Is it History's `End' or `Clash of Civilizations?"

Seeking clues to future by interpreting terrorists' attacks through two seminal views of post-Cold War world.

What do we make of the willingness of 19 young Muslim men to sacrifice their lives to kill thousands of Americans they didn't know?

Is it a tragic fluke, a final shudder of an old enmity at ``the end of history''? Or is it the first major battle in a titanic ``clash of civilizations''?

Those questions arise when the hijackers' attacks are viewed through the very different lenses of seminal essays written by two political scholars as the Cold War sputtered to a close a decade ago.

The articles, by Francis Fukuyama, then a U.S. State Department policy planner, and Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard University political scientist, were written in provocative style and made a splash in foreign-policy circles. Both were subsequently expanded into books and added to reading lists at scores of universities. Their authors were widely lionized, occasionally ridiculed.

Now, in the wake of the September terror, Fukuyama's 1989 article ``The End of History?'' and Huntington's 1993 article ``The Clash of Civilizations?'' put the news into larger patterns, as random stars form shapes when constellations are described.

Fukuyama did not claim historical events had screeched to a halt -- but that the epic contest of political systems had been fought and won.

``What we are witnessing,'' he wrote, ``is not just the end of the Cold War, or a passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.''

In fact, Fukuyama went so far as to anticipate a certain ``boredom'' that might set in, as ``the worldwide ideological struggle'' is replaced by ``the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.''

Fukuyama did allow in his essay in The National Interest that the Third World would remain ``mired in history'' and ``terrain of conflict.'' But even if ``a new Ayatollah proclaimed the millennium from a desolate Middle Eastern capital,'' he wrote, the underlying world order would be ``an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.''

Huntington's far-darker essay in Foreign Affairs proposed that, far from ending, history was entering a new and tumultuous period of cultural conflict among the ``seven or eight major civilizations,'' which he listed as ``Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilizations.''

Explicitly rejecting the end-of-history theory, among others, Huntington stated his thesis in words as categorical and evocative as Fukuyama's: ``The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.''

And one of the chief fault lines, Huntington wrote in the year of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, was that separating the Western and Islamic civilizations.

``Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years,'' he wrote, tracing the Crusades and rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire.

``This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent,'' he wrote.

If Fukuyama was right, the terror is an echo of the past more than a wave of the future, a fringe phenomenon rather than one expressing a ``civilization.'' The attacks may be merely a tragic, criminal detour in the global progress toward liberal democracy.

But if Huntington was right, the terror could be a grim prelude, the beginning of one more war in centuries of conflict between Muslims and Westerners. ``Some Westerners . . . have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen-hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise,'' he wrote.

Huntington, of Harvard, isn't commenting, and Fukuyama, now at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, is away due to a family illness. But following the carnage in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania, the essays' contrasting paradigms are everywhere reflected in government statements and expert analysis.

Steven R. David, a professor of international relations at John Hopkins' Homewood campus, says he believes both essays captured important truths about the contemporary world. Fukuyama is right, he says, that ``the big disputes that people fought and died for are over. Germany's not going to invade France. You don't have many people arguing that communism is superior to capitalism.'' But Fukuyama, he says, ``greatly underestimated'' the trouble that could be caused by those still ``mired in history.''

``Unfortunately,'' David says, ``I think Huntington's view is closer to the mark.''

One who portrays the terror very much as a clash of civilizations is suspected terrorist plotter and financier Osama bin Laden. Reaching back into 1,400 years of history, he is rallying Muslims against what he calls ``the new Jewish-Crusader campaign led by the biggest crusader, Bush, under the banner of the cross.''

The televised shots of crowds of Muslims in several countries celebrating the attacks, burning American flags and praising bin Laden also suggest a cultural conflict. Interviews with a wide range of Muslims around the world often elicit regret at the loss of lives, but it is usually coupled with a ``but'': But, the speakers say, American arrogance and actions, from support of Israel to sanctions against Iraq, provoked the attacks by reflecting hostility to Islam. Yet just as striking was the initial rush of Islamic leaders and officials of Muslim nations to denounce the terror and reject any Islamic justification. ``It is deplorable that in this year of dialogue between civilizations,'' said Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, a reformist Muslim cleric, echoing Huntington's words, ``the most violent and savage of attacks should have taken place.''

Other Muslim commentators, some specifically referring to Huntington, warned against unwittingly turning a horrendous crime into a conflict between civilizations. ``We should all do our best so that a war against terrorism does not turn into a `clash of civilizations,' '' wrote Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, in the Times of London.

David, at Hopkins, says the United States and its Western allies must be careful to avoid words that imply civilizations are at war.

``If we in the West say we're at war with Islam, then we're at war with Islam. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.''

In a notable stumble early on, President Bush labeled the campaign against terror with bin Laden's favorite word, ``crusade.'' ``That reminds Muslims of an ugly history,'' says Abdulaziz Sachedina, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Since then, the Bush administration has taken pains to avoid suggesting their war is against Islam. But many Muslims are still made nervous by American officials' frequent references to ``the civilized world'' or ``the free world'' in an apocalyptic showdown with ``barbarism'' or ``evil,'' Sachedina says. Americans' claim to be defending freedom rings especially hollow with Muslims in such countries as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, where the United States backs authoritarian regimes, he says.

In fact, Sachedina says, if the United States is to avoid Huntington's clash of civilizations, officials might be well-advised to back away altogether from the use of the word war.

``It's not a war; it's a criminal act,'' he says. ``The more we use war rhetoric, the more we need to find a proper target. And with an international terrorist group, there is no proper target.''

After just seeing Osama bin Laden's pre-taped threat against every American, from borders North, South, East, and West, unless the US pulls out of Israel and Saudi Arabia, who can doubt Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" Thesis?

Bin Laden also threatened the "moderate" Islamic states who are in the "coalition" against Al Quaeda, and threw in with Iraq. All as expected.

This is jihad. This is going to be long and bloody... at home and abroad.

Choose sides.

What do we make of the willingness of 19 young Muslim men to sacrifice their lives to kill thousands of Americans they didn't know?

Ah, but what do we make of 346 young American firefighters sacrificing their lives to rescue thousands of Americans, British, Filippino, Mexican, Kurd, Pakistani, Hindu, San Salvadorean, Honduran, Irish, Canadian, Colombian, Dominican, German, Italian, etc. etc. who were stranded in the World Trade towers?

"Ah, but what do we make of 346 young American firefighters sacrificing their lives to rescue thousands of Americans, British, Filippino, Mexican, Kurd, Pakistani, Hindu, San Salvadorean, Honduran, Irish, Canadian, Colombian, Dominican, German, Italian, etc. etc. who were stranded in the World Trade towers?"

Well said, and the answer is simply this:

Our civilization is superior, our ideals more pure, and we shall emerge victorious.

"Actually it's just the prelude to the presidential compaign of 2004. Whether or not Bush can get Bin Laden will is a major playing chip. Whether or not we get out clean will also be a very big one."

I think it's bigger than that, though certainly the War on Terror will be central to the 2004 campaign.

It's doubtful that we will "get out clean." This is going to be like Hercules vs. the Hydra.

``This centuries-old military interaction between the West and Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent,'' he wrote.

Tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and political correctness will be the end of western civilization.

Western culture will simply be eveloped and overwhelmed by "diversity" until it simply fades away.

What do we make of the willingness of 19 young Muslim men to sacrifice their lives to kill thousands of Americans they didn't know?

Excellent point, and worth being praised as such.

Western culture will simply be eveloped and overwhelmed by "diversity" until it simply fades away.

I think you are wrong, BUT, that is yet to be determined. We are off to a shaky start to ending the 'diversity suicide option'.

It's the Clash of Civilizations. But Bin Laden and his friends were too impatient, and struck too soon. In another generation or two, Europe--where the white races are suicidally aborting themselves into extinction--would have been majority Muslim in the not too distant future, and the Muslim guest-workers could have taken over most of the continent without firing a shot. Now at least the Europeans have had fair warning. It remains to be seen whether they can set their decadence aside and take advantage of this last opportunity. I'm not holding my breath, but sometimes events like this can transform cultures and, in particular, force people to recognize that they can't survive or have any future unless they conceive, bear, and properly bring up children.

This is jihad. This is going to be long and bloody... at home and abroad.

Choose sides.

As our President said: You are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

God bless our President and our brave fighting men.

”Western culture will simply be eveloped and overwhelmed by "diversity" until it simply fades away. “

Despair like this is neither helpful nor accurate. When I see these sentiments expressed on days like this, they are tiresome and irritating.

It seems to me that some of the people expressing his kind of pre-emptive defeat are expressing their own desires. One gets the feeling that Western civilization does not deserve to survive; that the writer does not want it to survive. It’s the same expression that Hitler used as Germany was losing WW2: if his vision of Germany could not come true then Germany deserved to be destroyed.

Well, my response to that is: “NUTS!”

At a time like this, on the Free Republic forum, dedicated to the restoration of Western Civilization and individual freedom, these views are simply off base and bizarre.

Love and peace.

"The terrorists don't come here to die just because they want to commit a crime."

The terrorists came here to KILL because they are the acolytes of a perverse and evil death cult.

"Tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and political correctness will be the end of western civilization.

Western culture will simply be eveloped and overwhelmed by "diversity" until it simply fades away."

Choose sides.

"It's the Clash of Civilizations. But Bin Laden and his friends were too impatient, and struck too soon. In another generation or two, Europe--where the white races are suicidally aborting themselves into extinction--would have been majority Muslim in the not too distant future, and the Muslim guest-workers could have taken over most of the continent without firing a shot. Now at least the Europeans have had fair warning."

Outstanding.

Any study of history will show that the rise and fall of civilizations is an echo of their population growth or decline.

ZPG is not only based on a Malthusian lie, it's cultural suicide.

Why let Bin Laden set the pace of the war? Bin Laden is trying to make this a war of civilizations. If he succeeds there will be many dead from both civilizations. Bush has defined this war as one against terrorism, Bin Laden, Al Queda and those who harbor him. If Bush succeeds then civilization on both sides will be intact. Lets support Bush's goals, not Bin Ladens.

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