March 14th, 2017 - Fort Russ News -
- Op-ed by Samer Hussein -
While at university, I once came across a book titled “The Clash of Civilizations”, written by the late US academic Samuel P. Huntington. In his book, which evolved from a rather long lecture, first given in 1992 and a Foreign Affairs article that followed a year later, Huntington is trying to tell the reader that several different civilizations exist in the modern world and that the clashes between them are inevitable as the world in this day and age is becoming a smaller, while demands of these civilizations, many of which are incompatible with each other, are growing bigger.
Huntington sees the only suitable alternative for the post-Cold War era world in the mass acceptance of liberalism and capitalism. It is therefore not strange why his controversial theories have been so widely promoted in academic circles in vast majority of countries and particularly those known for being “NATO’s lapdogs”.
The thesis of Huntington is a perfect tool to pursue the geostrategic and economical interest of NATO and neocon powers and indeed acted as such in the wake of 9/11 events and the US invasion of Iraq as it legitimized their actions and also helped to deliberately distortd the social and geopolitical reality through series of controversial claims that have since been debunked in academic circles worldwide.
According to Huntington, 10 different civilizations exist in the world today, yet the borders drawn by Huntington are strictly based on religion, meaning the latter is a key factor that differs and defines one civilization from another. Such theories are of course fresh dozes of water on the mills of sectarianists worldwide as they legitimize their geopolitical and ideological concepts. They are also a blessing to those geopolitical players whose activity is aimed at destroying certain parts of the geopolitical spectrum, not yet under the influence of the western elites.
Indeed, Huntington’s thesis came as a blessing for those responsible for dividing the former state of Yugoslavia. If we are to look at Huntington’s concept, we can see that Yugoslavia in fact belonged to 3 (rather different) civilizations (a Western one, an Orthodox one and a Muslim one). Given the differences between the civilizations, defined by Huntington, dividing Yugoslavia would be inevitable. It is probably not a coincidence that Huntington’s thesis first saw the light of day back in 1991, around the time of the outbreak of the Balkan wars. The latter , as opposed to the mainstream narrative, did not come from within Yugoslavia due to ethnic, religious and demographic differences (as is also evident by the fact that different groups co-existed with one another for several decades), but rather due to the efforts of Atlanticists that several years prior planned to dismantle one of the strongest and independent states of Europe that was shielding southeastern Europe from the atlanticist socio-political and economic influence.
The propagandist nature of Huntington’s thesis might go hand in hand with the atlanticist world narrative and economical interests, however, it has little to do with geopolitical reality, although still good enough to deceive the public as the work itself, despite its obvious purpose, is written with academic proficiency and rather detailed.
One does not need to be a geopolitical expert to recognize the falseness of Huntington’s thesis and his prediction of the inevitable forthcoming clash between the Western and the Muslim world. A mere look at the 2003 US invasion of Iraq is good enough to explain why Huntington’s prediction concept of the clash of civilisations has no credibility. If there is a clash between the Western and the Muslim civilization as Huntington would like us to believe, then why did the Arab Gulf states participate on the US side during the invasion of Iraq? This example, as well as many others, in particularly the Iranian Shia support for Armenian Orthodox christian side against the Azerbaijani Shia muslim side in the Karabagh conflict or the Syrian support for Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars, prove how utterly wrong, manipulative and distanced from reality are Huntington’s theories. Indeed, the 9/11 events and their portrayal in the corporate media may have provided fertile ground for the growth of Huntington’s lunacies, however, the Establishment, despite their efforts of pushing Huntington’s book in as many educational institutions throughout the world as it could, obviously underestimated not only the fact that a large number of people in academic circles dismissed Huntington’s claims, but also the power of mass communications, namely internet that has helped greatly to debunk not only the mythological world of Huntington’s geopolitical reality, but mainstream narrative of the post 9/11 world in general.
What is also “rather odd” about Huntington is that he explicitely warned about the alleged dangers that the Islamic world would bring to the West and even considered Islam and its values to be a threat to the West, its values and its way of life. At the same time, Huntington was known for holding a favourable opinion of the Grey Wolves, a Turkish ultranationalist group whose ideology consists of anti-western violent and expansionist Turkish islamism paired with extreme Turkish nationalism. The group’s ties to the western intelligence agencies that are not weaker than those of Huntington himself shed a light on Huntington’s exact geopolitical position, which is, of course, doing everything necessary to achieve the goals of the destructive neocon capitalism, even for the price of forging alliances with what is formally called “the devil”.
It shall therefore not come as a surprise that, during his career, Huntington never considered Saudi Arabia as a foe, despite the latter being the Godmother of all 99% terrorism-related things in existence and who indeed pose a grave danger not only for the West, but the rest of the world as well. Huntington’s claims on the supposed clash between the West and Islam are allegedly based on historic relations between the two that are said to be hostile due to religious rivalry. But is this, in a historic context, actually true?
As we can see the so-called Christian West has sided with the so-called Muslim World against the so-called Orthodox world many more times than it actually did against the so-called Muslim world. Let us only think about the fall of Constantinople as one of the many of such examples. Let us also focus on some of the more recent conflicts, such as the Balkan wars, the 1980s Afghanistan war, the Chechen war or the Karabagh war where the so-called Christian West sided with the Muslim side against the (predominantly) Orthodox one.
While some might argue that such moves may be a consequence of a rivalry between the Western and Eastern Christianity that ultimately forces the Westerners to resort to “an enemy of my enemy is my friend” doctrine, the real motives are nonetheless of pure economic and geostrategic nature.
Although Huntington’s “Clash of the Civilizations” theory might seem legitimate due to the academic background of its author, in reality it is just another camouflaged war drum that the warmongering neocon establishment loves to beat during its destructive expansions.
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