On topic: Clash of civilizations or not?
Interesting overview of the issue of the clash of civilizations that many have been talking about in recent times. It also mentions Huntington's concept of the "swing civilizations": essentially fault lines between core civilizations which are doomed to remain conflict points for a long time. He speaks of "bloody borders", where blood will spill over and over again, before the previous blood has had any chance of drying up. And all in all, he puts religious identity at a very high position in the list of factors for defining geopolitical blocs and the respective clashes.
A major criticism of that concept comes from the school of thought that bets on a more complex approach (as opposed to the "reductionist" one, as Huntington's approach has been dubbed by his detractors):
"The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness. An Islamist instigator of violence against infidels may want Muslims to forget that they have any identity other than being Islamic. What is surprising is that those who would like to quell that violence promote, in effect, the same intellectual disorientation by seeing Muslims primarily as members of an Islamic world. The world is made much more incendiary by the advocacy and popularity of single-dimensional categorization of human beings, which combines haziness of vision with increased scope for the exploitation of that haze by the champions of violence."
Still, some have gone as far as to call Huntington's writings prophetic. Indeed, he defined those fault lines of his long before the 9-11 era had supposedly transformed the way the world perceives itself (not specifically singling out Islamic terrorism as one side in this clash, but the implication was definitely there). This has earned him a lot of followers.
That said, I think I can see where the argument is coming from that Huntington's theory may look like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a fact that there are numerous think-tanks in the US that "produce" theoretical basis for a continuous US economic and geopolitical expansion - how correct or false that theoretical foundation is, is another story. In other words, the US and the West in more general tend to come up with excuses for a sustained world domination, disregarding and downplaying the cultural, religious and social diversities and particularities of the rest of the world. And this is something that we can recognize from the life cycles of many preceding empires, global and otherwise.
If we look at this impartially, we'd realize that it's an inherently totalitarian approach, because it emerges from the arrogant notion that we somehow possess the ultimate and universal medicine for every major societal problem of humanity, something like a global panacea (liberal democracy for example?) And the rest of the world is advised to follow our recipe, whether they like it or not. Lest they face trouble.
If history is any guide, a number of empires have resorted to such means, have developed such a mindset, and have eventually reached a spiritual and intellectual dead end in result, which in itself is a pattern that each one of them has failed to recognize in their predecessors, and has in turn reaped exactly what they have sowed.
A major criticism of that concept comes from the school of thought that bets on a more complex approach (as opposed to the "reductionist" one, as Huntington's approach has been dubbed by his detractors):
"The increasing tendency to overlook the many identities that any human being has and to try to classify individuals according to a single allegedly pre-eminent religious identity is an intellectual confusion that can animate dangerous divisiveness. An Islamist instigator of violence against infidels may want Muslims to forget that they have any identity other than being Islamic. What is surprising is that those who would like to quell that violence promote, in effect, the same intellectual disorientation by seeing Muslims primarily as members of an Islamic world. The world is made much more incendiary by the advocacy and popularity of single-dimensional categorization of human beings, which combines haziness of vision with increased scope for the exploitation of that haze by the champions of violence."
Still, some have gone as far as to call Huntington's writings prophetic. Indeed, he defined those fault lines of his long before the 9-11 era had supposedly transformed the way the world perceives itself (not specifically singling out Islamic terrorism as one side in this clash, but the implication was definitely there). This has earned him a lot of followers.
That said, I think I can see where the argument is coming from that Huntington's theory may look like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a fact that there are numerous think-tanks in the US that "produce" theoretical basis for a continuous US economic and geopolitical expansion - how correct or false that theoretical foundation is, is another story. In other words, the US and the West in more general tend to come up with excuses for a sustained world domination, disregarding and downplaying the cultural, religious and social diversities and particularities of the rest of the world. And this is something that we can recognize from the life cycles of many preceding empires, global and otherwise.
If we look at this impartially, we'd realize that it's an inherently totalitarian approach, because it emerges from the arrogant notion that we somehow possess the ultimate and universal medicine for every major societal problem of humanity, something like a global panacea (liberal democracy for example?) And the rest of the world is advised to follow our recipe, whether they like it or not. Lest they face trouble.
If history is any guide, a number of empires have resorted to such means, have developed such a mindset, and have eventually reached a spiritual and intellectual dead end in result, which in itself is a pattern that each one of them has failed to recognize in their predecessors, and has in turn reaped exactly what they have sowed.