I recently revisited the famous 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs by Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” . In this post I review the historical context of its publication, the degree to which its ideas have or have not proven prescient regarding current geopolitics of the 21st Century, and the ways in which his theory can be used to examine how different civilizations have experienced and responded to the digital revolution of the Internet age.
Two of the main intellectual paradigms for understanding the post-Cold War world were Huntington’s concept (which described inevitable future conflicts between civilizational blocs around the globe) and Francis Fukuyama’s view of “The End of History,” which observed that governments around the world seemed to be converting en masse to democratic politics and market economics.
These arguments, both of which were expanded into book-length form, were easily attacked as being over simplistic. Although their work had more complexity than many critics acknowledged, the fact that they proposed plausible interpretations of the future that had sweeping explanatory power caused their work to be popular.
When I was in graduate school, when I heard about the “clash of civilizations” and the “end of history” it was usually in the context of those ideas being criticized by left-wing academics. After all, Fukuyama’s model seemed to endorse “neoliberal hegemony” as the natural order of things, instead of viewing it as vulnerable to disruption by more radical forces.
Huntington’s idea was even more controversial. His ideas about civilizations possessing inherent traits (due to their unique intellectual pedigrees, social norms and religious beliefs) was easily dismissed as the type of “Orientalist” logic that made global cooperation seem unattainable. Critics alleged this type of emphasis on civilizational distinctiveness had historically given colonial societies a sense of superiority they used to justify aggression toward, or exploitation of, “lesser societies.”
During the peaceful final years of the 20th Century, Fukuyama’s ideas seemed a more accurate prediction of a post-Cold War world. That changed after 9/11, when conflicts between the West and the Middle East revived the concept of clashing civilizations. Militant Islamist groups gained momentum in the Muslim world, and their ideas seemed incompatible with modern secular Western society. The current conflicts in Syria, Russia, China, and North Korea documented in the recent HBO documentary “World in Disarray” also provide evidence that history has not ended, and civilizations are clashing to a degree not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Perhaps in a few decades, Fukuyama’s explanations will again seem a more plausible description of the future of the world that Huntington’s grim view. For the sake of global stability, one can hope so. But for now we’re stuck in a world defined by clashing blocs of military and economic power. For this reason, I reread Huntington in order to see how well his concepts and predictions apply to current events.
Some of his points struck me as eerily prescient. Huntington warned that Middle Eastern resistance to authoritarian regimes would be led not by liberals or leftists, but by anti-Western Islamists. He discussed the growing resentment over a large U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf (which went on to aggravate Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders). He warned that a young and growing North African population would push into Europe’s newly open borders, which would create ethnic and religious tensions, and which would facilitate a reinvigoration of European Far Right parties.
Huntington was prescient on other counts, particularly in his view that traditional borderlines between civilizations, such as Turkey and Yugoslavia and Ukraine, would be a focal point of tensions. However, other predictions have not held up well. He predicted a major increase in tensions between Japan and the West (especially the United States) that did not occur. I think he overstates the cultural incompatibility of North American and Japanese civilizations; after all, few Asian nations have been as strongly influenced by Western ideas than Japan.
Huntington also wrote a poorly received book called “Who Are We?” about the US – Mexico divide. The mass immigration from Latin America has obviously created tensions and problems (the last presidential election’s rhetoric makes it clear that many Americans are concerned about it). However, Huntington’s framework in that book relies on some outdated concepts. For example, he expresses hope that more Hispanics converting to Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism may help them imbibe the “Protestant work ethic” of American culture.
The Protestant work ethic may help explain the rise of the Dutch in early modern Europe, but I don’t think the concept has a lot of modern applicability. After all, heavily evangelical Southern and Border States as not more economically dynamic than heavily Catholic and Jewish Northeastern states. Religious cultures have changed and religious observance has declined over time, making other factors often more important. Admittedly, I have not read “Who Are We?” (although I have read reviews and summaries). Still I have never seen any evidence (neither statistical nor anecdotal) that Protestant Latino immigrants economically outperform Catholic Latino immigrants. Indeed, a major weakness of Huntington’s framework is that fact that he pays insufficient attention to the ways in which cultures can transform and fragment, their borders can move, and the relative importance of culture in forming identities within a particular society can decline.
But while his controversial framework definitely isn’t as sweeping in explanatory value as he might propose, cultural identity is more important than many modern observers would like to admit. This “clash of civilizations” concept has special relevance for understanding how various world civilizations have greeted the technological changes of the digital era.
The design of the Internet as an “open platform” for a “free exchange of ideas” embodies the liberal Western Enlightenment-based values. However, some non-Western cultures that are economically and technologically powerful enough to limit that openness of expression have done so, above all in China.
Other non-Western cultures may not have the power to limit popular access to social media and other disruptive elements of the Internet, but elements within those civilizations may use the technology to promote wildly illiberal ideals. Islamic extremists in the Middle East and North Africa have used US-based web sites and social media platforms to promote and recruit for organizations such as ISIS, and to spread an ideology that is broadly intolerant of religious and sexual minorities.
Finally, Russia (which Huntington labels as being part of an Orthodox / Slavic culture that is allegedly a separate civilization from the rest of the West) has been using the West’s openness against it by trying to hack its open technologies, and by using its own media channels to spread misinformation and influence elections around the Western world. The Russians seem to be betting that the West’s openness (which proved seductive to many behind the Iron Curtain just decades earlier in the revolt against Communism) can still prove to be its vulnerability. Vladimir Putin may believe that the “decadent” permissiveness embodied in allowing free expression of ideas and diversity of thought can be the West’s fundamental weakness in a geopolitical struggle against a unified autocratic Russian culture.
The problem of how Western nations should protect an open internet from being a swamp of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and the puzzle of how to keep verified facts and expert opinions from being drowned out by the assertions of amateurs, is one that continues to plague the Internet’s structure and culture.
Obviously, those in the West (and elsewhere) who believe in the rights-based liberal democratic ideals that emerged out of that civilization (myself included) will continue to prefer a voluntaristic approach that favors persuasion, education, and soft paternalism at most. Heavy-handed censorship, or elite interference to amplify some voices and drown out others, seems to fly in the face of our stated ideals. This is the challenge: how to prevent democratic values from being undermined via digital tools, without compromising those values in the process.