International Relations POL 720

International Relations
Institution
Date
Introduction
The post-cold war era has been of interest to scholars. The significant interest has been revealing new sources of conflicts and resolving them. While the biggest question has been what would be the cause of conflict in the post-cold war era. Various theorists have been applied to the topic with liberalists claiming it is possible to avoid war while realist was claiming that there is no promise of stability. Other scientists have characterized post-cold war era with affirmations of about the importance of democracy, freedom, and prosperity. However theorists Samuel Huntington did not view the period like that and in his ‘clash of civilization' theory, Huntington foresees emerging conflicts due to cultural dissimilarities.
The argument makes a succinct prediction on the conflicts and their causes and also specifies the types of wars that would be fought. It is in this background that the paper seeks to examine Huntington's theory. The paper will be divided into five parts with the first part giving Huntington's reflection on the fundamental sources of conflicts, his view on Arab strongmen regime, the dynamic interaction between Islamic civilization and the West. Additionally, the paper will explain the relationship between the theory and the core premises of realist and liberal international relations.
Huntington theory details what he believes would cause war in the post-cold war era. One of the belief is that the war would be caused by cultural differences rather than economic or ideological. On this basis, he argues that politics will revolve around civilizations which he defines as the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identities. The cultural difference is what distinguishes humans from other species Huntington (as cited in Cashman, & Robinson, 2007) at the center of civilization is religion according to Huntington.
He claims eight significant cultures is, Western Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-orthodox, Latin America, and sub-Saharan African civilization, and Huntington argues that the present-day cultural, political, technological and economical process all combine to intensify people a consciousness of their civilization.
According to Huntington, conflict in post –cold war era will cause by different culture between groups and states. This is a shift from the intra-civilization between states within the western civilizations that had happened in several centuries ago. That interstate wars were most likely to break along the geographical fault line between civilizations. Still on the difference in culture, he argues that conflicts between states within same civilization are most liable to be less frequent as compared to those of different civilizations. The assumption is that similar civilizational membership reduces the chances that conflict is likely to spread thus creating civilizational peace.
The likelihood of spread of conflict are most liable to happen via the standard civilizational group. According to Huntington, the concept is known as ‘civilizational rallying.' Moreover, membership of alliances will be formed by civilizational ties. Fundamentally, the conflicts in post-cold-war era will be between the western civilization against the rest. Other civilization will be trying to balance off the power of the most dominant cultural coalition. Thus the according to Huntington the biggest cause of war in post-cold war era is the clash between civilization.
On the Arab strongmen regimes, Huntington claimed that Islamic civilization is the most troublesome and that person in the Arab world do not harbor the same ideologies as their western counterparts. That the primary attachment to Islamic civilization is religion and not the state of the nation. He argues that the Islamic culture is inhospitable to certain liberal ideals like pluralism, individualism, and democracy. Huntington says the Arab strongmen regimes are very fragile and were not stable they were faced with a threat by unemployed young men.
The governments would definitely fall, and chances that they would modify into the western civilization were very minimal. In the turmoil in the Arab world and regime change, the rebels would borrow tools from the world of the west, but the borrowing would be detoured to suit their beliefs .thus there would be an attempt to follow own belief in an effort to avoid becoming more western. He also argued that the volatility of the strongmen regimes of the Arab world caused tension within their borders, and the Muslim world would embroil in a war with other civilizations.
Concerning interaction between the Islamic state and the West, Huntington believes that the Islamic religions are weak and at some point will crumble. In the event of tumult within the Islamic state would borrow widely from the western albeit through their own trajectory. Unlike their western counterparts, the Islamic world was full of chaos and was intrinsically not nationalistic compared to the west. The theory argues that Islamic states were living under regimes ruled by fear and that they don't hunger for democracy. Thus most people engaged in conspiracy mongering and the political positivity encouraged by the governments.
The theory departs from the premises of realist and liberal international relations paradigms. According to liberal view, most striking phenomena in the post-cold war is the economy which plays a dominant role in shaping international association. States put more emphasis on developing their economies and consider it the essential factor in the international political system. States grow their economies and use them to play a fundamental role in global politics. It deviates from the reality of the present world. It does not take cognizant of the role of regional grouping in shaping world politics. And because the world is in transition, a lot of factors may cause conflicts.
Such factors include territorial disputes, ethnic clashes, racial and religious contradictions hegemony, values and differences between civilizations. The theory tends to be aligned to the realist paradigm in that it claim the civilization differences are not only real but also very essential. Religion as the hallmark of culture creates different world view are more fundamental than the political ideologies thus will not disappear. According to this view, the theory fits very well into the realms of realism as an argument. The theory also claims that the world is becoming small, and the interaction between people from different civilizations is increasing. The increase thus present a challenge as it makes conflict arising from civilizational differences more and more prominent.
According to scholars, the theory exhibits both academic weakness and triumph. One of the weaknesses is that the method borrows concepts from different fields like anthropology and does not use terms that are acceptable to political science. The term civilization, for instance, is borrowed from anthropology. Additionally, the theory has erred in the definition of civilization. According to Huntington's definition of civilization, geographical boundaries has been given more prominence thus making it hard to apply to the Islamic civilization. The Islamic civilization in nature is a universal religion that is not bound to the specific geographical area. For instance, Muslim communities in the western countries may find themselves in both Western civilization and Islamic civilization making it hard to determine where to quantify them.
Islamic civilization as defined by Huntington is not representative of the various Islamic blocks. The Islamic world is not homogenous in that the East Asian Islamic nations like Malaysia, Indonesia have total cultural and historical background compared to the Arab countries, Central Asian Muslims and the Muslim of the sub-continent regions. These nations have different views on global issues and cannot be categorized under a broad phenomenon of Islamic civilization.
According to Ashraf, (2012), the theory is one sided with emphasis on conflicts without being cognizant of the fact that civilization also does blend and co-exists. The theory has totally neglected the fact that civilizations sometimes co-exist harmoniously and blend. Even though the article is a realist reply to liberals, he managed to make some brilliant points in that the politics and civilization of non-western nations will not be the object of history but will join the Western world in shaping history.
In conclusion, Samuel Huntington's theory sparked a controversy with the theory that was majorly anchored on the role o...