The Clash of Civilizations and The Making of a New World Order: A review of Samuel P Huntingdon’s and its Relevance to our New Political order By Donovan Reynolds Blogger and Independent Writer

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The recent killing of the U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on the 11th September 20 12:  — when the consulate in Libya was overrun by protesters and, some say, Islamist militants. This embarrassed the interim Libyan leadership in the capital Tripoli and fuelled public anger at the continued presence on the streets of units from the revolutionary army whose loyalties are often unclear.

 President Barack Obama on the 25th of September 2012 invoked the words of Mahatma Gandhi in his address to the UN General Assembly here as he remembered US envoy to Libya who was killed in violent protests that erupted in the aftermath of an anti-Islam film, saying the "crude and disgusting" video was no excuse for an "attack on America”. Three days before Presidents Obama speech impassioned and well measured speech the Daily mail published a shocking revelation: That a Pakistani minister has offered $100,000 to anyone who kills the maker of the on line anti-Islam video that has launched deadly protests across parts of the Muslim world.
 
The threat from right-wing extremist terrorism is as deadly as the atrocities committed by the Islamic Jihadist. On July 22, 2011, Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik bombed several government buildings in Oslo, Norway killing eight people and injuring more than 30. After the bombing, he made his way to Utoya Island in a fake police uniform and began firing on people attending a political youth camp for Norway's left-wing AUF political party, killing 68 and injuring more than 60. The 2011 Norway attacks became the largest mass killing of people committed by a single person during peacetime, excluding use of bombs.

As a child I always read widely and it gave me had a vivid imagination. I wanted to travel the world and broaden my horizon by travelling to different cultures. When the opportunity for me to travel to Barbados at the age of 16 years. It was my first holiday opportunity without my mother. So, it was hugely alluring as I had always harboured ideas of grandeur delusion about the outside world. A group of my friends in Kingston Jamaica decided to travel to Barbados I managed to convince my parent to allow me to go after confirming that an adult whom she trusted would be travelling with us and she had called Barbados and made arrangement with a College friend of hers who owned an hostel in Bridgetown Barbados to Keep us for a week.

On my arrival in Barbados we made friends with my mother’s friend relative Charles Padmore was kind enough to take us to Harrison Point Cave Hill, St Lawrence, Boscobel and Silver Sands all of which we enjoyed immensely and shared similarities with our Jamaican environment. My first culture shock came  when our host on a visit to the Bridgetown Harbour Charles showed me a cross dressing man whom I swore was a female  initially but was told after that he was a cross dresser who was originally named Paul but had changed his name to Paula and had become a male prostitute. Upon receiving that information I shuffled uncomfortably and my toes curled in a cringing manner. How was I a boy from a rural district on the outskirts of Kingston to process such a strange phenomenon?
 
On my penultimate day I went for a walk by myself and came across about five bearded Indian men dressed in what I recognised at the time as long black dresses walking towards me I immediately became paranoid and ran back to the cottage that I was staying. Almost out of breath I knocked up my boarder at the cottage and told her what I had seen. She gave me a cold drink to calm me down and explained to me that the men that I had seen were Muslims from Trinidad trying to set up a mosque in Barbados. About an hour after the men came to the cottage and we were introduced to them. They told us that Islam is one of the world's major religions, along with Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity They  also said  that Islam's central teaching is that there is one all-powerful, all-knowing God, who is referred to by the Arabic name, Allah. I was told that In Arabic, Islam means "surrender," or "submission," to the will of God and that Islam was a religion of peace. It sounded reasonable to me but it was different from what I was told by the Rector of my local church.

Today I live in London which is a city that celebrates a multicultural lifestyle with people of diverse ethnicity and religious beliefs. A society that embraces multiculturalism is said to be a society at ease with the rich tapestry of human life and the desire amongst people to express their own identity in the manner they see fit. It is a far cry a way from 1980 when I visited Barbados and had a narrow view of sexuality, culture and religion. Today I am also an unashamed secular humanist with a left of centre liberal viewpoint which sits squarely with the philosophy of multiculturalism. But ever so often, since 9/11 the great promise of multiculturalism and its avowed benefits of a tolerant society have become questionable Utopian ideal. As; ethnic and religious flash points across the globe drive an uneasy wedge of discontent among the great promise of globalisation and the push towards a unified world.

It seems wholly appropriate for me to assume that we are experiencing ‘a clash of civilisations. ‘The Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War era.
Samuel P. Huntington was a former White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council for President Jimmy Carter. Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy and capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.
 
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterised by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilisations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analysing the potential for conflict.

In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington wrote: It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Huntington in his seminal thesis on the clash of civilization explained that some of the factors contributing to this conflict are that both Christianity (which has influenced Western civilization) and Islam are: Missionary religions, seeking conversion of others. Universal, "all-or-nothing" religions, in the sense that it is believed by both sides that only their faith is the correct one .Teleological religions, that is, that their values and beliefs represent the goals of existence and purpose in human existence. Irreligious people who violate the base principles of those religions are perceived to be furthering their own pointless aim, which leads to violent interactions.

More recent factors contributing to a Western-Islamic clash, Huntington wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism—that is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values—that infuriate Islamic fundamentalists. All these historical and modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996 book, would lead to a bloody clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations.

Huntington offered the following six concrete explanations for why civilizations will clash:
 1.Differences among civilizations are too basic in that civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion. These fundamental differences are the product of centuries, so they will not soon disappear.
 2. The world is becoming a smaller place. As a result, the interactions across the world are increasing, and they intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations.
 3. Due to the economic modernization and social change, people are separated from longstanding local identities. Instead, religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.
 4. The growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the west. On the one hand, the west is at a peak of power. At the same time, a return to the roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations. A west at the peak of its power confronts non-Western countries that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.
 5. Cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones.
 6. Economic regionalism is increasing. Successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness.
5.Cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones.
 6.Economic regionalism is increasing. Successful economic regionalism will reinforce civilization-consciousness.

To conclude, In 1993, Huntington provoked great debate among international relations theorists with the interrogatively-titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", an extremely influential, oft-cited article published in Foreign Affairs magazine. Its description of post-Cold War geopolitics contrasted with the influential End of History thesis advocated by Francis Fukuyama. Huntingdon died December 24, 2008 (aged 81) befittingly at the famous Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts USA. He failed to factor in the role of right wing terrorist like Timothy McVeigh who was involved with the devastating Oklahoma Bombing.  However, he undoubtedly is one of the best conservative writers of his time. The legacy that he has bequeathed to political analysts and commentators is an invaluable way of deciphering the complexity of the new world order in a post- cold war era.

He was spot on with his predictions. His his critics such as Paul Burman are not word a mention as they are way off target. Huntington’s last book: Who Are We? -The Challenges to America's National Identity, was published in May 2004. Its subject is the meaning of American national identity and the possible cultural threat posed to it by large-scale Latino immigration, which Huntington warns could "divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages”. In this book Huntingdon was way off target and may have stoked up scaremongering by pondering to the conservative side of his brain. Or flippantly ,in his last days at Martha’s Vineyard he may have been possessed by John Belushi’s ghost  and dreamt up such an absurd book while paranoid and drinking champagne with other neo-conservatives. Whatever the case, the clash of civilizations by my account is more accurate than the book of revelation that John wrote.

Donovan Reynolds is a Blogger and Independent Writer.He is a British based Social Worker and Human rights Activist.He has an interest in Politics,Culture,HumanRigts and International Development issues.Readers of this blog may add their comments or critique at the space provided on this blog .Or alternatively they may e-mail him at dannygerm63@hotmail.co.uk/ dannygerm@twitter