Samuel Huntington's Theory of Geopolitical Stability
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When Samuel Huntington first hypothesized in 1993 that the coming challenges to geopolitical stability and security would be more cultural than ideological or economic, he received criticism from ideologues of both the left and the right. From the right, Fukuyama (58 et passim) had already explained that the West's victory in the Cold War and in the Gulf War represented the triumph of liberal democracy and the prospect of a stable civilization that yet provides members of that civilization with creative outlets. From the left, it was argued that civilizations need not clash if the West were more tolerant and respectful of non-Western cultures (Picco 28). One critic said that Western civilization might have something to fear from Islamic fundamentalism, were Islam not itself "fracture[d] into many pieces that cannot be reassembled" (Joffe 24). Another critic declared that Huntington was just talking about traditional power politics and giving it another name and that, besides, the forces of economic globalization, abetted by information technology, were fostering a homogenization, or convergence, of cultures, in both industrial and preindustrial cultures.Looking at the portrait of world socioeconomic structures today, we notice substantial differences; but considering them in the context of the enormous range of possible structures that could have emerged, the homogeneity of modern industrial societies appears nothing less than astounding. And this process is accelerating un
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ience. Identity politics, indeed, was never really absent from the geopolitical scene but only marginalized by the Cold War behemoth. Huntington and Fukuyama can be said to share a view of the West as culturally and technologically distinctive, even exceptional. But far from accepting the idea that liberal democracy born in the Enlightenment and finding its greatest flower of expression in America has no meaningful political competition, Huntington argues that the bright lines of the Cold War have been blurred and complicated by competing concepts of civilization: "A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways" (Huntington 25).
World events since 9-11-2002 appear to have lent weight to Huntington's thesis. Undoubtedly they have sharpened the boundaries of international conflict in a manner not unlike the boundaries drawn between nation-states on a political map. Relentless media coverage of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iran has, in a sense, put regions of the world unfamiliar to Westerners (especially American ones) on the map. But the nation-state boundaries do seem less relevant to the discourse and/or conduct of the confl
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1749
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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