Since its publication in 1996, Samuel Huntington’s The Conflict of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order has been globally influential, cited by leaders from Washington to Beijing. Huntington’s thesis is that geopolitical conflicts will more and more happen between what he defines because the world’s main civilizations, a combination of cultural, non secular, and racial classes. As critics have famous, that is nonsense.
Huntington’s concepts have been savaged and mocked by these who insist his idea of civilization is simply too incoherent, confused or “mushy” to meaningfully clarify the fault traces of world battle. However then perhaps that’s the purpose.
It’s not simply that such main current conflicts because the Syrian civil struggle and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have taken place inside reasonably than between Huntington’s civilizational classes. The classes themselves are everywhere in the map. Some civilizations, like Islamic and Hindu, are broad non secular identities, whereas Orthodoxy (as a subset of Christianity) is elevated to an identification of its personal. East Asia, in flip, is uneasily divided between Sinic, Buddhist, and easily Japanese—a byproduct of the guide being composed within the early Nineties, when Japan was extensively perceived as a rising superpower.
A map from Samuel Huntington’s The Conflict of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.Simon & Schuster
Lastly, the broad designation of “African” purports to be a crude geographic class whereas additionally invoking a good cruder racial one. As political scientist Anjali Dayal notes, Huntington’s civilizations are a bit like Borges’s imaginary division of animals in a fictional Chinese language encyclopedia: “(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs … (okay) drawn with a really effective camelhair brush, (l) et cetera…”
Sadly, within the fallacious fingers, an incoherent concept generally is a highly effective one. The very mushiness of Huntington’s divisions makes it excellent as a rhetorical gadget for framing conflicts in ways in which serve political ends. Human cultures are advanced and ever-changing, made up of an infinite array of overlapping non secular, inventive, linguistic, historic, and ideological affiliations.
Civilizational rhetoric provides pundits and politicians the pliability they should lower up and refashion this cloth in no matter manner most closely fits their agenda. At some point Russia is a Slavic state difficult the West; the subsequent, Vladimir Putin is guarding Christian civilization in opposition to its many foes. Within the West, racialized fears have been recast as ideological ones, then reframed once more in Huntington’s post-Chilly Warfare world as civilizational divides. The Yellow Peril turned Purple China which in flip turned the “Sinic” world. If in an earlier period, we have been all the time at struggle with East Asia, now East Asia has all the time been our civilizational foe.
The malleability of civilizational rhetoric brings different advantages. It has sustained a coalition dedicated to defending “Western civilization” that unites those that see the West as essentially secular and those who see the West as essentially Christian, whereas additionally offering cowl for many who see the West as essentially white.
And this identical malleability has helped nations like Russia, China, India, and Turkey take their nationalism up a notch by rebranding themselves as “civilizational states.”
The paradox of civilization begins with the evolution of the phrase itself. At first, it normally referred to a common customary of sophistication that might be utilized each to others societies and to lower-class members of your personal. However in time, civilization got here to indicate a discrete cultural unit with its personal distinct traditions or values. This model, captured most famously within the sport Civilization, nominally offered numerous cultures as probably equal.
But the idea by no means fairly escaped the sense of hierarchy. Those that speak by way of civilizations nearly all the time assume that theirs is the extra morally or technologically superior—whereas others will be ranked in line with their wealth or geopolitical energy. Many individuals additionally assume that, as within the sport, all civilizations will finally comply with the trail pioneered by the West, even when the scripts or architectural motifs might differ.
A bit of a map by Levi Walter Yaggy, from Yaggy’s Geographical Portfolio (1893).David Rumsey Historic Map Assortment
Inevitably, some civilizations are extra civilized than others. Take into account this elegant illustration from an 1893 classroom geography chart. A civilization might construct with spires, or maybe with pagodas or onion domes. However the ones with the spires are within the foreground, and so they appear to have all of the factories.
This inbuilt chauvinism makes it straightforward to maneuver between totally different variations of your civilization whereas nonetheless remaining supremely assured in your superiority. Putin, amongst others, has completed this notably nicely. Whereas Putin has most notoriously appealed to the thought of Russian civilization to justify the invasion of Ukraine, that is simply one of many many civilizational permutations at his disposal. There’s additionally Russia because the defender of Orthodox civilization, emphasised in Moscow’s outreach to Greece, and Russia because the defender of Slavic civilization, a staple of Russian appeals to Serbia.
After all, Putin’s ambitions lengthen past these extra restricted civilizational identities. As has been extensively documented, Russia has made inroads with right-wing and evangelical actions in Europe and the US by invoking a shared Christian civilizational identification. As he reportedly put it in 2013: “We see lots of the Euro-Atlantic nations are literally rejecting their roots, together with the Christian values that represent the idea of Western civilization. They’re denying the ethical ideas and all conventional identities: nationwide, cultural, non secular, and even sexual.”
And lest Muslims really feel overlooked, Russia’s civilizational rhetoric has one thing for them too. Whereas defending the Christian roots of western civilization within the West, Russian diplomats have appealed to a shared Eurasian identification in Turkey. The cultural and historic foundation of Eurasian values will be obscure—one thing in regards to the steppe and a powerful state—but it surely finds its footing in a shared hostility towards Western hegemony.
Turkey is one other nation that has embraced the contradictory potentialities of civilizational rhetoric. Because the self-proclaimed inheritor to Ottoman civilization, Turkey can concurrently supply a extra inclusive face to the world whereas doubling down on ethnic and non secular nationalism at residence. Within the aftermath of 9/11, for instance Turkey and Spain teamed as much as launch the Alliance of Civilizations, the place they celebrated the interfaith legacy of Al-Andalus and the Ottomans with out ever fairly mentioning the catastrophic sectarian violence of 1492 or 1915.
In an analogous vein, Istanbul utilized to be a 2010 European Capital of Tradition with a slick video that includes a wealthy array of historic church buildings, synagogues, and mosques. Then, after successful, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authorities took the accompanying grant cash and spent it on restoring the mosques alone.
These opportunistic reframings aren’t solely new. Historic empires usually outlined themselves in a number of fashions. The Qing Empire may concurrently place itself because the inheritor to the legacy of Genghis Khan, as a Buddhist monarchy led by a “wheel-turning king” to Southeast Asians, and because the inheritors of Confucian custom in China itself. The Ottomans additionally claimed the Central Asia title of “khan,” along with the Islamic “caliph” and the “Caesar of Rome.” Now, the civilizational model of this sport extends past the rulers themselves to solid the entire nation by way of whichever identification is strongest—or helpful—on the time.
Certainly, for all the hype about the rise of the civilizational state, the time period tends for use by those that are selling a extra unique type of nationalism. For instance, ruling Bharatiya Janata Occasion leaders proclaiming India a “civilizational state” should not searching for to have a good time the wealthy array of spiritual and linguistic influences that contribute to fashionable Indian tradition. Quite the opposite, they’re searching for to intentionally exclude that range in favor of Hindu supremacy.
In Europe and the US, the thought of “Western civilization” has helped weld collectively rival types of cultural chauvinism. Beneath this banner, New Atheists who condemn Muslim integration as a risk to Enlightenment secularism can be a part of ranks with Christian fundamentalists who see Muslim immigration as a brand new entrance within the Crusades. In case you’re not notably invested within the precise historical past of the Enlightenment or Christianity, you possibly can attempt to sq. the circle by suggesting that Christianity was all the time uniquely secular. Alternatively, in case your actual objective is to speak about white individuals with out truly saying so, you possibly can fall again on the dog-whistle model of “Western civilization” that former Rep. Steve King had in thoughts when he tweeted, “We will’t restore our civilization with any individual else’s infants.”
Finally, civilizational rhetoric provides a brand new type of ethnic nationalism for nations the place brazenly embracing it carries historic problems: the US with its melting pot ideology; European Union states with their rival nationalisms; Russia and China with their Communist-inspired multi-national state buildings; India with its numerous post-colonial inheritance; and even Turkey, the place nationalism was historically secular. Now, beneath the rubric of civilization, nationalists in all these lands can have a good time their most well-liked linguistic, non secular, and cultural identities with out apology.
For its most dedicated advocates, “Western civilization” can imply a number of issues, however seldom does it imply “Western democracy.” Certainly, in all of those nations, the idea of civilization has been embraced most eagerly by these explicitly rejecting inclusive democracy. The time period itself, a bit anachronist, a bit hierarchical, stands in opposition to the common aspirations of twentieth century liberalism. As a substitute, it provides a nationally particular gloss on a surprisingly replicable mannequin of authoritarianism.
On this sense, mapping Huntington’s civilizational classes or quibbling about their incoherence misses the purpose. From a civilizational perspective, the place you draw the traces is much less vital than the very act of drawing them. The chauvinism is the purpose.
