An interview with Samuel P. Huntington

BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Samuel P. Huntington, author of "Who Are We?," what`s the book about?

SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON, AUTHOR, "WHO ARE WE?: THE CHALLENGES TO AMERICA`S NATIONAL IDENTITY: The book is about America. And you`ll notice that it is a question, and it`s a question which I grapple with in the book as to what American national identity means, how it has changed over the years.

LAMB: The book called "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order"...

HUNTINGTON: Well, it was basically about the nature of post-cold war global politics. During the cold war and during most of the 20th century, in addition to power playing a role in international relations, ideology played a role in international relations. And what I argue in this book on the clash of civilizations is that ideology is out now. It is not important. But culture is, and civilizations are the broadest cultural entities in the world, and we have maybe eight or so major civilizations, and that international politics now is being shaped by the interactions among these civilizations, and cultural factors are playing a role in shaping the patterns of alliances and antagonisms among states, much as ideology did in the 20th century.

LAMB: You made some people mad, some people very mad, and Edward Said, who`s now deceased, wrote a piece in "The Nation" magazine. He didn`t like the fact that you put the West against Islam.

HUNTINGTON: Well, I am very careful in the book not to divide the world in two. And as a matter of fact, I quote Said approvingly on this point in the book. And I see global politics as being interactions among the eight or so major civilizations, and obviously, Islam and the West are two of the most important, and their relations over the centuries, since -- for the past 1,300 years or so, have varied. At times they`ve been peaceful, at other times there`s been conflict. And clearly, there is a very important Islamic resurgence going on in the world now, as Muslims from Morocco straight through to Indonesia are becoming more and more conscious of their Islamic identity and are asserting it in a variety of ways, and some of which, but only a small part of which, are violent. And that is why we are seeing this militant Islamic extremism manifest itself.

LAMB: ... "The Clash of Civilizations," did that just make sense to you, then, based on what your own theory was?

HUNTINGTON: Yes. Well, it -- unfortunately, yes. And like most of my books that I`ve written in the past, what I tend to do in my books -- and this is true of "Who Are We?" -- is to look at situations and analyze phenomena which, for one reason or another, people are uneasy with or don`t want to focus on or want to avoid. This was true in my first book on the soldier and the state, and it was denounced because I said we`ve got to work out a new way of handling civil-military relations in this country. But after a few years, it became the accepted book on civil-military relations, and it`s still in print now after 30 years or more and is commonly referred to as the classic work. And I think this book, "The Clash of Civilizations," was attacked by a variety of people when it first -- first came out, as was the -- my "Foreign Affairs" article, which came out four years before on the same subject. But since September 11, people -- people have been applying the adjective "prescient" to "The Clash of Civilizations" book. And as I say, it`s unfortunate that it turned out to be relevant, so relevant now.

LAMB: Do colleges make decisions about whether to give tenure to professors based on what they think, what side they`re on?

HUNTINGTON: Well, they shouldn`t, and the -- all sorts of things, obviously, come into tenure decisions. I think, certainly, at a place like Harvard, merit far excels anything else. And that has become more and more the case over the decades. Back in the 1950s, when I was turned down for tenure, it was much more of a personal sort of decision. And people -- the senior professors making the decision would, at times, certainly, make decisions on whether you just liked a person or not, not on the quality of the work.

HUNTINGTON: I had the title of Coordinator of Security Planning at the National Security Council, working with my friend, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the national security assistant to Carter. And Brzezinski, when he was appointed, asked me to come down and work with him, which I did for two years.

HUNTINGTON: In the Johnson administration, I was a consultant to the State Department, and in particular, to the Policy Planning Council, and was asked to write a report on the problems of getting political stability in South Vietnam. This was at the height of the war, in 1967. And so I went out and spent a couple of months in South Vietnam and traveled around and came back and wrote a report which I think was one of the more damning documents, as far as our then policy was concerned. I remember briefing people -- one group of people on it, and the top person in the White House concerned with Vietnam, when I had finished, said, Well, if what you say is right, everything we`re doing is wrong. So...

HUNTINGTON: Well, the basic reason I wrote it is that it seemed to me in the 1990s, looking at what was going on in this country at that time, that there were various challenges to American national identity that had developed, a whole variety of different ones. And the -- and I think that one could argue that there had been some core elements in American national identity. I identify four in the book that were present historically, that -- these were race, ethnicity, culture and what is general called the "American creed," a set of values and political beliefs articulated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and by many other leading figures.

Happily, race and ethnicity, which were central for a couple of centuries, at least, in defining America, have faded -- just about disappeared. And that leaves us with our culture and our creed, and I argue that the creed is a product of the culture, and hence, the attacks on the culture or changes in our culture are -- could be of some -- some consequence. And one of the important distinctions I made in the book, I think, is that between settlers and immigrants because we always refer to ourselves as -- like to refer to ourselves as a nation of immigrants, and that is -- that`s true, but it`s a partial truth.

Immigrants are people who go from one society to another society. There has to be a recipient society. And I argue that the basic American culture was brought over in the 17th and 18th century by people from Britain, and it had these what I -- these British origins, and it was basically, I argue, an Anglo-Protestant culture because America was a 98 percent Protestant country in the 17th and 18th century. And these were dissident Protestants, by and large, who were leaving in part because they were persecuted in Britain. And the ideas and values and culture and institutions and customs they brought with them have been the core culture of the United States.

Now, obviously, there are all sorts of other cultures here, sub-cultures. But most countries do have something that could be called a mainstream or core culture, and it seems to me that over the years, our core culture has been this Anglo-Protestant culture of the original settlers, although obviously, it`s evolved and changed and been affected by the waves of immigration that we`ve had, who`ve contributed to it in a whole variety of positive ways. But it still is basically the -- the culture of the original settlers.

LAMB: So today, what`s the real difference in this country? For instance, you point out in your book that there are 38 million Mexican-Americans.

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think the Mexican immigration and the Hispanic immigration generally during the period since the 1960s is a phenomenon we`ve never really had before. We`ve had previous waves if immigrants in the mid-19th century and in the decades before World War I. After World War I, we pretty much shut down immigration. Congress passed very restrictive laws. But then in the 1960s, I think very happily, we opened up, changed those laws. And the laws that were enacted, the Immigration Act, weren`t supposed to have quite the effect which they did have, but they opened the door to this very widespread immigration that we`ve had since the mid-`60s. And a heavy component of that has been the Hispanic, and particularly Mexican immigration. And this is the first time in our history that we have had a majority of the immigrants coming into this country speaking a single non-English language.

LAMB: You have some statistics that you use in the book. In the 1960s, we had 3.3 million immigrants, 1980, 7 million immigrants -- immigration -- and in 1990s, 9 million. And you say that in the `60s, foreign-born...

LAMB: In the `60s, foreign-born were 5.3 percent of the population, and today -- 2002, roughly -- 11.5 percent.

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think, basically, immigration is good. It is essential, as I point out in the book, to the development of America, and immigrants have made tremendous contributions to our success economically, in science and technology and exploration and have greatly contributed to our playing a positive role in the world. In the past, however, immigration has always been accompanied by assimilation, and I think the problem now comes not from immigration per se, but to the extent that there is a problem, it comes from the extent to which recent immigrants, particularly Hispanics, do not seem to be assimilating in the same way in which immigrants have in the past. Now, maybe the process will just be slower. It certainly will be different.

But there are a whole variety of factors in American society that contribute to this difference, as well as the differences in the nature of the immigrants. Previous immigrants, in the 19th, early 20th centuries, had to make a real commitment to come here. It was tough. During the 19th century, in particular, there were great risks involved. Large numbers of -- a good percentage of people died on the ships coming over to -- to America. So that involved a very definite commitment. Now immigrants don`t have to make that sort of commitment, and we have the phenomenon of what I call "ampersands," people who have two nationalities, two homes in different countries, and increasingly, two citizenships. And it seems to me the whole question of dual citizenship, which we`ve had some of in the past, but which, in theory, we`re not supposed to have -- but that has become a widespread phenomenon now. And so in a whole variety of ways, it seems to me this new immigration raises a -- differences and potentially problems.

LAMB: Well, you write about -- you know, we haven`t taught history forever to students in the country and that...

LAMB: And it varies over time, as far as how interested people are in it. I mean, is that...

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think what you have here is that the history of the United States and of America as a society and a country didn`t really appear, in terms of books or courses in schools or colleges, until after the Civil War. With one major exception, the histories that were written before the Civil War were devoted to localities and states. There wasn`t, in any real sense, a national history.

And before the Civil War, the issue as to whether we were a nation was up for grabs. It was debated. It wasn`t clear that we were a nation. And it was the Civil War, as Emerson and various other people said, that really made us a nation. And after that, we began to have a national history and a focus on national history.

And the century from the 1860s to the 1960s was the century of American nationalism. That was when we became very -- Americans became very nationalistic and identified with their country, and among other things, promoted national history and they glorified the Pilgrim fathers and the Founding Fathers and the whole panoply of heroes and wars that we had fought, and so forth and so on.

Then in the 1960s, with the rise of multi-culturalism and a variety of other developments, national history began to fade. And so increasingly, we have seen emphasis upon the histories of ethnic groups and racial groups and other subgroups, which had been certainly neglected during the period of nationalism. But now, I think, there`s a fair amount of evidence that indicates, at least in a large number of schools, in particular, and some colleges, that national history is neglected. And it`s given way to the history of particular groups in our society.

HUNTINGTON: Well, it`s a result of the -- this intellectual movement that developed in the 1960s that reacted against the -- what was at times, certainly, the overemphasis on nationalism. I think it was affected, of course, by the Vietnam war attitudes of people, and it was, in a way, a rather bizarre product of the Civil Rights movement. And the Civil Rights legislation in the mid-1960s was passed because the whole effort devoted to getting it passed was saying this is a tremendous violation, the situation of blacks in this country being discriminated against and segregated, and so forth. This violates the American creed, the principles of basic equality on which this country is founded. And as a result, we passed the Civil Rights Act and then the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s.

But as soon as they were passed, then the blacks and other groups began claiming special privileges for themselves as groups, not as individuals. And this let loose this whole series of efforts by a whole variety of racial groups, ethnic groups, women, of course, to -- demanding more attention to themselves. I think that was the result of -- that produced the result of this replacement of the national history that had been taught previously with the history of particular groups.

LAMB: If in our American creed we believe so much in equality, why did we let slavery happen?

HUNTINGTON: Well, that was the great anomaly, of course, and Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration, of course, was a slave runner, as well as most of the other people from the South in this country for -- down until the Civil War, most of the leading people in the South. And this was degrading congruity. And the -- I think slavery appeared, of course, in the 17th century, when we were -- and in terms of harvesting tobacco and cotton or other crops, it was -- and through the plantation system, this was an extremely efficient and profitable way of making money. And of course, slavery was prevalent throughout most of the world during that period of time, too.

And it`s, as I say, a very great incongruity. And happily, we finally got rid of it, and now we have finally also got -- after a century since the Civil War, pretty much gotten rid of discrimination based on race.

LAMB: "What political party do you belong to?" You answered, "I`m an old-fashioned Democrat. I was dead set against going into Iraq.

LAMB: "Oh, yes. I`ve met him several times. He lives a few blocks away from me on Beacon Hill." And she says, "How can you reconcile being a Democrat with your views on immigration and assimilation?" And you say, "Actually, both parties are divided on immigration, and as a scholar, I have a responsibility to study society and to try to call people`s attention to things they might not welcome looking at."

HUNTINGTON: Right. Well, in that final answer, over my vigorous objections, they deleted my first sentence, which was, "I am in favor of immigration, but it has to be immigration with assimilation."

HUNTINGTON: Well, I -- no, I didn`t see it, but I insisted that I have a chance to look at -- to hear, at any rate. They wouldn`t -- said they couldn`t send it to me. And when that -- with that question, I said, Look, I want to make it clear I`m not opposed to immigration per se. I`m in favor of immigration. It`s been important. I say it`s more important earlier in the interview. But it has to be immigration with assimilation. And also, of course, as I point out, I`m married to the daughter of an immigrant, an Armenian immigrant.

LAMB: Who best -- as long as this is a political year, who best, then, is recognizing these future problems, the John Kerry versus the George Bush? And if you`re conservative, why wouldn`t you be a George Bush fan?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think -- when I say I`m conservative, what I`m -- I think you have to ask anybody who says they`re conservatives, OK, what do they want to conserve? And I want to conserve American society as it has evolved and American culture and develop it, obviously -- it has to change. But basically, what that`s what I`m interested in conserving. And American society, culture, and particularly our political institutions, are, of course, very liberal in their substance. But that`s what it seems to me a real conservative should want to preserve. I`m not going to make any judgments on Kerry and Bush as to how they would rate when judged in that way.

LAMB: Well, I guess what I wanted to ask your opinion on is -- do people say they`re liberals or conservatives, say they`re Republicans or Democrats, do either one of those mean anything today? And do people follow some line...

HUNTINGTON: Well, all this problem of -- when you talk about liberalism and conservativism in the United States, that we, in our popular discussion and so forth, define those terms very differently from the way in which they were historically defined in Europe. And as many scholars have pointed out, all Americans are liberal, including anybody, whether it`s George Bush or people to the right of George Bush, are liberals in the European sense. Neo-capitalists are certainly the epitome of European liberalism. But we think of them as conservatives, and liberals are people who promote government involvement in the economy to help poor people and provide services, and so forth and so on. And it seems to me all of these groups, however, have an appropriate role to play in our society.

LAMB: When you -- and you talk a little bit about this bit in the book. In Germany, do the Germans insist that the Turks speak German and in France, the Algerians speak French, and in -- well, Pakistanis do speak English in Britain. But you see where I`m getting at. The Koreans speak Japanese in Japan. What kind of insistence is there around the world about assimilation in those places?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think the Europeans countries have a much greater problem with assimilation because they don`t have the same immigrant experience that we have had, certainly not to the same extent. And so with the Turks in Germany or with the North Africans in France, there`s been a tendency for them to go off and live in encapsulated communities and not to really assimilate. Now, obviously, people who are born of Turkish parents in Germany or Algerian parents in France learn German and French, but the communities still are -- remain very separate.

And this is a real problem for those countries because Germans have historically defined their identity by ancestry. You`re a German if you had German parents. Well, the Turks don`t have German parents. And only -- and they only now recently, in the past few years, has Germany begun to change its citizenship laws to facilitate people of Turkish ancestry born in Germany becoming full German citizens.

Excerpted to save bandwidth

The interview takes about an hour, click on excerpt to view it.

1 posted on 06/26/2004 6:49:10 PM PDT by Valin

Professor Huntington is a confused man. It is ridiculous that anyone with his views would even consider voting for Kerry. The Dems would tar and feather him!

2 posted on 06/27/2004 12:49:23 AM PDT by California Patriot (California Patriot)

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