inst the West is based on decades of economic exploitation of that region's oil reserves by the West.
In addition, if culture were the primary factor in those nations of the Middle East, how do we explain the significant divisions among those nations based on economics and geographical claims. Those claims, after all, were the basis of the invasion by Iran of Kuwait---two nations which should be united along cultural lines if Huntington's assessment were correct, which it obviously is not.
Huntington argues that nation-states will continue to be "the most powerful actors in world affairs" (22), but nation-states, contrary to Huntington's scenario, act in their own self-interest rather than according to any sense of cultural affinity with their neighbors. That self-interest is primarily economic rather than cultural. The leaders of Iraq invaded the culturally similar nation of Kuwait because they recognized that their own people were increasingly pressured by economic needs, and their hope was that the invasion of Kuwait would ease those needs. A nation-
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