A critique by the English School of Thought on the Clash of Civilizations

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About the Author(s)

Abstract:

The “clash of civilizations” concept, advanced by American political scientist Samuel Huntington. This concept has received the greatest attention and criticism of all the international relations ideas advanced by Western academics in the post-Cold War era. Samuel Huntington also predicts the emergence of a new political system in which conflicts between various civilizations would be based on their cultural identities rather than on economic or ideological groups. The Clash of Civilizations notion is examined critically by the English School of International Relations, who point out that it is unable to adequately describe the intricate details of international relations, which go beyond cultural conflicts. It looks at how these states interact within the framework of a global society and provides various instances to support the critique of the notion of a clash of civilizations

Introduction:

Conflicts between rulers, nations, and ideologies were essentially “Western civil wars,” conflicts inside Western civilization. This held true for both the Cold War and previous wars from the 17^th to 19^th centuries, as well as during the World Wars. Since the end of the Cold War, world politics has transitioned from a mostly Western phase to one where its focal point is the interaction of non-Western civilizations where they are no longer considered historical objects in the politics of civilizations.  Today, it makes far more sense to categorize nations based on their cultures and civilizations, as outlined by Samuel Huntington, rather than their political, economic, or level of economic development. He asserts that wars in the future would develop along the fault lines of many civilizations, each of which is founded on a distinct cultural identity. These civilizations include Confucian, Western, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and maybe African and the cultural fault lines that divide these civilizations from one another will be the sites of the greatest conflicts in the future.  However, Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” was heavily criticized. By focusing on the function of international society and the potential for simplifying and misrepresentation of global dynamics, the English School of International Relations offers an opposing viewpoint on the Clash of Civilizations theory, demonstrating its shortcomings in describing the multifaceted nature of international relations.

The Clash of Civilization:

Samuel Huntington predicts the emergence of a new political world order, as do many other scholars and he disagrees with others and thinks that the main factors in these confrontations will be culture rather than politics or the economy. The period of “politics of the civilizations” will be inaugurated by conflicts between groups of governments representing various civilizations.

Nature of Civilization:

Samuel Huntington believes that culture and civilization should be used as a prism through which he examines the world and its nations rather than politics or economics and he alters the boundaries in this way. He continues by defining culture where culture is distinguished by him as a multi-level component. He gives cases of towns, nations, and continents, all of which are different degrees of cultural groups. “A civilization is thus the most significant cultural group of people and the broadest spectrum of cultural identity that individuals possess short of that which differentiates humans from other species,” is how he defines it in the end. He emphasizes that civilizations precede nation-states and are crucial elements of the international order.

Why Civilization Will Collapse?

Seven or eight main civilizations which include the Islamic, Western, Indian, Confucian, Slavic-Orthodox, Japanese, Latin American, and perhaps African civilizations will interact through conflicts in the future. Six arguments support the aforementioned assumption.

• The first justification is based on the idea that each civilization has its definition of what it means to be human and how the world is perceived, which is distinct from any political or ideological structure.
• Second, the rise in relationships between people brought on by globalization strengthens cultural identity with context. The tragic episodes of history are reopened as a result of entrenchment.
• Thirdly, Samuel Huntington argues that religion is gaining ground while lower-level cultural identities are vanishing along with the nation-state. Religion provides a basis for identification that surpasses national boundaries and unifies civilizations.
• The idea of states is introduced in the fourth argument in the context of culture as there are several instances of a “return to the roots” phenomenon, such as in Japan and Russia.
• The fifth argument asserts that while individuals may and do alter their economic or political identity, they do not do the same for their cultural identity. It does this by using a variety of instances such as Russian communists who became Democrats but not Russians who became Estonians. Compared to ideas or politics, ethnicity and religion are significantly stronger markers of identity.
• Last but not least, the rapid expansion of regional economic growth appears to have a strong cultural foundation. While other regional economic blocs appear to be based upon cultural convergence, the European Union’s economic success relies on the shared European character.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has expanded its dominance over the world and reached its pinnacle of strength. Overall, a sense of “us versus them” is brought to the forefront by the loss of ideologically defined governments and the West’s desire to advance its ideologies and methods, and conflict results from this sentiment on both a social and national level.

Fault Lines Between Civilizations

The differences caused by ideologies in Europe were eliminated with the conclusion of the Cold War and there have been new divisions that are cultural such as Orthodox Christianity and Islam clash with Western Christianity. The history of Western and Eastern Europe is then briefly discussed by Samuel Huntington. A “centuries-old military conflictual relation between the West and Islam” is demonstrated by the Ottoman Empire’s growth, the decline of European colonialism, the establishment of the Gulf monarchies, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and French, US, and British actions in the Middle East. Huntington predicts that this conflictual interaction will continue to fall apart and the dynamics between the Islamic world and the West will deteriorate. The rise in immigration and xenophobia, as a result, reveals a facet of the impending clash of civilizations. The conflicts between Christian, Muslim, Black, and Arabs in the Africa and Middle East highlight the fault lines that resulted in the rise of violence such as the wars in the Balkans between Serbs and Albanians, Bulgarians and Turks, Ossetians and Ingush, and others all but support the claim that the fundamental cause of conflict today is the resurgence of strong religious and ethnic identities.

Civilizations United For Conflicts

Coalitions cannot escape the stronghold of culture because the cultures of the individuals who make up allies and blocs appear to have a significant impact. Examples are given below to support this claim.

In the Gulf War, or war in Iraq in 2003, an alliance of Arab and Western countries was pitted against one Arab nation. Despite this, the majority of Muslims shared the opinion that Iraq should be supported regardless of the stand taken by their nation. The people exerted influence over their governments as a result of the Pan-Islamic appeal of Saddam Hussein, which successfully reduced their involvement in the anti-Iraq alliance and even supporters made an effort to depict the conflict as a clash of civilizations. According to Safar Al-Hawali, dean of Islamic Studies at Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, “It is not the world against Iraq”, in fact, “the West is at war with Islam.”  By 1993, the anti-Iraq coalition of the West and Kuwait had largely replaced the 1990 alliance between the West and the Soviet Union, Turkey, and Arab nations.

The disputes in the Soviet Union are covered in the second illustration. Due to the religious component, the war between Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey underwent quick changes. The military victories of Armenia in 1992 and 1993 encouraged Turkey to provide a stronger hand to its Azerbaijani brothers and sisters in terms of religion, ethnicity, and language and Turkey blocked cargo ships and air flights to Armenia. Turkish Air Force planes conducted surveillance flights along the Armenian border, and Turkey and Iran said they were going to reject the division of Azerbaijan. The Soviet Union sponsored Azerbaijan in its latter years as its government was presided over by ex-communists.

Third, whereas Russia sided with the Orthodox Serbs during the Yugoslavian conflict, European nations and the US supported Catholic Croatia.  At the same time, Muslim nations criticized the West for failing to defend Bosnian Muslims as horrible acts committed against them by the Serbs. However, there hasn’t been much concern raised over Croatia’s persecution of Muslims and involvement in the breakup of Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to Huntington, minor disputes along the fault lines between civilizations, like those in Bosnia and the Caucasus, are most prone to turn into big wars and if there is another world war, it will be one between civilizations.

According to Samuel Huntington, those who reject the West will have to compete with it and these nations use alliances and internal strengthening as some of their strategies. The “Confucian-Islamic connection,” which serves as a counterbalance to Western influence, is a good example.

Critique On The Clash Of Civilization:

The “clash of civilizations” theory, advanced by American political scientist Samuel Huntington, has received the greatest attention and criticism of all the international relations ideas advanced by Western academics in the post-Cold War era. Even if this theory is oversimplified and has many flaws, according to Huntington himself. It is a simple model for international politics. It captured a greater number of events than any of its rivals. Many academics contend that neither the shape of international wars in the post-Cold War era nor the broad tendencies of the time were predicted by this idea. Furthermore, this idea has a destructive and pessimistic view of the world, and it will have a detrimental effect on efforts to establish a new global political and economic order.

English Of School Of Thought In IR:

The English School was initially intended to integrate the two main ideas that sought to explain international relations, namely realism, and liberalism but now the English School theorists seek an important response to the issue of “How is one to incorporate the cooperative aspect of international relations into the realist idea of the conflictual nature of the international system” to arrive at a better, more comprehensive understanding of international system. The three separate domains that are involved in international politics always function simultaneously, according to English School reasoning and Barry Buzan explains each sphere in detail:

International System: Realism places the form and progression of international anarchy at the core of IR theory, where Hobbes and Machiavelli’s views about power politics between states are dominant. This viewpoint is widely researched and generally understood since it is roughly analogous to structural realism and mainstream realism.

International Society: According to this approach, the institutionalization of shared interests and identities among states, emphasized by the Grotius school of thought on international law, and rationalism places the development and preservation of common norms, standards, and institutions at the core of the theory of international relations. Although this approach has some similarities to regime theory, it goes far beyond and has ramifications that go beyond mere instrumentality. The primary emphasis of English School thought has been international society, and the idea is quite well-developed and transparent in current times. 

World Society: This Kant-inspired perspective places the transcendence of the state system at the core of IR theory, whereas Revolutionism places the focus on world societal identities ‘the ultimate units of the great society of all mankind are not states … but individual human beings. Thus, world society transcends the state system and takes individuals, non-state actors, and ultimately the global population as the focus of global societal identities and arrangements. Forms of universal cosmopolitanism are primarily what revolutionism is about. Of all the English School notions, it is the least developed and has not yet been systematically or properly described.

The English School mixes realist thinking with the idea of a human element arising from the domestic sphere while including realist proposes such as a focus on the primacy of states engaging in anarchic systems. International society, the most significant component of the English School, therefore functions under the influence of both the international system, that is realism, and world society which focuses on revolutionism. There are two distinctive sections within the English School itself where the first is the pluralist perspective, which upholds a more conventional definition of IR by emphasizing a more Hobbesian or realist interpretation of the discipline. The link between world society and international society is emphasized in the second interpretation of international society, which is known as the solidarity view which made it possible for ideas like peace, individual security, and human rights to pervade the guiding principles of international society.

Comprehensive and complex knowledge of contemporary world political challenges is achievable through the English School’s pluralistic approach, which triumphs where the clash of civilizations, which solely focused on culture, failed. There would be a strong likelihood of violent conflicts breaking out along the “fault lines” between civilizations, giving the impression that different civilizational groupings are at odds with one another. Here we have a few examples,

Unexplainable Conflicts In The Post-Cold War Era By Huntington’s “Clash Of Civilizations:

The largest military conflicts in the post-Cold War era were primarily the wars fought in Iraq between the US-led Western Bloc and the Saddam Hussein regime between 1991 and 2003. Other included the US war on terror against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. Furthermore, include the Bosnia-Herzegovina War from 1992 to 1995 following the breakup of the Yugoslav Union, and the Kosovo War in 1999. All of these battles had a connection to Islam, but not to the clash of civilizations between Western and Islamic civilizations that the “clash of civilization” emphasizes. This is because the two military campaigns conducted by Western forces in Iraq were supported by their Middle Eastern Islamic friends, and the anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan was also backed by several local tribes. To break apart Yugoslavia in the Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo Wars, the Western coalition went beyond the “clash of civilizations” by promoting “national self-determination” for local Muslims. Without taking into account the reality that many members of the Syrian opposition were Islamic religious extremists throughout the civil war that raged in Syria from 2011 to 2018, the US and its Middle Eastern allies supported the Syrian opposition as they attempted to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime. In the meantime, Iran and Russia backed the al-Assad government. A struggle between Shia and Sunni factions within Islam, the Syrian Civil War, which featured significant foreign troops, was viewed from a civilized viewpoint. This demonstrates that the “clash of civilizations” cannot fully account for the circumstances and origins of international wars in the post-Cold War era.

On the other hand, English schools clarified the complex nature of conflicts in the Middle East between the Islamic states based on the real interests of the states and their leaders who fought with one another in the international community to maintain their power, such as Bashar Asad in Syria, and for maximizing their powers to control the other regional Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. All parties’ goals are pragmatic and not focused on culture, which led them to even work with different civilizations.

Rise Of China And Clash Of Civilization

According to Huntington, China’s civilization will unavoidably become a hegemonic force following its ascent and will finally come into confrontation with the US and other civilizations. However, the Clash of Civilizations dissertation ignores other important elements like finance, politics, and the dynamics of power in international relations that are discussed by the English School of IR, simplifying complex geopolitical and socio economic concerns to cultural battles. Huntington strongly rejects the presence and relevance of these shared traits since his theory of the “clash of civilizations” is built on their contrasts. According to Chinese President Xi Jinping, civilizations are diverse, equal, and tolerant, and there won’t be a “clash of civilizations” as long as tolerance is maintained through interdependence as focused on by the the English school’s international society. Harmony between civilizations can be achieved, which China is trying to expand in the world for its economic power or realistic interests that China is trying to pursue by peaceful means in international society. These interests can be achieved by overcoming barriers and conflicts through mutual learning and by thriving in each civilization’s sense of its superiority through coexistence. For instance, China’s Belt and Road programme has made economic interdependence a key component. The chief representative of Sinic civilization has decided to further its objectives by economic means that transcend Chinese civilization and reach all corners of the globe. Economic considerations continue to play a crucial role in foreign policy, as seen by the debt diplomacy used in Africa, the substantial infrastructure spending in Europe, and the persistent pursuit of trade agreements with the US. Conflictual strategies appear to lose out to economic reliance. Even the US-China trade war quickly came to an end after it became clear that both countries’ economic interests would be harmed by it because of the intricate geopolitical and economic relationships that exist. According to the English School of International Relations, conflict between states is not the answer, and peace is maintained because of shared interests.

Role Of International Society And World Society:

The English school also discussed the solidarity account, emphasizing the connection between global and international societies that uphold peace, individual security, and human rights as the normative cornerstones of the former. This clarified how the Arab Spring’s explosion demonstrated and how democratic principles are shared by all people. Islamic nations expressed a strong desire for internal transformation rather than waging war on the West and more people in the Islamic world wanted women’s rights, democracy, freedom, reform, and greater economic prospects than did those who supported the Islamic State and its anti-Western propaganda. The Islamic world is still searching for internal equilibriums between rival states, authoritarian governments, and interreligious conflict which demonstrates that, regardless of civilization, “Modernization” has acted as a universal value.

The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the importance and applicability of economics to politics as well as the degree of interconnectedness between countries, which Huntington neglects to take into account. States from other cultures were governed and coordinated by non-state actors like the IMF and the EU.

However, if civilization is what matters to Huntington, there shouldn’t be much chance of conflict between Russians and Ukrainians. Sadly, we were alive to see both the bloody takeover of Crimea by Russia and the ongoing fighting in the region. Contrary to Huntington’s expectations, intra-civilizational warfare once again characterized the new millennium.

Analysis

Huntington’s worldview, which sees the current world from a Western, unique, hostile, group-thought viewpoint, is the root of his problems with the conception of a clash of civilizations. It hinders him from recognizing the post-Cold War era’s development of openness, inclusivity, and win-win outcomes or the formation of non-aligned relationships. Huntington may be able to explain some conflicts involving cultural and identity-based interests, but he has failed to do so for the multifaceted international system that involves national-state social, economic, political, and ideological interests which is explained by the English School of International Relations. Nation-states are firmly established in a world that is being shaped by universal principles. Because of this, Huntington had a few tactical successes but ultimately suffered a strategic loss. The English School, on the other hand, could be viewed as a logical and helpful approach for gaining a comprehensive grasp of contemporary international political concerns.