THE NEXT PATTERN OF CONFLICT
World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated
to proliferate visions of what it will be--the end of history, the return
of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the
nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among
others. Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality.
Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics
is likely to be in the coming years.
It is my hypothesis that 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 of global politics will occur between nations
and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will
dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be
the battle lines of the future.
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Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution
of conflict in the modern world. For a century and a half after the emergence
of the modern international system with the Peace of Westphalia, the conflicts
of the Western world were largely among princes--emperors, absolute monarchs
and constitutional monarchs attempting to expand their bureaucracies, their
armies, their mercantilist economic strength and, most important, the territory
they ruled. In the process they created nation states, and beginning with
the French Revolution the principal lines of conflict were between nations
rather than princes. In 1793, as R. R Palmer put, "The wars of kings were
over; the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenth-century pattern lasted
until the end of World War I. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution
and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict
of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy,
and then between communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War,
this latter conflict became embodied in the struggle between the two superpowers,
neither of which was a nation state in the classical European sense and
each of which defined its identity in terms of its ideology.
These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarily
conflicts within Western civilization, "Western civil wars," as William
Lind has labeled them. This was as true of the Cold War as it was of the
world wars and the earlier wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out
of its Western phase, and its centerpiece becomes the interaction between
the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations.
In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western
civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western
colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.
THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATIONS
During the Cold War the world was divided into the First Second and Third
Worlds. Those divisions are no longer relevant. It is far more meaningful
now to group countries not in terms of their political or economic systems
or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms
of their culture and civilization.
What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a cultural
entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups,
all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity.
The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of
a village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture
that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in
turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese
communities. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any
broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization
is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level
of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans
from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such
as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective
self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident
of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman,
an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization
to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which
he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and,
as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change.
Civilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("a civilization
pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it), or a very small number
of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A civilization may include
several nation states, as is the case with Western, Latin American and
Arab civilizations, or only one, as is the case with Japanese civilization.
Civilizations obviously blend and overlap, and may include subcivilizations.
Western civilization has two major variants, European and North American,
and Islam has its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilizations are
nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom
sharp, they are real. Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and fall, they
divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civilizations disappear
and are buried in the sands of time.
Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in global
affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few centuries. The broader
reaches of human history have been the history of civilizations. In A Study
of History, Arnold Toynbee identified 21 major civilizations; only six
of them exist in the contemporary world.
WHY CIVILIZATIONS WILL CLASH
Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and
the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven
or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese,
Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization.
The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural
fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.
Why will this be the case?
First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic.
Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language,
culture, tradition and, most important, religion. The people of different
civilizations have different views on the relations between God and man,
the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children,
husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance
of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy.
These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon disappear.
They are far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies
and political regimes. Differences do not necessarily mean conflict, and
conflict does not necessarily mean violence. Over the centuries, however,
differences among civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the
most violent conflicts.
Second, the world is becoming a smaller place The interactions between
peoples of different civilizations are increasing; these increasing interactions
intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between
civilizations and commonalities within civilizations. North African immigration
to France generates hostility among Frenchmen and at the same time increased
receptivity to immigration by "good" European Catholic Poles. Americans
react far more negatively to Japanese investment than to larger investments
from Canada and European countries. Similarly, as Donald Horowitz has pointed
out, "An Ibo may be...an Owerri Ibo or an Onitsha Ibo in what was the Eastern
region of Nigeria. In Lagos, he is simply an Ibo. In London, he is a Nigerian.
In New York, he is an African." The interactions among peoples of different
civilizations enhance the civilization-consciousness of people that, in
turn, invigorates differences and animosities stretching or thought to
stretch back deep into history.
Third, the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout
the world are separating people from long-standing local identities. They
also weaken the nation state as a source of identity. In much of the world
religion has moved in to fill this gap, often in the form of movements
that are labeled "fundamentalist." Such movements are found in Western
Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as in Islam. In most
countries and most religions the people active in fundamentalist movements
are young, college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and
business persons. The "unsecularization of the world," George Weigel has
remarked, "is one of the dominant social facts of life in the late twentieth
century." The revival of religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel
labeled it, provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends
national boundaries and unites civilizations.
Fourth, the growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual
role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the
same time, however, and perhaps as a result, a return to the roots phenomenon
is occurring among non-Western civilizations. Increasingly one hears references
to trends toward a turning inward and "Asianization" in Japan, the end
of the Nehru legacy and the "Hinduization" of India, the failure of Western
ideas of socialism and nationalism and hence "re-Islamization" of the Middle
East, and now a debate over Westernization versus Russianization in Boris
Yeltsin's country. A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests
that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape
the world in non-Western ways.
In the past, the elites of non-Western societies were usually the people
who were most involved with the West, had been educated at Oxford, the
Sorbonne or Sandhurst, and had absorbed Western attitudes and values. At
the same time, the populace in non-Western countries often remained deeply
imbued with the indigenous culture. Now, however, these relationships are
being reversed. A de-Westernization and indigenization of elites is occurring
in many non-Western countries at the same time that Western, usually American,
cultures, styles and habits become more popular among the mass of the people.
Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence
less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones.
In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can
become poor and the poor rich, but Russians cannot become Estonians and
Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class and ideological conflicts, the
key question was "Which side are you on?" and people could and did choose
sides and change sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question
is "What are you?" That is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know,
from Bosnia to the Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question
can mean a bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates
sharply and exclusively among people. A person can half-French and half-Arab
and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult
to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.
Finally, economic regionalism is increasing. The proportions of total trade
that were intraregional rose between 1980 and 1989 from 51 percent to 59
percent in Europe, 33 percent to 37 percent in East Asia, and 32 percent
to 36 percent in North America. The importance of regional economic blocs
is likely to continue to increase in the future. On the one hand, successful
economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness, On the
other hand, economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in
a common civilization. The European Community rests on the shared foundation
of European culture and Western Christianity. The success of the North
American Free Trade Area depends on the convergence now underway of Mexican,
Canadian and American cultures. Japan, in contrast, faces difficulties
in creating a comparable economic entity in East Asia because Japan is
a society and civilization unique to itself. However strong the trade and
investment links Japan may develop with other East Asian countries, its
cultural differences with those countries inhibit and perhaps preclude
its promoting regional economic integration like that in Europe and North
America.
Common culture, in contrast, is clearly facilitating the rapid expansion
of the economic relations between the People's Republic of China and Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the overseas Chinese communities in other Asian
countries. With the Cold War over, cultural commonalities increasingly
overcome ideological differences, and mainland China and Taiwan move closer
together. If cultural commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration,
the principal East Asian economic bloc of the future is likely to be centered
on China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into existence. As Murray
Weidenbaum has observed,
Despite the current Japanese dominance of the region, the Chinese-based
economy of Asia is rapidly emerging as a new epicenter for industry, commerce
and finance. This strategic area contains substantial amounts of technology
and manufacturing capability (Taiwan), outstanding entrepreneurial, marketing
and services acumen (Hong Kong), a fine communications network (Singapore),
a tremendous pool of financial capital (all three), and very large endowments
of land, resources and labor (mainland China)....From Guangzhou to Singapore,
from Kuala Lumpur to Manila, this influential network--often based on extensions
of the traditional clans--has been described as the backbone of the East
Asian economy.(1)
Culture and religion also form the basis of the Economic Cooperation Organization,
which brings together ten non-Arab Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan
and Afghanistan. One impetus to the revival and expansion of this organization,
founded originally in the 1960S by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization
by the leaders of several of these countries that they had no chance of
admission to the European Community. Similarly, Caricom, the Central American
Common Market and Mercosur rest on common cultural foundations. Efforts
to build a broader Caribbean-Central American economic entity bridging
the Anglo-Latin divide, however, have to date failed.
As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are
likely to see an "us" versus "them" relation existing between themselves
and people of different ethnicity or religion. The end of ideologically
defined states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union permits traditional
ethnic identities and animosities to come to the fore. Differences in culture
and religion create differences over policy issues, ranging from human
rights to immigration to trade and commerce to the environment. Geographical
propinquity gives rise to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to
Mindanao. Most important, the efforts of the West to promote its values
of democracy and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military
predominance and to advance its economic interests engender countering
responses from other civilizations. Decreasingly able to mobilize support
and form coalitions on the basis of ideology, governments and groups will
increasingly attempt to mobilize support by appealing to common religion
and civilization identity.
The clash of civilizations thus occurs at two levels. At the micro-level,
adjacent groups along the fault lines between civilizations struggle, often
violently, over the control of territory and each other. At the macro-level,
states from different civilizations compete for relative military and economic
power, struggle over the control of international institutions and third
parties, and competitively promote their particular political and religious
values.
THE FAULT LINES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS
The fault lines between civilizations are replacing the political and ideological
boundaries of the Cold War as the flash points for crisis and bloodshed.
The Cold War began when the Iron Curtain divided Europe politically and
ideologically. The Cold War ended with the end of the Iron Curtain. As
the ideological division of Europe has disappeared, the cultural division
of Europe between Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity
and Islam, on the other, has reemerged. The most significant dividing line
in Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern boundary
of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are
now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and between the Baltic states
and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine separating the more Catholic
western Ukraine from Orthodox eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating
Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia
almost exactly along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from
the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line, of course, coincides
with the historic boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The
peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or Catholic;
they shared the common experiences of European history--feudalism, the
Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution,
the Industrial Revolution; they are generally economically better off than
the peoples to the east; and they may now look forward to increasing involvement
in a common European economy and to the consolidation of democratic political
systems. The peoples to the east and south of this line are Orthodox or
Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist empires and
were only lightly touched by the shaping events in the rest of Europe;
they are generally less advanced economically; they seem much less likely
to develop stable democratic political systems. The Velvet Curtain of culture
has replaced the Iron Curtain of ideology as the most significant dividing
line in Europe. As the events in Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line
of difference; it is also at times a line of bloody conflict.
Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations
has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding of Islam, the Arab
and Moorish surge west and north only ended at Tours in 732. From the eleventh
to the thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary success
to bring Christianity and Christian rule to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth
to the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended
their sway over the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople,
and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
as Ottoman power declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western
control over most of North Africa and the Middle East.
After World War II, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial empires
disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested
themselves; the West became heavily dependent on the Persian Gulf countries
for its energy; the oil-rich Muslim countries became money-rich and, when
they wished to, weapons-rich. Several wars occurred between Arabs and Israel
(created by the West). France fought a bloody and ruthless war in Algeria
for most of the 1950s; British and French forces invaded Egypt in 1956;
American forces went into Lebanon in 1958; subsequently American forces
returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various military encounters
with Iran, Arab and Islamic terrorists, supported by at least three Middle
Eastern governments, employed the weapon of the weak and bombed Western
planes and installations and seized Western hostages. This warfare between
Arabs and the West culminated in 1990, when the United States sent a massive
army to the Persian Gulf to defend some Arab countries against aggression
by another. In its aftermath NATO planning is increasingly directed to
potential threats and instability along its "southern tier."
This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely
to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left some Arabs
feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and stood up to the
West. It also left many feeling humiliated and resentful of the West's
military presence in the Persian Gulf, the West's overwhelming military
dominance, and their apparent inability to shape their own destiny. Many
Arab countries, in addition to the oil exporters, are reaching levels of
economic and social development where autocratic forms of government become
inappropriate and efforts to introduce democracy become stronger. Some
openings in Arab political systems have already occurred. The principal
beneficiaries of these openings have been Islamist movements. In the Arab
world, in short, Western democracy strengthens anti-Western political forces.
This may be a passing phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations between
Islamic countries and the West.
Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular population
growth in Arab countries, particularly in North Africa, has led to increased
migration to Western Europe. The movement within Western Europe toward
minimizing internal boundaries has sharpened political sensitivities with
respect to this development. In Italy, France and Germany, racism is increasingly
open, and political reactions and violence against Arab and Turkish migrants
have become more intense and more widespread since 199O.
On both sides the interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash
of civilization. The West's "next confrontation," observes M. J. Akbar,
an Indian Muslim author, "is definitely going to come from the Muslim world.
It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Maghreb to Pakistan
that the struggle for a new world order will begin." Bernard Lewis comes
to a similar conclusion:
We are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues
and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than
a clash of civilizations--the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction
of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present,
and the worldwide expansion of both.(2)
Historically, the other great antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic
civilization has been with the pagan, animist, and now increasingly Christian
black peoples to the south. In the past, this antagonism was epitomized
in the image of Arab slave dealers and black slaves. It has been reflected
in the on-going civil war in the Sudan between Arabs and blacks, the fighting
in Chad between Libyan-supported insurgents and the government, the tensions
between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the Horn of Africa, and the
political conflicts, recurring riots and communal violence between Muslims
and Christians in Nigeria. The modernization of Africa and the spread of
Christianity are likely to enhance the probability of violence along this
fault line. Symptomatic of the intensification of this conflict was the
Pope John Paul II's speech in Khartoum in February 1993 attacking the actions
of the Sudan's Islamist government against the Christian minority there.
On the northern border of Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted between
Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including the carnage of Bosnia and Sarajevo,
the simmering violence between Serb and Albanian, the tenuous relations
between Bulgarians and their Turkish minority, the violence between Ossetians
and Ingush, the unremitting slaughter of each other by Armenians and Azeris,
the tense relations between Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, and the
deployment of Russian troops to protect Russian interests in the Caucasus
and Central Asia. Religion reinforces the revival of ethnic identities
and restimulates Russian fears about the security of their southern borders.
This concern is well captured by Archie Roosevelt:
Much of Russian history concerns the struggle between the Slavs and the
Turkic peoples on their borders, which dates back to the foundation of
the Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In the Slavs' millennium-long
confrontation with their eastern neighbors lies the key to an understanding
not only of Russian history, but Russian character. To understand Russian
realities today one has to have a concept of the great Turkic ethnic group
that has preoccupied Russians through the centuries.(3)
The conflict of civilizations is deeply rooted elsewhere in Asia. The historic
clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent manifests itself now
not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India but also in intensifying
religious strife within India between increasingly militant Hindu groups
and India's substantial Muslim minority. The destruction of the Ayodhya
mosque in December 1992 brought to the fore the issue of whether India
will remain a secular democratic state or become a Hindu one. In East Asia,
China outstanding territorial disputes with most of its neighbors. It has
pursued a ruthless policy toward the Buddhist people of Tibet, and it is
pursuing an increasingly ruthless policy toward its Turkic-Muslim minority.
With the Cold War over, the underlying differences between China and the
United States have reasserted themselves in areas such as human rights,
trade and weapons proliferation. These differences are unlikely to moderate
A "new cold war," Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991, is under way
between China and America.
The same phrase has been applied to the increasingly difficult relations
between Japan and the United States. Here cultural difference exacerbates
economic conflict. People on each side allege racism on the other, but
at least on the American side the antipathies are not racial but cultural.
The basic values, attitudes, behavioral patterns of the two societies could
hardly be more different. The economic issues between the United States
and Europe are no less serious than those between the United States and
Japan, but they do not have the same political salience and emotional intensity
because the differences between American culture and European culture are
so much less than those between American civilization and Japanese civilization.
The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to which
they are likely to be characterized by violence. Economic competition clearly
predominates between the American and European subcivilizations of the
West and between both of them and Japan. On the Eurasian continent, however,
the proliferation of ethnic conflict, epitomized at the extreme in "ethnic
cleansing," has not been totally random. It has been most frequent and
most violent between groups belonging to different civilizations. In Eurasia
the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame.
This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic
bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also
occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans,
Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the
Philippines. Islam has bloody borders.
(I'm too lazy to go find the thread, but Huntington's FP essay has come up in conversation before).