Summer 1993: Political Scientist Predicts ‘Clash of Civilizations’

Samuel P. Huntington, a prominent Harvard political scientist (see 1981), writes that post-Cold War geopolitics will be dominated by tensions between the world’s main civilizations that inhabit the Western, Muslim, Hindu, and Asian regions. First expressed in an article in Foreign Affairs and later in a book, Huntington predicts that this “clash of civilizations,” as he calls it, will become the organizing principle of international relations. His thesis is extremely controversial. [Foreign Affairs, 6/1993; Huntington, 1998] After 9/11, some of his arguments—for example that Americanization of lifestyles does not necessarily imply an adoption of American values—will be called prescient. His New York Times obituary reads in part: “The book has an almost uncanny image of what was to come: ‘Somewhere in the Middle East, a half-dozen young men could well be dressed in jeans, drinking Coke, listening to rap, and between their bows to Mecca, putting together a bomb to blow up an American airliner.’” [New York Times, 12/28/2008]