Small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. People can and do redefine their identities and,Īs a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change.Ĭivilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("aĬivilization pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it), or a very To which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which Of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman,Īn Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. People have levels of identity: a resident It is defined both by common objective elements, suchĪs language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective Of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humansįrom other species. Is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of anyīroader cultural entity. Turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or ChineseĬommunities. That distinguishes them from German villages. The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that ofĪ village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture Groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is aĬultural entity. Or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms Now to group countries not in terms of their political or economic systems In the politics of civilizations, the people and governments of non-WesternĬivilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of WesternĬolonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history.ĭURING THE COLD WAR the world was divided into the First, Second and The West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. Of its Western phase, and its center-piece becomes the interaction between With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out World wars and the earlier wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenthĬenturies. This was as true of the Cold War as it was of the These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarilyĬonflicts within Western civilization, "Western civil wars," as William Neither of which was a nation state in the classical European sense andĮach of which defined its identity in terms of ideology. This latter conflict became embodied in the struggle between the two superpowers, Of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy,Īnd then between communism and liberal democracy. Then, as a result of the Russian RevolutionĪnd the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict Were over the ward of peoples had begun." This nineteenth-century pattern The French Revolution the principal lines of conflict were between nations In the process they created nation states, and beginning with Of the western world were largely among princes - emperors, absolute monarchsĪnd constitutional monarchs attempting to expand their bureaucracies, theirĪrmies, their mercantilist economic strength and, most important, the territory Of the modern international system of the Peace of Westphalia, the conflicts For a century and a half after the emergence
The clash of civilizationsĬonflict between civilizations will be the latest phase of the evolution Nations and groups of different civilizations. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in worldĪffairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between Great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict willīe cultural. New world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality. Nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among Of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the To proliferate visions of what it will be - the end of history, the return WORLD POLITICS IS entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated Institute's project on "The Changing Security Environment and American HUNTINGTON is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Huntington: Class of Civilizations The Clash of Civilizations?įoreign Affairs, 72:3 (Summer 1993), pp.