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
The West hasn't reached its universal state as yet, although its close to it, but it certainly has evolved out of its warring state phase, which it was in for a couple of centuries.
And so in terms of territorial control, in terms of economic preeminence, the western share of the gross world product is declining as Asian societies in particular develop economically.
Both sides are divided and Western countries collaborate with Muslim countries and vice versa.
I think we can expect leaders of Muslim societies to cooperate with each other on many issues just as Western societies cooperate with each other.
In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.
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.
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?
Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.
Our relationship with Mexico in this regard is unique for us, and in many respects unique in the world.
The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.
Immigrants are people who leave one country, one society, and move to another society. But there has to be a recipient society to which the immigrants move.
They weren't immigrating to some existing society; indeed, they often did whatever they could do to destroy whatever existed here in the way of Indian society.
Finally, in my critique of the immigration image of America, it is also important to know that we're not only a nation of immigrants, but we are in some part a nation of emigrants, which often gets neglected.
We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.