ON, "THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS," II i registered my objections to what little doctrine or prescription there was in CLASH in "clash I." that was accepting the usefulness of huntington's civilizational map-redrawing. i don't accept that either. samuel huntington has long been an eminent scholar and was a foreign policy advisor in jimmy carter's administration. he is a serious man. he thinks big thoughts. he has what yogi berra would call "deep depth." there is little if any of this on view in the descriptive portion of CLASH which makes up eleven of the book's twelve chapters. the book is one of those dark malthusian works in which subtlety and complexity are beaten into submission to fit "the model." it's in the vein of paul kennedy's RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT POWERS of the '80's which predicted the end of american economic supremacy and the ascendancy of the japanese. it is a high-brow version of those MEGATREND books by whoever that knucklehead was, john naismith, james naismith, whatever. it also reveals more about huntington himself, the way he thinks, what his prejudices are, what his world view is, than it does about how the world is actually is. descriptively, CLASH is simple, brilliant but simple. if you read the original FOREIGN AFFAIRS article or even if you've talked to someone who has for 15 minutes you get the point. i think the book fits well in describing america's relationship to islam. i think we are in a clash there but huntington divides the whole world up into different civilizations. for the record these are: -the west -orthodoxy (russia, et al) -the sinic -the japanese -the latin american -the islamic -the hindu -the buddhist -the african (maybe) it is a fair summary of the book to say that huntington views these as clashing civilizations also. huntingtonists would assert that that is a distortion, and obviously not all the civilizations are at present--nor may they be in the future--in conflict with one another, but the clear point is that these civilizations and their interests are so different that they will inevitably clash with each other at some time over something. this does not necessarily mean civilizational war but clashes at least. these clashes are made all the more intractable because as huntington wrote in the original CLASH article in FOREIGN AFFAIRS, "a communist today can become a capitalist tomorrow, but an armenian can never become a turk." world history certainly suggests that this may be correct. humanity indeed has a very bloody history but huntington's world view is very dark indeed, darker i think, than it is useful to view it as. in the first chapter, under the pretense of surveying the different ways in which the post-cold war world has been viewed by OTHERS, huntington quotes from a novel called DEAD LAGOON by michael dibdin: "there can be no true friends without true enemies. unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are." that is shocking, and huntingtonists would say "he's not saying that's what his view is, in fact he specifically introduces the paragraph from which that excerpt is taken by saying 'one grim weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the venetian nationalist demogogue' in dibdin's book." that is apologia however, not truth, because on the next page huntington does not quote from a book of fiction, he states as his own view: "we know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against." huntington's entire world view as expressed in CLASH is of a world in conflict. fukuyama i challenge the most basic civilizational categorization by huntington. i have argued here previously and do so now again, that there is no "western civilization" that has geopolitical or doctrinal meaning. huntington conflates europe and the united states and their interests. i separate them. his argument and mine are easy to defend. his is that america is the product of european thought, settled by european peoples. mine is that although that is true, america broke away from europe demonstrably, we fought two wars against england itself, our "mother country" for heavens's sake, we have fought two world wars with european states, wars which huntington classifies as essentially "western civil wars." from the perspective of the other side of the atlantic, the european union was not conceived as a proto-alliance with the united states but as a counterweight to it. our culture rankles europe in the same way, although not with as much violence, as it does islam. it is tempting to say in the post-cold war era that the atlanticist military alliance of nato should be perpetuated into this new era. in fact that is what huntington says. in fact, as mentioned in "clash I" he argues for expanding it to other western countries in europe. i think he is dead wrong, wrong, wrong about that and have argued it previously. nato was a military alliance for the cold war. it made sense then to obligate each alliance member to the defense of the other if attacked by the other half of that bi-polar world. an attack on germany--or france or england--would have and should have resulted in a combined response by the other nato member states. in like manner the united states had military treaties with south korea against aggression from the north, with taiwan against aggression from the prc. the problem is WE STILL HAVE THOSE TREATIES! we are still treaty-bound to defend those countries if attacked even though the raison d'etre for the treaties, the threat from the soviet union and from communist china, DON'T EXIST ANYMORE! what the hell sense does that make? further, huntington would EXTEND these treaties to, as he says on page 312, "the western states of central europe...the baltic republics, slovenia, and croatia." and in fact we've done that. we are now obligated to defend poland against attack FROM ANYONE. does the american public realize any of this? huntington, completely contrary to american foreign policy history, common sense, and present realities, would extend our foreign policy obligations far beyond our shores and our national security interests. all this because we are "kin" with these other states in the civilization of "the west." BULLshit. huntington says that the western civilization is unique, not universal but unique. in fact it is the AMERICAN civilization that is unique, although i agree with him that it should not be presumed to be universal (it may be though). huntington urges a rigid construct and responses by "the west" in response to clashes with other civilizations. in fact, it is precisely because america has never been caught in rigid, ossified constructs of any kind, much less in foreign affairs, that we have survived and flourished. our federalist system grounded us philosophically in non-involvement in others affairs, our "rugged individualist" psychology did the same, our geographic isolation has helped us avoid the "entangling alliances" that woodrow wilson warned against. for these reasons and more, america has retained a diplomatic nimbleness that has allowed us to: -become the closest of allies with the england, the country we separated from and fought two wars against. -become the closest of allies with germany who we fought two wars against. -become the closest of allies with japan who we dropped atomic bombs on. -waited out the collapse of our cold war mortal enemy, the soviet union, and have become friends, if not the closest allies with its successor, russia -waited out the less dangerous standoff with the prc. the prc has not ceased to exist as has the soviet union but it is no longer the communist state that it was under mao and our relations with it have reflected that change. just these examples illustrate (1) the fallacy of huntington's "western civilization" fantasy (2) the fallacy that we can not form alliances with states from other civilizations (russia, japan, china)and (3)the disastrous policy consequences to accepting huntington's dark division of the world. in huntingtonia, we will always be in some civilizational opposition to russia. never mind that the soviet union has ceased to exist, never mind that russia has at times been an important american ally since 1989, never mind that it is now part of the g-8, never mind that, with whatever difficulty, it is trying really hard to become democratic and market-oriented economically. for huntington this is all pap. russia can never become western. it will always be orthodox. biology is not destiny, culture is destiny. culture, a creation of man, can never be undone. once created it is forever. similarly, he opposes the expansion of the european union to include turkey because it is a state from another civilization and hence it can never be made to fit. the world is not like that as the examples of germany, japan, russia, china, etc. show. people, countries, civilizations can change if only to be less rigid and more tolerant of others. the world is also too complex for one state, much less the most powerful state, to be forever locked into a rigid construct of "civilizational" alliance. as argued here in "international federalism," the united states should maintain shifting alliances as our national security requires: with israel and perhaps england in the middle east, with russia in its own clash with islam, with all of the nuclear powers in all the civilizations to reduce nuclear stockpiles and enforce non-proliferation. and etc. huntington's prescription is not for how to deal with conflict if it occurs. structurally, he BUILDS IN conflict. he divides the world up into eight, maybe nine, clashing civilizations, he urges alliances whose only purpose is to set up an us vs. them posture, he wishes to expand those alliances which will heighten the chance of conflict, he would re-do the u.n. security council so that all the major civilizations would be represented, thus again building in conflict in the one world organization that is to prevent, not just manage, conflict. it is not to "our western heritage" that america should return in meeting the challenges of the post-cold war world. it is to our own uniquely american heritage, of federalist acceptance of diversity and tolerance, non-involvement in the affairs of others, intellectual modesty over the applicability of our experience elsewhere, realpolitik realization of the dangerousness of entangling alliances, and generosity, both of spirit and of treasure. it is the american--not the western or the singaporean (!?)--experiment in all these matters that gives hope that there may be a "thin" connective tissue among civilizations that allows mankind to transcend differences and avoid clashes. -benjamin harris