Sixteen years ago Gorbatchev announced on television that he resigned as the President of the USSR, the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin and on December 26th 1991, the Supreme Soviet Court recognized the extinction of the Soviet Union: the USSR was no more. After more than fifty years of an ideological conflict between the East and the West, after a harsh struggle between communism and liberalism, the post Cold War world was searching for a new prism to view international relations. The first influential answer was given by Francis Fukuyama in his book, The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992. According to him, liberal democracy is a universally acceptable concept which has finally overcome all other ideologies and that the world is now going to embrace it. He so assesses the end of history seen as a series of confrontations between ideologies. Two years later as a reaction to this thesis, the Harvard political scientist, Samuel Phillips Huntington, published in Foreign Affairs the article The Clash Of Civilizations adapted into a book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in 1996.
[...] According to his prophesy, the clash of civilization will take place at two levels. At the micro-level groups along a fault line between two civilizations will struggle over the control of a territory. At the macro-level, states from different civilizations will fight to control international institution and to expand their military and economical power and their particular values. When a country of one civilization will be involved in a conflict with another civilization country, it will turn into an inter civilizations conflict. [...]
[...] The fault line between the West and the Islamic civilization has been a bloody area of wars for years. Tensions between Arabs and the West that are all the more “unlikely to decline”[11] since the upward demography in Arab countries has led to an increasing immigration to the West and to the development of racism. On the northern borders of Islam the slaughters in former Yugoslavia make Huntington says that fault lines between civilizations not only are lines of differences these are also lines bloody conflict”[12]. [...]
[...] The second kind of torn countries he identifies have a good degree of cultural homogeneity but don't agree about which civilizations their society is part of. Huntington gives three examples of these torn countries: Turkey which is torn between the Western civilization and an Islamic revival; Mexico which no longer defines itself in opposition with America but now wants to join the West; and Russia which has always hesitated between being a part of the West and being the leader of the Slavic-Orthodox civilization. [...]
[...] Bibliography Articles Casso Giuseppe, Nuts to a war of civilizations, in International Herald Tribune, November 4th 1993 Fouad Ajami, The Summoning , in Foreign Affairs vol.72, September- October 1993 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993 Mahbubani Kishore, The Danger Of Decadence: What The West Can Teach The Rest, in Asian Studies Review, vol July 1994 Rushdie Salman , Yes, This Is About Islam, in The New York Times, November 2nd 2001 Book Huntington Phillips Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order Annex Huntington's map of civilization Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 22 Rushdie Salman , Yes, This Is About Islam, in The New York Times, November 2nd Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 24 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 24 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 24 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 26 Annex 1 : Huntington map of civilizations Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 42 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 44 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page 26 Huntington Samuel P., The Clash Of Civilizations, in Foreign Affairs vol.27 summer 1993, page32 Huntington 5IJKLMåк¯º Št^ I4(hhCJOJ[13]QJ[14]^J[15]aJmH sH (hhD eCJOJ[16]QJ[17]^J[18]aJmH sH +hhÿrÛ5?CJ0OJ[19]QJ[20]^J[21]aJ0mH sH +hhD e5?CJ0OJ[22]QJ[23]^J[24]aJ0mH sH +hh5?CJ0OJ[25]QJ[26]^J[27]aJ0mH sH hhCJ$aJ$mH sH hhmH sH +hB*CJOJ[28]QJ[29]^J[30]aJmH phÿsH (hhß_ÌCJOJ[31]QJ[32]^J[33]aJmH sH HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington" "Samuel P. [...]
[...] The anti occidental speeches of some South East Asia countries− that Huntington takes as examples of non Western civilization hostility against the West− clash with their warm welcoming of Occidental's investments and technologies. This discrepancy can be explained by leaders' willing to legitimatize their authoritarian regimes, thus civilization is there used to their own advantage. “Civilizations don't control states but states control civilizations”[18] , the argument of the defense of a civilization against his enemies remains an alibi used by states to justify their policies. [...]
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