The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington | Goodreads

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The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

by
Samuel P. Huntington
3.74 · Rating details · 8,618 ratings · 644 reviews
"Sam Huntington, one of the West's most eminent political scientists, presents a challenging framework for understanding the realities of global politics in the next century. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the most important books to have emerged since the end of the Cold War." --HENRY A. KISSINGER

Based on the author's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism. In this incisive work, the renowned political scientist explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.

"An intellectual tour de force: bold, imaginative, and provocative. A seminal work that will revolutionize our understanding of international affairs." --ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

"The book is studded with insights, flashes of rare brilliance, great learning, and in particular, an ability to see the familiar in a new and provocative way." --MICHAEL ELLIOTT, THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

"A benchmark for informed speculation on those always fascinating questions: Just where are we in history? What hidden hand is controlling our destiny?...A searching reflection on our global state." --RICHARD BERNSTEIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES

"This is what is so stunning about The Clash of Civilizations: It is not just about the future, but may actually help to shape it." --WANG GUNGWU, THE NATIONAL INTEREST (less)

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Paperback, First Touchstone Edition, 368 pages
Published 1998 by Simon & Schuster (first published 1996)
Original Title
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
ISBN
0684844419 (ISBN13: 9780684844411)
Edition Language
English

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I know that some people might be offended by this question, but please don't misunderstand me; Do you think that the Jewish origin of the author Samuel Huntington has any effect on his political and historical views in this book?

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Clifford Michaels That's a fair question. Samuel Huntington talks a lot about differences in cultures as well as civilizations. - and backs it up with empirical data. I…more
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An appalling fraudulent propaganda defense of American imperialism. The entire work is a screed. The author long ago revealed himself as a replent defender of the U.S.A. genocide in Viet Nam. Do you agree?

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Razique Mahroua Hi Ted, I would disagree. I do not know the author's political affiliations or positions towards US's foreign policies. He openly discusses US decline…more
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Dec 22, 2007Huyen rated it did not like it
Shelves: history-politics-religion
This is a masterpiece of scare mongering, not recommended for the faint of heart. Sage Huntington can make you groan inside: omg, tomorrow there will be a massive conspiracy between the democracy-hating Sinic and Islamic civilizations (whatever that means) to destroy our democracy, civilized society and freedom and push us back to the Dark Ages. Don’t you see how they’ve already started infiltrating the US government with an African Muslim communist called Obama? And hapless America will heroically fight that struggle against evil and oppression until the end of time and come out gloriously victorious. But before that, we need to fight terror, terror, terror and build more aircrafts, missiles, military bases and bomb the shit out of them if necessary. I’m sorry I can’t pass this test of valor and courage, before this apocalypse happens, I’d rather drive to Mars. A rather depressing thought.

So much for the ranting. Now the serious stuff.

Samuel Huntington laid out his analysis of conflicts in the Post Cold War world in his article in 1993:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future

He divides the world into 8 major “civilizations”: sinic, western, orthodox Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Japanese, Latin American, African, and basically says that in the future, when the age of ideology is over, the cultural and civilizational rifts will be the main cause of conflicts. The only way the West can survive is to get stronger both militarily and economically and ally with civilizations sympathetic to itself to fight against the rise of Islamic and Confucian countries (i.e China).

This line of argument has some major flaws. First, it defines civilization as an all-encompassing and monolithic concept and ignores all the interaction and diversity within one culture. How would you define Islamic civilization? Islam of Saudi Arabia? Indonesia? Iran? Dubai? Similarly for all the rest.

But more importantly, often I find this kind of confrontational mind-set rather dangerous. It takes conflicts out of context and strips them of their much wider and more complex socio-political backdrop and reduces them to over simplistic terms of “us vs. them”, “cultural differences” or “civilizational faultlines”. But I never believe in such things, I never believe that people have enough time sitting on their ass and hating another group just because their culture and religion are different. If people fight, that must be for a reason, often one group are conquered or oppressed and resist, otherwise, economic reasons such as land, exploitation or resources. Invoking jealousy or ethnic hatred to explain conflict is a chauvinistic and foolish way of looking at it. The Vietnamese did not hate the Americans because the Americans drove cars and watched tv while the Vietnamese slogged behind buffalos. The Palestinians don’t hate the Israelis because the Israelis have swimming pools and have nuclear warheads. The Afghans hated the Russians not because the Russians rode tanks and had an empire. It’s never about jealousy, all about conquest, oppression, injustice and subjugation. Aren't these legitimate things to hate?

Conflicts are always about the conqueror and the dominated, about power and oppression, never so much about ideology or ethnic hatred. And if there’s an element of ethnic hatred, it often has a lot to do with the way the power structure was distorted to favour a group to oppress another during the colonial period. Need I say any more about Algeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia? But then again, don’t take my word because I might be oversimplifying things as well.

I find Huntington’s idea dangerous also because it represents a primordialistic world view, in which people are inherently and inevitably different, therefore, conflicts are unavoidable. Once you talk about something grand and presumably rigid and static in this case like civilization and culture as an innate part of human nature and as causes of war, you’re heading for a dead end. If people are inherently irrational, antagonistic, confrontational, aggressive, then what’s the point in preventing war and addressing political issues underlying them? That’s it, we’re doomed.

So let’s put all this in context because it’s the last thing this book would ever do. After the end of the Cold War, America came out as the sole superpower. So people started asking: ok, now the Russians are gone, why don’t we reduce our military budget and invest more in education, healthcare, aid to the third world, technology, infrastructure? Why do we need this half a trillion dollar military budget when we have massive social problems at home in this most advanced industrialized country? So America needed to invent something to replace the Russians to justify all that. Shush, it can’t be about the humongous profits for the military industrial complex, it can’t be about defending our corporate interests overseas. So voila, that must be the clash of civilization. America is perpetually at war with other rival civilizations, especially Islam. The paradigm of the West vs. the Rest never changed. Gone with the Russians, in with the Muslims. That’s why we need $500b in military spending (6 times the second largest, China, and the Pentagon squeaks) and 700 military bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, Djibouti, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the list goes on.

After 9/11, this book rocketed in influence because now obviously, the Islamic world is waging war against America. The real civilization clash IS happening. How scary indeed. Huntington even declared:
"It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power” and hate people “who are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world."

But the attack led by a group with a couple of thousand members (or say, even a million, still 0.1% of total Muslim population) against a country with a population of 1/4 of the “West” is defined as a civilizational war. Very representative huh? Some of them are Saudi, er but let’s forget that for a moment because that’s our closest friend in the region, although rather nasty bastards…

So yes, Huntington would easily dust off his hands and say this has nothing to do with US foreign policies in the Middle East at all. They hate us because we love freedom, democracy and we’re more civilized than them. Because this pre-renaissance backward fanatical people hate progress and are jealous of us living in our first world luxury. This rhetoric has been parroted again and again and again by Emperor Bush and his friends to justify his increasingly militant approach in the ME. Oh, there’s no limit to chauvinism and ignorance in this world.

Truly, I’d be rather upset if Americans buy this lie. The idea of CoC obscures the real grievances and frustration of people in the Middle East at many decades of American dominance in the region. Let’s remind ourselves that America is great friends with the despots of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel, the PLO (rather a rocky friendship), the mujahedeen (who gives a shit about Islamic fundamentalism if all we cared about was to kick ass the Russians out of Afghanistan), Jordan and a long time ago, Iran and Iraq. And many other friends that torture its citizens under US auspices (politics jargon: extraordinary rendition). Could anyone still say it has nothing to do with politics at all?

Finally, is it just me or anyone else that finds the idea of a respected professor writing such provocative arguments seemingly not to mitigate the problem but to aggravate it, to defend “our” superiority at all cost, rather disturbing? Is this honest and balanced historical analysis or is there a hidden agenda behind? I’m not good at conspiracy theory, but mind you, this guy’s book in the 1960s advocating stable dictatorships to achieve economic development over troublesome democracies also had great influence on US foreign policy in Africa and Asia. No wonder why America loved some dictators and overthrew a couple of trouble makers. Expert on democracy and civilization indeed.

(if you’re interested listen to this brilliantly eloquent critique by Edward Said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boBzrq... )
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Jan 03, 2009William rated it really liked it
"Clash of Civilizations" is an easy book to misread. Many have taken Huntington to task because he pessimistically forecasted a world of discord following the Cold War. The headlines of the past decade beg to differ.

The world according to Samuel Huntington was going to reset to its multi-polar default setting, each pole being the center of a culture/religion/ethnicity that had always existed in world history. The border regions between these centers were going to be fraught with friction and co ...more
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Oct 24, 2016Riku Sayuj rated it liked it
Shelves: history, history-civilizations, history-europe, history-modern, history-theory,geo-politix, direct-history, often-cited, middle-east
The Preservation of The West
or
Making America Great Again

Huntington polarized his readers, being a book the liberals would rather not believe as it implies religious and cultural differences will continue to divide humanity, and also one that the right would rather ignore, preferring Fukuyama's thesis of Capitalism as the supreme achievement of mankind, over this more accommodating world-view.

Now we are far enough from the end of the Cold War to be able to judge this book more fairly. In the immediate aftermath of the cold war, strategists were looking for a "theory" that will help us understand the world in conceptual terms - the conceptual simplicity of the bipolar cold war world enticed them into believing that a new world order will be formed, which can again be explained under a new framework.

Huntington probably came up with one of the most realistic models - unlike the ideologically divided world before the cold war, the post-Cold War world's inhabitants will increasingly define themselves not on ideological grounds, but on cultural (civilizational, even religious) lines and hence the new world order will be organized around the same. As this happens and various civilizations vie for 'space', inter-civilizational fault-lines will become the new sources of major conflict, especially between "West & the Rest" (primarily economically?) and between "Islam & its Neighbors" (militarily?). These two conflicts along with China's sphinx like role will define the future according to Huntington.

So far so good.

However, as Huntington himself says, the best test of any theory is its predictive capacity. And that is the first place where this cultural or civilizational model of world order falls short. According to Huntington, intra-civilizational conflicts are to die down fast in the post cold war world as core states of each civilization rallies its allies around its own sphere of influence - this would include China taking up its hegemonic role in Asia, the Koreas uniting, the Middle-East somehow redrawing artificial boundaries and creating a core state that can guide them (according to Huntington civilizational stability is not possible with a "core state" rallying the civilization), the South Americas either uniting to form a distinct civilization or just bandwagoning with the west, etc. But the world we see today shows us that most of the real hot zones are along intra-civilizational fault-lines - along fault-lines that are not defined so much by broad civilizational identities, but rather by narrower ethnic, historical and sometimes quite random identities. So the civilizational model might still work, but instead of the small set proposed by Huntington, we might need a much larger set of civilizations to be invoked, which would then render the theory pretty useless.

The second issue is with the real core message of the book - How to protect the western civilization. Huntington is in truth issuing a clarion call to the whole of western civilization' to band together against this new post cold war world which is not exclusively west-facing anymore.

Huntington faces up boldly against Fukuyama's partisan view that Capitalism is the final stage of history (extending Hegel), but falls into the same trap by implying throughout the book that the western culture is the best and is in dire need of preserving, dedicating much of the later part of the work to strategies aimed at this end.

As per this thesis, as the Asian and Islamic civilizations rise into economic prominence, the new world order will also tilt towards them (not to mention the additional demographic and immigrational pressures fueling this). The only way to arrest this tilt and to avoid the tragedy of losing all the culture the west has built up and perfected is for the western countries to set aside their differences and band together, especially the United States.

The book is an exhortation to the US of A to skirt any aspirations to being multi-cultural itself (and thus diluting the holy western culture), but stay pure and take up the mantle of being the core state for the western civilization (and this involves cozying up to Russia too, btw, just fyi) and thus make sure that the new multi-cultural world is still as western in culture as possible. (less)
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Dec 30, 2012Mikey B. rated it it was amazing
Shelves: religion, world-politics
This is still a very valid book today. The author’s premise is that with the collapse of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Cold War is over and therefore we need a new paradigm in which to view our world. We are back to the basics of culture and religion.

Mr. Huntington constructs a frightful world; whereas, before, there could be rationality between liberal democracy and the communist block, the room for agreement between absolutist religions in the Islamic and Western Christian worlds are fraught with problems.

Russia is back to Orthodoxy and its peripheral borders are dangerous. As Mr. Huntington would say Russia has “Fault Lines” – with the Christian Catholic world in Northeast Europe, with Islam in the south and in Southeast Europe with both Islam and Christianity. The author talks at length of the emerging China and how its’ increasing power and geographical reach could lead to conflict with the West. China will become less subservient and the countries bordering it, like Japan, will need to redo their alliances.

The author is also adept at changing our perspective. The U.S. saw the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan as a victory for the West against communism, but the Islamic world viewed it as a successful religious jihad against a superpower. The West – and the U.S. in particular, seems unable to relinquish its Cold War paradigm. The U.S. (and I would include Canada) feels hubristically that the rest of the World wants to be like the West. There is much danger in this universalistic mentality.

The world has now become more complex with several competing powers, instead of two superpowers. With religion back in the equation, this adds an unstable emotional level when a conflict begins, or in most cases, when the conflict reasserts itself after a dormant period.

I take issue with Mr. Huntington on the universality of Human Rights. There are basic Human Rights, like gender equality and the evil of torture, which many view as “sacrosanct universal principals”. Many countries today do not adhere to these values, much to the detriment and dignity of their people. It is generally the rulers of these countries who disparage Human Rights as being a “Western Concept”. As a Chinese dissident said (to paraphrase): “If you are in a jail in China you will soon be asking for your rights, without worrying about whether they were “American” or “Chinese”.

This is an essential book for understanding the world and makes for illuminating reading. Many of us thought that with the end of the Cold War the world had become a safer and more humane planet – and we were all off to a better and greater way of living. As Mr. Huntington suggests the Cold War was just an ideological anomaly; we are back to fundamentals.

A favourite quote about the Soviet-Afghan war: “They [Islam] beat one of the world’s two superpowers and now their working on the second.”
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Apr 20, 2015Adrian rated it it was amazing
It is over 10 years since I read Samuel Huntington's full length expansion of his classic Foreign Affairs article. This was read during my final year at university, and back then, it was fashionable amongst many to refute, or outrightly mock Professor Huntington's disturbing piece of work. The work was derided amongst my fellow students, it was frequently derieded amongst academia, it is something of a fashion statement to deride Huntington's work. Why?
Could it be, perhaps, because of a deep, inbuilt feeling that we just know that he was right?
In the 10+ years since I read this monumental study, I have encountered very little in current events to refute his argument. Time has vindicated Huntington, and will continue to vindicate him.
Huntington identifies 9 civilizations, Western, Orthodox, Islamic, Latin American, African, Sinic, Hindu, Buddhist and Japanese.
The 2 civilizations that Huntington considers to be the most potentially antagonistic toward the West are Islamic and Sinic, however, as this book was completed in 2006, various conflicts had not yet played out between the West and the Orthodox World, and this is deserving of a special place as a potential faultline civilization.
Huntington considers the value systems of Sinic and Islamic culture as essentially incompatible with the West, and attempts to assimilate or reconcile Western values with these cultures is ultimately futile. Therefore, Huntington advocates a careful, cautious approach to foreign policy, wherein Western powers should try to mediate civilizational disputes, but not directly involve themselves with them.
Why do I think Huntington has been vindicated? The list is not exhaustive.
Firstly, attempts through that ill conceived 2003-? War in Iraq to democracize Iraq has proved a colossal failure. The Arab Spring led to an outright dead end for all countries involved except Tunisia, and Turkish membership of the EU remains a pipe dream.
However, while Huntington's work was written before the full democratization of South Korea and Taiwan, we have seen little progress in China toward any kind of accountable or open system, and China has recently given Hong Kong a half-baked, managed democracy.
If anything, the civilizational faultline that has become more pronounced is the Orthodox World. Russia and US relations are at the worst they have ever been since the end of the Cold War, and the continuing support of Putin's strongman leadership amongst the Russian population shows a general preference in Russia at least for strongman leadership, rather than a more pluralistic approach.
The situation in Ukraine is perhaps the Western-Orthodox divide being played out within a single, fragmented state, and is in many ways the result of naive Western attempts to push Western Institutions (NATO and the EU) into the Orthodox World.
A further example was the almost universal Western support (exception Spain) for the unilateral independence of Kosovo, and then the complete reverse of this foreign policy toward the Russian unification with Crimea.
This is not to distract oneself with current issues. Huntington's original work was written in response to the 1991 Gulf War, and the expanded book was based on events in the 90s, such as the Yugoslav wars, Chechnya, and the very nature of Sino-Western relations.
However, very little has transpired to prove Huntington wrong, and few would argue that his main policy proscription, that the West only mediate, not directly involve themselves with disputes involving other civilizations.
I think the dust will never settle on the debate over Huntington's thesis, but Huntington has convinced this reader at least. (less)
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Jan 01, 2016Farhan Khalid rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: political, war
Hypothesis

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future

Major Civilizations

Western (Christian) Civilization

Comprising the United States and Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia and Oceania

Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union are included, or are instead their own separate civilizations, will be an important future consideration for those regions

The Orthodox World

The former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania

The Buddhist Areas

Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are identified as separate from other civilizations (but not constitute a major civilization in the sense of international affairs)

The Sinic Civilization

China, the Koreas, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. This group also includes the Chinese diaspora, especially in relation to Southeast Asia

Hindu Civilization

Located chiefly in India, Bhutan and Nepal, and culturally adhered to by the global Indian diaspora

Japan

Considered as a society and civilization unique to itself

The Muslim World

The Greater Middle East (excluding Israel), Africa, Albania, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Maldives. Considered as a possible 8th civilization

Lone Countries

Ethiopia and Haiti are labeled as "Lone" countries

Israel

Considered a unique state with its own civilization (one similar to West)

The Caribbean World

Former British colonies in the Caribbean, constitutes a distinct entity

Cleft Countries

Because they contain very large groups of people identifying with separate civilizations. Examples include India ("cleft" between its Hindu majority and large Muslim minority), China, Ukraine, Sudan

Swing Civilizations

Russia and India are 'swing civilizations' and may favor either side

Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia

Sino-Islamic Connection

"Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position

Civilizational conflicts are "particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims", identifying the "bloody borders" between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations

All-or-nothing Religions

Universal, "all-or-nothing" religions, in the sense that it is believed by both sides that only their faith is the correct one

Religions that perceive irreligious people who violate the base principles of those religions to be furthering their own pointless aims, which leads to violent interactions

Demographic Explosion

More recent factors contributing to a Western-Islamic clash are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism

Why Civilizations will Clash

Differences among civilizations are too basic in that civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and, most important, religion

These fundamental differences are the product of centuries, so they will not soon disappear

The world is becoming a smaller place

Differences and Commonalities

As a result, the interactions across the world are increasing, and they intensify civilization consciousness and awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations

Identity Crisis

Religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations

Return-to-the-roots Phenomenon

A return-to-the-roots phenomenon is occurring among non-Western civilizations

Cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones

The West versus the Rest

World politics tends to be the conflict between Western and non-Western civilizations

Isolation

Non-Western countries can attempt to achieve isolation in order to preserve their own values and protect themselves from Western invasion. However, the costs of this action are high and only a few states can pursue it

Non-Western countries can make an effort to balance Western power through modernization

Cooperation

They can develop economic, military power and cooperate with other non-Western countries against the West while still preserving their own values and institutions

Fault line conflicts

Between adjacent states belonging to different civilizations or within states that are home to populations from different civilizations

Core state conflicts

Between the major states of different civilizations

Modernization vs. Westernization

Japan, China and the East Asian Tigers have modernized in many respects while maintaining traditional or authoritarian societies which distinguish them from the West. Some of these countries have clashed with the West and some have not

The West is distinguished from Orthodox Christian countries by the experience of the Renaissance, Reformation, the Enlightenment, overseas colonialism rather than contiguous expansion and colonialism, and a recent re-infusion of Classical culture through ancient Greece rather than through the continuous trajectory of the Byzantine Empire

Torn countries

Countries that are seeking to affiliate with another civilization as "torn countries." Turkey, whose political leadership has systematically tried to Westernize the country since the 1920s, is his chief example

Turkey's history, culture, and traditions are derived from Islamic civilization, but Turkey's elite, beginning with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who took power as first President of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, imposed western institutions and dress, embraced the Latin alphabet, joined NATO, and is seeking to join the European Union

Mexico, Australia and Russia are also considered to be torn

Requirement

Its political and economic elite must support the move. Second, the public must be willing to accept the redefinition. Third, the elites of the civilization that the torn country is trying to join must accept the country

Anyhow, no torn country has successfully redefined its civilizational identity

Contrast Theories

(1)

The world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense

Human rights, liberal democracy, and capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world

The End of History by Francis Fukuyama

(2)

Division of "West" and "Islam" is not as per reality

Clash of civilizations thesis is an example of "the purest invidious racism, a sort of parody of Hitlerian science directed today against Arabs and Muslims

The Clash of Ignorance by Edward Said

(3)

Diversity is a feature of most cultures in the world. Western civilization is no exception

The practice of democracy that has won out in the modern West is largely a result of a consensus that has emerged since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution

To attribute it to the West and then to contrast it with non-Western traditions would be a great mistake

Amartya Sen
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Sep 15, 2011Jan Hidders rated it liked it
There is no doubt that this is a must-read if you are interested in global politics. That does not mean that I think the book is right. Quite the contrary, I think the book is dangerously oversimplifying the current situation in world politics and trying to shoe-horn world events into a seductively simple-looking world view that, although advertised as a new paradigm, looks suspiciously like the cold-war paradigm on steroids. Since the human mind often prefers such simple explanations over more complicated ones, and because they also tend to be rather convenient for power-hungry leaders and institutions, these ideas should be very critically examined.

As a whole the book seems well argued and an honest attempt at analysis. However, as soon as you start talking to people that are from and/or know more about particular regions and worlds such as the Islamic world, South America or Eastern Europe, I consistently find that they confirm that Huntington severely oversimplifies or even misrepresents the situation in that particular part of the world. I don't think that is a coincidence. So I would advice everybody who plans to pick up this book, to also make sure that you read afterwards some work that critically examines this book. For an idea of what the critique consists of, you might take a quick look on YouTube for a lecture by the late Edward Said under the title "The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations". (less)