S.P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" (esp.Islam), Online Text Available

SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University. This article is the product of the Olin Institute's project on "The Changing Security Environment and American National Interests."

I. THE NEXT PATTERN OF CONFLICT II. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATIONS III. WHY CIVILIZATIONS WILL CLASH IV. THE FAULT LINES BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS V. CIVILIZATION RALLYING VI. THE WEST VERSUS THE REST VII. THE TORN COUNTRIES VIII. THE CONFUCIAN-ISLAMIC CONNECTION IX. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WEST

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 be the battle lines of the future.

Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase of the evolution of conflict in the modern world. For a century and a half after the emergence of the modern international system of 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 it, "The wars of kings were over; the ward 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 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 center-piece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of civilizations, the people 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 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."

Spoken like a true loser.

They(the thirld world) would love to be in our shoes. They don't accept that we got here sooner and that the human condition came out of Nature,red and tooth and claw.

This country is continually trashed by the people who attempt to trash it.

Russian revolution? Not likely. It was the Bolshevik coup d'etat, resulting in probably the second worst genocide in history. I suggest a reading of the Black Book of Communism for some details. Do your homework Prof. Huntington!

Second phase..."interaction between western and non western"..."objects of history as targets of western colonialism?" bla bla.

Professor, do us a favor and check out any encyclopedia (stay away from the People's version published in the Kremlin) (try reading Bat Ye'or's Dhimmi series if your leftist mush brain allows it.) It is the Mohameddans and Bolsheviks who have encroached upon and decimated the west and the whole world, one in the last 100 years and the other for the last 1300 years or so.

Get your facts straight Professor Huckleberry.

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