Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel P. Huntington
Samuel Phillips Huntingtonwas an American political scientist, adviser and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor. During the Carter administration, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. He is most well known by his 1993 theory, "The Clash of Civilizations", of a post-Cold War new world order. He argued that future...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
Date of Birth18 April 1927
CountryUnited States of America
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.
Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.
Certainly there are various trans-Islamic political movements, which try to appeal to Muslims in all societies
Collective will supplants individual whim
I think clearly the United States, as well as other western nations, should stand by their commitments to human rights and democracy and should try to influence other countries to move in that direction.
Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.
Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community.
And the big question for the West, of course, and to the Europeans is, what other countries, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, should be incorporated into western institutions?
It was one thing to contain the Soviet Union in Europe because Britain, France, and Germany were all willing to join in. But will Japan and other Asian countries be willing to join in the containment of China?
Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people.
Civilizations evolve over time, and most scholars of civilization, including people like Carol Quigley, argue that they go through periods of warring states, and eventually evolve into a universal state.
There will be associations and partnerships between some Muslim countries and some Christian countries. Those already exist. And they may shift as different regimes come and go and interests change.
We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution.