Untangling the knots

When Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations first came out in 1996 a discussion ensued about what it was trying to say and do. There were those who said it deliberately stoked the clash. It was political. Others said it was scholarly. But there is no dispute that it created a stir that has led to violence in and ethnic and religious conflicts. On top of these conflicts was Christian-Muslim.

What used to be academic discussions led to reality.

So, in a way, thinking and talking about conflict between civilizations provoked it. As an ordinary reader I agreed with those who believed the book implied that Christian-Muslim wars would be inevitable. There were others who said it was good that he did so. The different countries referred to as potential hotspots were given the opportunity to come up with ideas on how to avoid or at least mitigate it. It was scholarly but it was also provocative. The conflict between Islam and Christianity was inevitable because it came from an unforgotten past when Islam had been the leading religion in the world that became the source of innovations. Remember the Arabic numbers made it possible to develop mathematics. There were other achievements from Islam’s supremacy. In time that supremacy declined. It was defeated by the Christians in war after war until the Islamic countries became poor and second class countries mand in time seek vengeance and that we could expect it any time soon.

A review of the book laments that it is guilty of racism.

“In my view the book is based upon a real, although rather trivial, insight which has been stretched far beyond the appropriate point.

The insight is that each of us feels more affinity with people who share our ethnicity, our cultural background, our language, and our religion than we do with people who do not share these characteristics. That insight is so obviously true that I regarded as “trivial” in the same way that a mathematician regards any self-evident proposition as trivial.

The insight is extensible to contacts between citizens of two different countries to the extent that each country is homogeneous and different on the above characteristics. English speaking British Christians will initially find Japanese speaking Shinto practising Japanese citizens strange and difficult to relate to until they find things that they have in common.

However it is not self-evident that countries belonging to different civilizations (using Huntington’s definitions) are more likely to come into conflict than countries belonging to the same civilization. That is something that requires to be proved, and Huntington does not adequately do so in his book. For example both Europe and Latin America have a long record of internal wars.

Furthermore, Huntington underestimates the linkages between countries belonging to different civilizations that arise from permanent migration, temporary relocation (such as students and expatriate workers) and modern communications such as use of the Internet. To take one small example, the “Gangnam style” YouTube video by the Korean rapper PSY had been watched over 1.4 billion times when checked on 31 March 2013. The viewers will not all have come from Chinese civilization.

Normally when I read a book I find myself developing some level of intellectual affinity with the author. That did not happen in this case. From reading the book I concluded that the author was a grumpy old crank, and somewhat racist.

Signs of racism run throughout the book if one “reads between the lines” but become quite explicit in the comment “Africa, on the other hand, has little to offer to the rebuilding of Europe and instead disgorges hordes of socially mobilised people to prey on the remains.” which he makes when discussing the aftermath of his fantasy intercivilizational war. Accordingly when I read in his Wikipedia biography that during the 1980s Huntington served as an adviser to the apartheid regime in South Africa, I was not surprised.

The book is worth reading primarily because doing so should inoculate the reader against the risk of believing that Huntington’s proposition has any merit.

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With the so-called Islamic-Christian conflict being now being pushed into the Philippines, it is time to untangle the knots. The Muslims and non-Muslims have lived together for hundreds of years before the Spanish Christians came.

This is the first knot to untie. Both were traders and the South China Sea united them rather than divided them. This time the South China Sea is being used as a source of conflict with the United States feeling threatened by the growing supremacy of China in the region.

That is the main reason why Duterte is under siege. He said bluntly the Philippines will separate from colonialist America in its conduct of foreign affairs to an applauding audience of Filipinos. The US  wants him removed using the CIA’s expertise in regime change.

F. William Engdahl, a strategic risk consultant and lecturer, says the attempts are awkward.

“The so-called ISIS terror attack in the minerals-rich southern Philippines island of Mindanao, a predominantly Muslim part of the mostly Christian nation of 100 million people, took place literally in the midst of President Duterte’s talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Duterte-Putin talks in turn followed Duterte’s attendance in Beijing on May 15 for the first New Silk Road or Belt Road Forum. America’s colonial asset since 1898 was clearly walking away from the Washington “reservation.”

The terrorist siege in Marawi City is blatantly a desperate Washington try to topple the very popular (80% popularity in polls) Duterte, who successfully won the Presidency last June over a US-backed Mar Roxas, a US-educated former Wall Street banker.

Since taking office Duterte has made bold and quite courageous steps to steer the former US Colony toward  a Eurasian alliance with China and Russia as his major supporters. In Beijing in October last year, Duterte met China’s Xi Jinping and signed numerous trade deals with China. Critically, taking an opposite policy to his pro-US predecessor Benigno Aquino III, Duterte agreed to resolve the South China Sea dispute between Philippines and China through peaceful diplomatic talks, and to as he put it, “seek a separation from the United States.”