the battle of civilizations article assessment
Excerpt from Dissertation:
fall of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s spurred debate among policymakers and intellectuals about the shape of future of world politics, and the role that the U. T. would play in it. One of the greatest early on voices with this debate was Samuel Huntington, who through his content, ‘The Clash of Civilizations’, took difference in civilization as the greatest source of conflict in the worldwide political program in the post Cold-War period. According to Huntington, disputes between civilizations seeking to gain and maintain affect in a new world order are the leading method to obtain interstate instability in the post-Cold War era. Events including the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York, as well as the bombings in London, Madrid, and Bali have been interpreted by many scholars while evidence with this particular paradigm. However , other scholars have come out firmly in evaluate of Huntington’s viewpoint. The type of scholar is Mian Muhammad Ashraf, lecturer in the Political Science Section at the Zakariya University in Pakistan. This text analyzes the sights of these two scholars inside the context of America’s regular War on Terrorism. It starts with a quick description of the views carried by both students.
Huntington’s World Thesis
While already mentioned, Huntington based his view on world conflict for the clash of civilizations. In his view, the dominant source of interstate turmoil in the post-Cold War period is certainly not the collide of ideologies (as was the case through the war), nevertheless the clash between people and nations of various civilizations (Huntington, 1993). A civilization, relating to Huntington, is the “highest cultural grouping of people as well as the broadest standard of cultural identification people have” (Huntington, 1993, p. 25). People belonging to the same world are joined up with together by simply religion, traditions, culture, vocabulary, and background – facets that are more fundamental and less easily sacrificed than monetary and political ideologies (Huntington, 1993).
Huntington puts forth a number of factors behind why civilizations are such an important identity in the period in question, and why persons of different cultures will battle. First, variations in ideologies among groups/people in different civilizations are on a fundamental level, touching on very sensitive questions such as marriage as well as the relationship among humans and God. Second of all, due to financial liberalization, relationships between people of different civilizations have increased, weakening the nation as a supply of identity, and reviving faith as an alternative personality source. Finally, there is an us-versus-them mindset spurred by anti-westernization activity, where the western world, being at the height of it is power, rupture with the non-west that opposes any sort of association with it. Non-western civilizations begin to feel that the west is trying to can charge its traditions on them; as a result, they work to take on the western in order to conserve the uniqueness with their civilizations.
Ashraf’s Thesis
Ashraf supports Huntington’s view that there is a clash of civilizations, particularly among groups in the west and non-western domains. In the view, however , this is not the dominant source of conflict between states. According to Ashraf (2012), groups fight to protect their perception, blood, family, and faith; however , these are generally only extra to monetary interests.
