We Need to Bury the “Clash of Civilizations” Theory for Good
The discredited “clash of civilizations” theory keeps bouncing back because it dresses up sordid resource wars in mock-heroic clothing. After another disastrous war informed by such fantasies, it’s time we changed the script.
Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth represent the nadir of the cartoonish worldview that’s guided the US on its path to war over and over again. It was entirely fitting that they ended up losing the propaganda battle to Iranian Lego videos. (Samuel Corum / Sipa / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Over the years, philosophers and theorists have launched a big idea at various moments. In summer 1993, with no little hubris, Samuel Huntington articulated a grandiose global model in an essay for the influential journal Foreign Affairs, titled “The Clash of Civilizations?”
It was a pivotal moment following the end of the Cold War, and others were celebrating the new emerging globalism. But Huntington’s formulation caught fire as the bold vision needed within the American establishment, though it was terribly flawed, reductive, and lacking in depth and rigor.
Successive catastrophic wars in the Middle East, culminating in Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, have shown us how dangerous and damaging such perspectives on the world can be.
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