Politika - Samuel Huntington...
Herr Mann Diesel
Huntington is a professor of government at Harvard, where he also heads the
Olin Center for Strategic Studies. Since he began his career as a graduate
student at Harvard along with Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and
Stanley Hoffmann, he has produced a steady stream of articles and books.
Apart from tours of duty at the National Security Council during the Johnson
and Carter administrations, he has spent his entire career as an academic.
Huntington initially focused on civil-military relations. His first book,
The Soldier and the State (1957), offered a keen examination of the tensions
between civilian control and military strategy. Since the book's appearance
an entire subfield has emerged in political science to grapple with the
question of civil-military relations-a topic that has acquired fresh
importance in the post-Cold War era as doubts have surfaced about the
reliability of the American officer corps. In his next book, Political Order
in Changing Societies (1968), Huntington maintained that economic progress
could not be divorced from political liberty-again, an argument that is now
hotly debated, and one from which Huntington himself now seems to dissent.
It was with American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (1981) that
Huntington first displayed his interest in the question of ethnicity and
national identity. Huntington maintained that there was a distinct American
creed based on the Protestant ethic, natural rights, and equality. "[E]thnic
cultural identities," he wrote, "coexist with a national identity rooted in
a particular set of political ideas and institutions." In the United States,
he maintained, ethnic groups did not claim to represent a separate national
identity, and ideology and nationality were fused.
In his most recent book, The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington returns to
the question of ethnicity, but on a global scale. He argues that the world
is made up of seven major civilizations: Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic,
Orthodox, Western, and Latin American. The post-Cold War world is divided
along rigidly civilizational-ethnic lines and therefore is inhospitable to
democracy. In Huntington's view, democracy is a Western creation that cannot
be transplanted to the inhospitable environments of Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East. Over the centuries, these countries have developed their own
habits and practices, which the West should respect rather than attempt to
change. Anything else would smack of cultural imperialism. The best that the
U.S. can do is to team up with its western European partners to form a kind
of imperium that can resist marauding foreigners.
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GETTING REAL
The Clash of Civilizations is brilliant, provocative, and utterly
unconvincing. Like so many previous efforts to devise grand theories of
history and politics-from Spengler to Toynbee to Fukuyama-Huntington's
collapses under the weight of its own assumptions. In fact Huntington's form
of theorizing suffers from its own kind of malady. Though he stresses that
he has written a popular book rather than a political science text, The
Clash can be properly understood only in the context of conservative realist
and neorealist theory.
Before the Second World War, the study of international relations was simply
another term for diplomatic history. Political scientists such as Archibald
Cary Coolidge and James Shotwell served on Woodrow Wilson's Inquiry
Commission to determine European borders, and they wrote readable prose
about America's role in the world. It was only with the arrival of European
émigrés such as Hans Morgenthau that the European realist tradition-with its
neoclassical emphasis on a mechanical balance of power-became dominant in
the United States. This tradition emphasized power politics, stability, and
a diminished role for ideology-all themes that Henry Kissinger embraced at
Harvard and later sought to follow as national security advisor and
secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
As political science became increasingly wedded to scientific and
mechanistic thinking in the 1970s, international relations theory skidded
off the rails. The weakness of "realist" theory had always been its
assumption that a balance of power should be maintained among nations.
Should any nation become too powerful, so the thinking went, opposing
nations should form an alliance to balance against it. Neorealism, which
emerged in the 1970s, went even further.
Neorealism held that the nature of a regime was largely irrelevant to its
behavior. The leading neorealist, Kenneth Waltz of the University of
California at Berkeley, explains that the manner in which nations behave is
best understood by viewing them in terms of neoclassical economic theory.
Whether the Soviet Union was a totalitarian power or a democracy was
secondary to its objective geopolitical interests. It was simply responding
to the international environment, to the incentives and disincentives of an
organized and coherent system. Any government or statesman running a
Russian-led empire at mid-century would have behaved more or less like
Stalin or Khruschev. Neorealism thus implies that given a sufficient number
of case studies, political scientists should be able scientifically to
predict the behavior of regimes.
Huntington's book moves beyond these increasingly sterile debates. He
attempts to integrate an analysis of cultural and civilizational
distinctiveness into traditional realism. In arguing that ethnicity stands
at the heart of international relations, Huntington turns realism on its
head. The nature of regimes becomes the most important factor in what he
sees as a battle of rival civilizations jockeying for advantage. But in the
end, Huntington himself succumbs to the flaws of the grand theory. For in
his attempt to refurbish traditional, conservative realism with culture,
Huntington has produced a profoundly illiberal book.
Herr Mann Diesel
One of the main themes of The Clash of Civilizations is that Western
arrogance has blinded the West to the true nature of world politics. While
American politicians indulge the naive fantasy of a coming liberal
universalism, Asian countries are girding themselves to fight off American
intrusions into their spheres of influence.
There may be something to this. But the way Huntington describes it, Asia is
set to dispense with the United States as an economic, cultural, and
military power. In fact, Huntington's views of Asia turn out to be only a
slightly more restrained version of the Japanese parliamentarian Shintaro
Ishihara's warnings a few years ago: "There is no hope for the United
States," said Ishihara. "Right now, the modern civilization built by whites
is coming close to its practical end." Huntington approvingly quotes Tommy
Koh, Singapore's ambassador to the United States, who observed in 1993 that
a "cultural renaissance is sweeping across Asia." Asians, said Koh, "no
longer regard everything Western or American as necessarily the best."
Huntington agrees; he even goes so far as to argue that the Confucian work
ethic is responsible for the economic progress of Asia.
But is this really true? One of the problems with seeking the roots of
Asia's economic success in something as vague as Confucianism is that
Confucianism might just as plausibly be used to explain Asia's current
economic crisis. This is one of the pitfalls of reading broad cultural and
civilizational conclusions into momentary economic trends. Confucianism is
deeply rooted in the Asian cultural tradition. But its effects on Asia's
current economic climate are complex and ambivalent-hurting in some respects
and helping in others. And in any case, avarice, foolishness, and luck
probably play at least as great a role in charting Asia's economic future.
What's more, Huntington likely has it exactly backward when it comes to
Asian self-assertion. Economic failure, rather than success, seems far more
likely to spark an anti-American backlash. Some Indonesians and South
Koreans are already beginning to view the International Monetary Fund as a
tool of the United States intended to upend their countries' economies. To
write off Asia as an economic power, as some are now doing, would be absurd.
But if we are looking for the roots of tensions between Asian nations and
the United States, the source is less American arrogance than America's in
ability to absorb ever greater productive capacity from Asia.
When it comes to the Islamic world, Huntington would seem to be on firmer
ground. Radical states like Syria, Iran, and Iraq clearly view the United
States as an interloper, and even America's relations with more moderate
states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are plagued with religious and cultural
tensions. But it would be wrong to assume that American dealings with any
Islamic nation are fated to be hostile. Turkey, after all, enjoys a cordial
and long-standing relationship with the United States. And even in Iran, the
revolution appears to have burned out, leaving behind an apathetic youth
eager to enjoy the trappings of American culture, despite the Ayatollahs'
adjurations.
Viewing Asia and the Middle East as monolithic civilizations is also
misleading because it masks the fact that many of the conflicts in these
regions are conflicts within civilizations. It is no accident that Saudi
Arabia and Egypt respond differently to the United States than Iran and Iraq
do; their regimes perceive their interests as best served by friendly ties
with the U.S. Similarly, if the West constituted a single bloc, as
Huntington seems to believe, then it would be united in confronting the
"Islamic peril." But as the collapse of the Gulf War coalition indicates,
the West is divided over how to respond to Saddam Hussein's depredations.
France and Germany would like to deal with Saddam as well as Teheran, while
the United States vainly insists on isolating both countries. And the Middle
East as a region corresponds rather closely to traditional realism. Middle
Eastern countries are all jockeying for advantage against one another; the
dream of Pan-Arab unity, which Nasser attempted to fulfill, has sputtered
out, leaving behind a region united only in suspicion and fear.
Huntington's focus on culture becomes particularly far-fetched when he turns
to Bosnia. Here he seems intent on ramming every possible event into his
framework to supply it with desperately needed evidence. In Huntington's
view, "the intensification of religious identity produced by war and ethnic
cleansing, the preferences of its leaders, and the support and pressure from
other Muslim states were slowly but clearly transforming Bosnia from the
Switzerland of the Balkans into the Iran of the Balkans." But this is simply
not true. While some Bosnians have gravitated toward Muslim fundamentalism,
there is no evidence of anything like a massive upsurge of religious fervor.
Rather than acknowledge that most Bosnians are thankful that the fighting
has ended, Huntington repeats Serb propaganda. The ethnic differences
between the Bosnians and Serbs were, in any case, largely the invention of
Serbian nationalists motivated by territorial conquest and racial
extermination. But Huntington declares that "the war in Bosnia was a war of
civilizations," endowing the Bosnian conflict with a grandeur that it does
not deserve. The Serbs were petty tyrants intent on rubbing out an
inconvenient and despised neighbor. There is more here of the banality of
evil than some grand clash of civilizations.
Huntington's theory runs into similar difficulties in trying to pit the West
against another civilization. Since some European countries such as France
and Britain were sympathetic to the Serbs, while the United States was
pushing to help the Bosnians, Huntington starts to waffle. Why did the U.S.
help the Bosnians, he wonders? He considers and rejects the notion that the
Clinton administration was attempting to placate the Arab states. He then
attacks the United States for having seen in Bosnia a peaceful example of
multiculturalism: "American idealism, moralism, humanitarian instincts,
naiveté and ignorance concerning the Balkans thus led [the U.S.] to be
pro-Bosnian and anti-Serb."
In other words, the American government failed to realize that
civilizational demands dictated that it should have stood by while the Serbs
rolled over the Bosnians. That seems a rather uncivilized outlook. There is
more: "By refusing to recognize the war for what it was, the American
government alienated its allies, prolonged the fighting, and helped to
create in the Balkans a Muslim state heavily influenced by Iran. . . . The
Spanish Civil War was a prelude to World War II. The Bosnian War is one more
bloody episode in an ongoing clash of civilizations." But the United States
did not alienate its allies. It did not prolong the fighting. And it
certainly did not help create a Muslim state influenced by Iran. On the
contrary, the war ended only when America belatedly launched a few strikes
against the Serbs. The Balkans have now become a de facto American sphere of
influence, while the allies have happily sent their troops to ensure that
renewed warfare does not break out. Where are the Iranians?
Herr Mann Diesel
The final chapter of The Clash makes it clear where Huntington has been
heading: American national identity itself is under siege. Other countries
may fear American cultural imperialism; but Huntington fears their influence
on us. No longer is Huntington sanguine about the American national creed
that he extolled in American Politics. He believes that multiculturalism is
destroying the United States. According to Huntington,
Western culture is challenged by groups within Western societies. One such
challenge comes from immigrants from other civilizations who reject
assimilation and continue to adhere to and propagate the values, customs,
and cultures of their home societies. This phenomenon is most notable among
Muslims in Europe. . . . It is also manifest, in lesser degree, among
Hispanics in the United States.
What Hispanics could Huntington possibly mean? If anything, Hispanics tend
to be among the most patriotic of Americans. And Huntington goes on to
declare that "historically American national identity has been defined
culturally by the heritage of Western civilization and politically by the
principles of the American creed. . . ." If the United States is
"de-Westernized," he warns, the West could be reduced to Europe and "a few
lightly populated overseas European settler countries."
Essentially, Huntington wants the United States to renounce universalism
abroad and at home. A multi-civilizational United States, he says, "will not
be the United States; it will be the United Nations." But will it? The
United States has always contained different ethnicities; the only
difference in very recent history is that new groups are sharing power with
the Anglo-Saxon elite. Even the succession of ethnic groups into the
American elite is by now an old story. Bill Richardson, the ambassador to
the United Nations, may be the first Mexican American to hold a high-level
foreign policy appointment in the United States government. But his story is
really no different from that of the Jews and Catholics who made their way
into the foreign policy elite in the early Cold War era.
What Huntington seems to fear is the rise of ethnicity in the United States
itself. In his 1997 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington warned that ethnic
lobbies have hijacked foreign policy. A unified national interest, he says,
no longer exists. Multiculturalism has taken over. The only option for the
United States is retreat. But this grossly exaggerates the perils and
influence of multiculturalism. There is little reason to believe that
multicultural activists have taken over the nation's foreign policy.
Huntington's alarms about multiculturalism in the United States are as
excessive as his claims that Bosnia has become an Iranian beachhead in
Europe.
Above all, these musings suggest how disaffected American conservatives have
become with the country itself. At the very moment when the U.S. is finally
attempting to fulfill its promise of a color-blind society, Huntington is
lashing out against fringe multicultural movements and depicting immigrants,
in tired and sloppy language, as a menace to the Republic. Huntington is by
no means the only conservative to bewail the state of the United States.
Alexander Haig, who heads the Singapore-America Council, told me a year ago:
"Here in our society we're not a good example." Singapore, according to
Haig, is in better shape. Under Lee Kuan Yew's direction, "Singapore has
made great progress . . . but in a model best suited to Singapore in his own
judgment." Other conservatives who have hailed "Asian values" against
American sloth include William F. Buckley, Jr., Henry Kissinger, and Patrick
Buchanan. After the flogging of young American Michael Fay in Singapore,
Buchanan wrote, "It is our moral elite's distance from reality . . . which
induces a moral paralysis when it comes to punishing domestic enemies."
Blaming America first has become the new code among conservatives.
In the end, Huntington's apprehensions about immigration and civilizational
strife prompt him to suggest that the United States should retreat to a
spheres-of-influence foreign policy. But why go through all these cultural
and civilizational contortions just to arrive at this old conclusion?
Huntington believes that the Anglo-Saxon world-Britain and the United
States, with perhaps a few continental countries along for the ride-should
form an imperium against the Asian, Islamic, and African hordes. But to
confine America's role to such a rearguard action hardly corresponds with
the country's traditional conception of foreign policy. The truth is that
America, far from being an isolationist power, has steadily expanded its
power abroad. Already in 1840, American lithographs depicted an eagle with a
banner in its beak heralding: "Westward The March of Empire Takes Its
Flight." The United States has moved from conquering the West to dominating
the Caribbean to occupying Western Europe to, most recently, assuming
responsibility for the Balkans and the Middle East.
There is a potential middle ground that Huntington ignores, one between the
naive internationalism now embraced by a portion of the American elite and
the dark isolationism that Huntington now apparently embraces. Had
Huntington considered the work of Adam Watson, a prominent British theorist
of international relations, he might have pondered the notion of a society
of states. Watson has written what is probably one of the most brilliant
texts on international politics, The Evolution of International Society.
Like Hedley Bull and other English political scientists, Watson realized
that it is absurd to project balance-of-power or other procrustean systems
theories onto world politics. The norm, as Watson suggests, has been for one
power-whether the Assyrian, the Roman, or the British Empire-to dominate
over the rest. There is no reason to assume that the United States is not
following in that path. Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once
mused that the United States was playing the upstart Rome to Britain's tired
Greece. And there was something to that. The United States may not be
attempting to create military rule over its client states and allies, but it
does seek to create a new and peaceful system based on American democracy.
Relations between states have historically been based not on anarchy but on
organized rules of the game established and enforced by a single great power
[see T. Alexander Aleinikoff, "A Multicultural Nationalism?" TAP,
January-February 1998].
Whether or not the United States is able to create such a system depends not
on civilizational forces but on its resources, skill, luck, and readiness to
promote democracy. That is something that Huntington I seemed to understand
even if Huntington II has repudiated it. "Other nations may fundamentally
change their political systems and continue their existence as nations,"
wrote Huntington in The Third Wave. "The U.S. does not have that option.
Hence Americans have a special interest in the development of a global
environment congenial to democracy." The United States is unlikely to engage
in reckless crusades, but it might forget that defending human rights abroad
is what helps to define its national identity at home. There is no
multicultural clash, no uniquely Asian democracy, and no grand clash of
civilizations. But there are two Huntingtons. And the real clash is between
them. Will the real Samuel P. Huntington please stand up?
SP
> BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
> The final chapter of The Clash makes it clear where Huntington has been
> heading: American national identity itself is under siege.
He, he, povestili astea le-am auzit acu un an. Saracu' , i-a cazut si
lui fisa dupa 12 luni, Huntington carevasazica ne esplica cum ie
treaba! Un fel di Brucan dar e fumat.
Acu ie alte tiorii, keep up with the news.