Chapter 18: Huntington Overlooked That Communism Remained the Primary Enemy, 1992–1996 (Part I)

After the collapse of the Soviet communist empire, many people came to believe that the conflict facing the United States was one between Western civilization on the one hand and Islamic civilization and Chinese civilization on the other. They shifted the focus of struggle toward the Middle East and China, placing the Middle East and China on the same level. This view is deeply confused. The originator of this line of thinking was Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008), a professor at Harvard University in the United States and the doctoral advisor of Francis Fukuyama.

In the summer of 1993, Samuel P. Huntington published an article titled “The Clash of Civilizations?” in Foreign Affairs, proposing the thesis of a “clash of civilizations.” In 1996, he expanded the article into a book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington argued that in the post–Cold War era, the decisive factors shaping the global order would be seven or eight major civilizations: Sinic civilization, Japanese civilization, Indian civilization, Islamic civilization, Western civilization, Orthodox civilization, Latin American civilization, and possibly African civilization. In the post–Cold War world, he claimed, the fundamental sources of conflict would no longer be ideological, but cultural. What would dominate global politics would be the “clash of civilizations.”

Huntington’s theory exerted a profound influence on America’s strategic orientation. Unfortunately, the “clash of civilizations” is an ambiguous political theory. Thinkers should provide clear insights to identify the core problem (or principal contradiction) facing the contemporary world. Regrettably, Huntington misidentified the core problem. He hoped that a civilizational research paradigm would help explain the evolution of global politics at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Instead, he pointed in the wrong direction. Numerous scholars harshly criticized Huntington’s thesis from empirical, historical, logical, and ideological perspectives. The American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, and social critic Noam Chomsky pointed out that after the Cold War, the “Soviet threat” could no longer serve as a usable pretext; the “clash of civilizations” narrative was merely a new form of official propaganda used by the U.S. government to legitimize its actions and violence around the world.

After the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the core of communism shifted from the Soviet Union to China. The harm posed by the last bastion of communism to human civilization continued to exist. Although the Chinese Communist Party downplayed the ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism and introduced capitalist modes of production and management in the economic sphere, it continued to hold high the banner of Leninism and Stalinism and to practice communist rule under the guise of the “Four Cardinal Principles.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the confrontation between the remnants of communism and the United States not only persisted, but after 2013, under the era of Xi Jinping, even showed signs of intensifying.

There is, however, one point on which Huntington did not misjudge. He predicted that conflict between China and the United States was inevitable. For the first time in human history, global politics had become multipolar and multicultural. In such a diverse world, no bilateral relationship would be as crucial as that between China and the United States. Future world peace would depend to a large extent on the ability of Chinese and American leaders to coordinate their respective national interests, yet tension and confrontation would inevitably exist. The United States and China share almost no common goals on major policy issues; their differences are comprehensive. Regardless of the economic ties between Chinese and American societies, fundamental cultural differences would prevent them from coexisting harmoniously. China’s history, culture, traditions, scale, economic vitality, and self-image all drive it to seek a hegemonic position in East Asia. This goal is a natural result of China’s rapid economic development. All other great powers—Britain, France, Germany, Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union—underwent outward expansion, self-assertion, and imperialist ambition during periods of rapid industrialization and economic growth, or in the years immediately following. There is no reason to believe that China, after gaining economic and military strength, would behave differently. Huntington’s prediction was not wrong; what was wrong was that his prediction was not grounded in the communist and totalitarian nature of the Chinese Communist Party.

Over thousands of years of human history, multiple civilizations have formed in different regions. Exchanges among civilizations, like commercial interactions, have been mutually beneficial. Civilizations themselves do not inherently conflict with one another. Although their core values and forms of expression differ, they are fundamentally peaceful and benevolent in nature, with no essential contradiction. Take, for example, what Huntington identified as the core features of Western civilization: the classical legacy; Greek philosophy (rationalism); Roman law; the Latin tradition; Christianity; Catholicism and Protestantism (the Reformation); European languages (diversity); the separation of spiritual and secular authority; the rule of law; constitutionalism; human rights; social pluralism (diverse autonomous groups and an autonomous aristocracy); representative institutions (estates, parliaments, movements toward self-government); and individualism (individual rights, traditions of freedom, and equal rights).

The core of Islamic civilization includes peace, security, moderation, harmony and justice, doing good deeds, a worldview that values both this life and the afterlife (this world as the field of sowing, the next as the field of harvest), compatibility between religion and secular life, equality (all are equal before God), freedom (each community free to conduct its affairs), and tolerance (acting with moderation and respecting differences). Where, then, is the conflict between these Islamic civilizational values and Western civilization?