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Locking up the dogs of war: huge decline in war-related deaths

By Pat Byrne - posted Monday, 18 August 2014


In 1993, he provoked intense debate among international relations specialists with his article, "The clash of civilizations?", in the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs. In it he warned of the eruption of major global conflicts. He expanded his thesis into a 1996 book with the title, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Huntington believed that future conflicts would not be the product of particular historical events, but would occur because of fundamental differences between civilisations - civilisations that are differentiated from each other by virtue of history, language, culture, tradition and, most important of all, religion.

Huntington treated the world's "civilisations" as so internally monolithic, homogenous, static and divergent from each other that they could not peacefully interact and adapt as globalisation caused today's great intermingling of populations and cultures. The inability of cultures and religions to adapt would heighten the risk of conflicts and wars.

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Huntington's "clash of civilisations" thesis has been roundly criticised.

Indian-born Nobel prize-winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen disputes Huntington's idea that cultures are so monolithic that they could not adapt to the modern world, leading almost inexorably to conflicts between states.

Sen writes: "The practice of democracy that has won out in the modern West is largely a result of a consensus that has emerged since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last century or so.

"To read in this a historical commitment of the West - over the millennia - to democracy, and then to contrast it with non-Western traditions (treating each as monolithic) would be a great mistake" (Journal of Democracy, July 1999).

Extending that argument, Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism (2004), has argued that distinct cultural boundaries no longer exist in a world where the global connections and migrations are producing a huge intermixing of peoples, cultures and ideas. For example, despite China still being a totalitarian state, huge numbers of Chinese study abroad in places like the U.S, and Chinese tourists head abroad to many of the world's tourist destinations.

There is now a growing interdependence between nations because of the intertwining of economies, education, media and cultures and the mixing of populations.

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Critics regard Huntington's "clash of civilisations" theory as a Cold War-inspired relic.

So how can an assessment be made of the failed "colour revolutions" that occurred in many societies of the former Soviet Union and of the 2010/11 "Arab Spring" revolutions in the Middle East and Africa?

The Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute notes that, while few mature democracies experience serious internal violence, the transition from authoritarian ancien régimes to semi-democratic systems increases the risk of conflict until a stable democracy is achieved. Indeed, that has been the experience of many Western democracies.

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About the Author

Patrick J Byrne is national vice president of the National Civic Council. He writes in the NCC’s magazine News Weekly on foreign affairs, economic, rural and social issues.

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