How Huntington’s idea is reshaping the politics
Samuel Huntington, who is an American political scientist and who remained an advisor to various government agencies, in his book “Clash of civilization” argues that prior to the end of the Cold War, societies were divided by ideological differences, such as the struggle between democracy and communism. Huntington’s main thesis argues, “The most important distinctions among peoples are [no longer] ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural”. New patterns of conflict will occur along the boundaries of different cultures and patterns of cohesion will be found within the cultural boundaries. In this article, we’ll further discover what politicians got wrong about this idea for so long and how their pertinent actions made this idea a reality to serve their own political interests, by downplaying the core values of democracy and liberalism, rather than understanding Huntington’s idea to prevent this situation, which is the ultimate aim of Huntington’s work.
Nationalism had never been that strong among government and masses before as that of today, before the modern industrial era, individual’s identities were mainly based on race and ethnicity, rather that of the nation he/she belongs to and so the conflicts that those identities shaped were also based on race, ethnicity or culture rather than political ideologies or trade. Huntington’s idea of the “clash of civilization” fits into the idea of “Cycle” as the global conflicts are again shifting towards ethnicity, race, and religion rather than that of political ideology or trade. Also, to be noted that conflicts in the past in terms of identity/civilization conflicts were more destructive and radical than that of conflict in determining political ideology or trade. The greatest example is the emergence of Nazism, that caused second World War, but an ideological war between the Soviet Union and the US for decades or the current US-China trade war didn’t cause any mass destruction, unlike the identity war that caused second World War and after the war further ideologies took place that worked out to consider the cause in both ways.
The idea of liberalism has been proved out to be the most handful to contribute to the cause of “clash of civilization”. It allowed one civilization, such as western civilization in case of Huntington’s idea to play an agenda against another civilization i.e. Islamic civilization, such as dealing with terrorism. Rather than making this a cooperative goal, the west played agenda of “Islamophobia”, which became a source of conflict. Jeffrey Haynes argues that, without 9/11, the Clash of Civilizations theory would not have become a mainstream lens through which to explain the “sometimes-fraught relationship between the West and Muslim countries.” The attacks, which were carried out by only 19 Muslim terrorists, were enough for some to regard all Muslims as guilty.
This face of liberalism also helped to shape the right-wing politics, as they got a strong argument to make their state more realist by spreading the fear of Islamophobia and terrorism within their own public through media, no doubt that while few Islamic groups were engaged in terrorist activities but this rhetoric was mainly used to create a greater cultural divide to shape right-wing politics. While the left-wing focuses on opening up borders and considering terrorism as a matter of collective security, such as US operation in killing Usama Bin Laden were conducted during a left-wing government in the US, the operation was conducted while keeping in mind that their actions don’t affect any sort of diplomatic relation with any state that could become a cause of retaliation and hence a threat to global peace. But the recent incident of Qasem Solemani’s assassination in Iraq during a right-wing US government did create tensions in the Middle East against the US, at this time which lead to the strong retaliation by Iran. In this situation, the focus of right-wing was more shifted towards engaging the whole state on name of terrorism, as the President of the United States or Intelligence failed to provide any sort of clear evidence of Qasem Solemani conducting terrorist activities in the US, unlike Usama Bin Laden which makes clear that the tensions were caused due to anti-Islam narrative and the actions provoked due to that, also to be noted that the right-wing President Donald Trump has many times aimed at labeling Muslims in terms of Islamophobia as terrorism which also reflected in his foreign policy.
My view in terms of how political groups react to is that only the political ideology might not as far much effective and convincible for a political group to build up a narrative, not everyone could agree that he/she supports socialism or capitalism as the people are also more likely to change their narrative with time, also that’s not something that produces aggression among individuals or not something that pushes people to get out of their comfort zones to stand for. But by spreading a sense of threat and making people fearful of something does help to play with their emotions. The example is a person shouting “Allah Akbar” in the west is enough to create chaos in public because the fear is fed into them by media, such fear is cashed by political groups to build an anti-Islam narrative that brings them support from the public who are fearful of this threat and then the political parties elected on this narrative are also forced to engage in anti-Islam activities to show their voters that they are doing enough to eliminate such threats, whether they exist or not, such as the case of Qasem Solemani as discussed earlier.
Though the Huntington is criticized for his views because the governments did follow up on that, it should be noticed that the governments didn’t acknowledge the Huntington’s policy measures to prevent the US from making crucial mistakes in the complex post-Cold War world but the governments only acknowledged his worldview that helped the governments to shape their politics. Trump’s administration appears to bring U.S. foreign policy another step closer to embracing a Huntingtonian view of the world; senior administration members genuinely appear to believe the United States is engaged in an existential civilizational struggle. Yet they also seem unaware of Huntington’s cassandraic warnings against pursuing actions that are more likely to provoke conflict with other states than prevent them. If the administration continues down this path, the results may be grim to prevent the US from making crucial mistakes in the complex post-Cold War world but the governments only acknowledged his worldview that helped the governments to shape their politics. Trump’s administration appears to bring U.S. foreign policy another step closer to embracing a Huntingtonian view of the world; senior administration members genuinely appear to believe the United States is engaged in an existential civilizational struggle. Yet they also seem unaware of Huntington’s cassandraic warnings against pursuing actions that are more likely to provoke conflict with other states than prevent them. If the administration continues down this path, the results may be grim.
