored question mark in its title, was an effort to do that. This book is intended to provide a fuller, deeper, and more thoroughly documented answer to the article's question. I here attempt to elaborate, refine, supplement, and, on occasion, qualify the themes set forth in the article and to develop many ideas and cover many topics not dealt with or touched on only in passing in the article.

What Hacker News says

pasNov 2016

Have you read Pinker: The Blank Slate, and Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty?

And "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington?

Also, Gleick: Chaos?

Oh, and for fiction the James S. A. Corey: The Expanse series, veeeery easy to read, normally funny, and quite clever.

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jack_hSep 2025

It's no different than the South in the US which does not include Texas, New Mexica, Arizona, or any other states that are geographically South in the modern day US. Once you understand the historical aspect of the naming it makes sense. The category itself, regardless of its label, is useful.

In terms of Latin America being a part of the West or not, that's more interesting. I'm currently reading Samuel P. Huntington's "A Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" and in it he talks a lot about civilizations which he defines as the highest cultural grouping of people short of what makes us human. Language, law, and religion in Latin America largely derive from Europe, although there are other aspects like economics that tend can differ. Some people consider Latin America as part of the West, others believe it's peripheral to the West or its part of its own civilization as Huntington does.

As others have pointed out Russia is not part of the West and at least according to Huntington would be placed in the Orthodox Civilization. Interestingly Huntington also argues that Greece, despite being the center of Classical Civilization which is the bases for Western Civilization, is not a part of the West, rather they too are Orthodox.

Regardless of whether you agree with these groupings, I think distilling it down to skin color is incorrect and not useful. The West itself is not even remotely homogenous in this aspect. You wouldn't go to sections of the Deep South in the US and declare it as not being a part of the West anymore than you would include Belarus as part of the West.

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vfclistsJul 2022

This is the naive viewpoint.

Ever head about "The Clash Of Civilizations: And The Remaking Of World Order", which is actually a book?

Westerners do not truly understand how degenerate their political leaders can come across to the rest of the world.

A good of example if the policy of denying aid or some trade favours to countries which are hostile to the LGBTQ ideologies of the West.

In effect what Western leaders are saying is that in their view tolerating what to other cultures is an unclean sexual fetish is a more important human rights issue than the ability of children to be well-fed and have clean water. Gay marriage is not even a starter as it is an oxymoron as far as many cultures are concerned.

The west considers it more important for a tiny minority of men who never even asked for the West's support to have penises in their bellies than for children to have food in their bellies. Do you understand how demented that looks to other cultures? How many people have died as a result of lacking penises in their bellies compared to those who have died for lack of food in their bellies?

How do you think it looks to the world when Western leaders gather at global summits to iterate the importance of such an issue over some of the more basic needs facing a large number of the worlds population?

Obama goes to berate African politicians for not allowing gay marriage because it is a human rights issue, while ignoring the human rights dimension of drone strikes he personally authorizes and the immense suffering and death caused by US wars and support in other conflicts such as Yemen?

How many innocent people have been killed as a result of drone strikes authorized by Obama personally as opposed to people prosecuted or executed on account of sodomy in Africa?

You have no conception of the depth of depravity and dementedness it takes for mature adult males to stand on a global stage and moralize over LGBTQ issues when there are for more compelling issues facing billions of people around the world which they are both directly and indirectly responsible for.

This is only a small example of the way the West is perceived that is why the West's stance on Ukraine is not supported by the rest of the world. As far as the rest of the world is concerned the West has no moral leg to stand on, other than the fact that it is the population of an white country that is important to the West who are suffering.

Right now in Ukraine, instead of finding a way to get the parties to negotiate and find a peaceful solution to their difference, the policy of the West now is to support Ukraine with the weaponry and resources to fight to the bitter end, with no concern for the long-term damage and suffering that will inflict on Ukraine's population and their country. In effect is good that Ukrainians consider to suffer heavy losses in the near and long-term because they will eventually be "victorious".

Now how does that come across as concern for human suffering?

In the view of the rest of the world, the West is supporting Ukraine in this war to their own strategic goals, not out of concern for Ukraine's population.

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Paul_SNov 2016

Thanks, no. I'll start with "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" as it's the most controversial one (spread of reviews) and if I like it I'll keep going.

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fwezDec 2009

I stand corrected. I failed to take into account the effectiveness and efficiency of modern weapons. They assign disproportionate power to the top of the thugocracy (Saddam Hussein being an extreme example). Such a thugocracy can propagate itself brutally, suppressing the trickling down of wealth and development.

The question that follows (and that I honestly don't know the answer to) is whether the invention of modern weapons was a historical tipping point that obliterated previous routes of national economic development. What if mechanized warfare had been invented before the rise of the West by a non-Western civilization and transferred (via trade) to the medieval European feudal lords. Would they have allowed the rise of the middle class in the West the way it did?

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do" -- Samuel Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, p. 51.

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