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the clash of cultures....

 

 

In the history of ideas, theories occupy a pivotal place, especially those theories that promote a concrete vision of a future or critically examine the myriad dimensions of politics. Theories provide the structural framework within which a phenomenon is analyzed. It is in that context that a highly influential theory continues to animate discussions globally, especially in this world of deep polarization. That theory is the clash of civilizations.

 

 

The Clash of Civilizations Revisited

Pranay Kumar Shome 


More than three decades later, the influential theory continues to remain relevant in global politics.

 

This theory was proposed by the Harvard University academic and political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. Originally written in the form of an essay, the theory eventually was drafted into a complete book titled-The Clash of Civilizations & the Remaking of the World Order. The book was published in 1996.

More than three decades have passed, yet the theory continues to animate vigorous conversations in intellectual circles both for and against it. Hence, it becomes necessary to undertake a critical exposition of this theory and examine its relevance.

The Theory

Huntington contended that the end of the Cold War would not usher in an era of peace and prosperity that many thinkers in the West originally prophesized. He also rejected the notion that the downfall of communism and the end of the Soviet Union would result in the triumph of the West followed by the universalization of Western political and social norms.

It can be said that Huntington’s influential theory will continue to remain relevant in the years to come as the world becomes more and more polarized on the issues of culture and religion 

He instead argued that culture would replace ideology as the new flashpoint in global politics. He argued that conflicts in the name of culture would take place in almost every region of the world, particularly in West Asia and eventually the West. He argued that these conflicts would play out at two levels—macro and micro. He emphasized the point that it would be at the micro level in societies where these cultural conflicts would take their most egregious forms. He coined the term fault line conflict to explain this phenomenon, particularly at a time when globalization spearheaded by the West was slowly taking off.

He classified civilizations into multiple categories: Western (under the banner of Judeo-Christian civilization), Islamic, Slavic, African, Sinic or Chinese, Hindu, and Buddhist.

With that said, he also went on to give an in-depth explanation of how these conflicts would pan out in the interstices of two notable ‘civilizations’—the West and Islamic. He argued that the West became dominant not because of the universal acceptance of their ideas and doctrines, but because they were experts in monopolizing the exercise and use of force.

Cultural conflicts, he prophesized, would soon become one of the major headaches for the global community, eventually resulting in the rise of religiously inspired terrorism.

Relevance in Today’s Time

Notwithstanding the barrage of criticism from both the left and right sides of the ideological spectrum globally, the theory has continued to remain relevant, particularly when seen in the context of the global socio-cultural & socio-political milieu.

Culture has become one of the key flashpoints in global politics, both in domestic as well as the foreign affairs of countries. Today, the western countries are experiencing culture wars. This emanates particularly due to immigration that represents the cultural aspect of globalization. Immigration, both legal and illegal, has resulted in a marked increase in the populations of the adherents of the world’s fastest growing religion in the West.

This has resulted in a significant demographic shift in the West with a concomitant change in the cultural norms and principles. Differences on fundamental issues like worship, customs, traditions, cuisine, and social attitudes have generated friction among the natives and immigrants, particularly of Muslim faith. This became the cause behind the rise of far-right forces in the West, whether in the form of Donald Trump’s MAGA or Make America Great Again Movement, Tommy Robinson in Britain, Marie Le Pen in France, or AFD in Germany.

The cultural right seeks to make vigorous efforts to reclaim the pristine roots of their societies. This has manifested itself in varying reactions, from hard-line immigration policies in the USA to anti-Islamic rallies in Britain.

But these culture wars are symptomatic of a deeper rot. The rot in question is the decline of the West as a monolithic cultural entity that could take on other civilizations even as it maintained internal cohesion.

This decline is also a sign that white supremacism is on the rise, and the targets include innocent, industrious, law-abiding individuals and families whose only sin is that they happen to possess a different skin tone, speak a different language, or, for that matter, belong to a different religion.

Another aspect of this relevance is the rise and the strong partnership exhibited by India, Russia, and China, representatives of the Hindu (read secular), Buddhist, and Slavic civilizations. The West’s attempts to counter these civilizational countries one way or the other have failed not only in the past but continue to fail even in the present.

In conclusion, it can be said that Huntington’s influential theory will continue to remain relevant in the years to come as the world becomes more and more polarized on the issues of culture and religion.

 

Pranay Kumar Shome, a research analyst who is a PhD candidate at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India

https://journal-neo.su/2025/10/31/the-clash-of-civilizations-revisited/ 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

of fortune...

On the FRENCH NEWS (LES CHIENS éCRASéS) YESTERDAY, APPARENTLY A WOMAN HAD LOST A FORTUNE ON ONLINE FORTUNE-TELLERS TELLING HER THAT SHE WAS GOING TO GET A FORTUNE… AND SHE WAS COMPLAINING ABOUT IT.

IT OCURED TO JULES LETAMBOUR THAT MANY PEOPLE ARE GULLIBLE… AND WANT TO KNOW “THE FUTURE”… VERY FEW OF US ARE ABLE TO WITHSTAND THE PRESSURES OF OUR HUMAN UNCERTAINTY AS WE JOURNEY TOWARDS OBLIVION — AN ANGST WHICH MOST OF US ALLAY WITH RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

THE RELIGIOUS DOODAHS HAVE LONG KNOWN THE TRICK OF PREDICTION… IN ORDER NOT TO FALL FOUL OF THE LAW, NOT TO APPEAR CALLOUS AND ROB YOU BLIND WITH THEIR PREDICTIONS OF YOUR FUTURE, YOUR TEMPORAL HAPPINESS IS BASED ON YOUR AFTERLIFE. IT’S A BETTING CONCEPT WHICH HAS ZERO CREDIBILITY TO THE DISCERNING ATHEIST BUT 100 PER CENT SUCCESS TO THE GULLIBLE PUBLIC — IF YOU BEHAVE… 

THE NUMBER OF MONUMENTS AND GODLY HOUSES THAT HAVE BEEN BUILT, AND ARE BEING BUILT TO CAPTURE OUR OBEDIENCE TO AN IDEA(S), IS MONUMENTAL: CHURCHES, TEMPLES, MOSQUES, SHRINES, ETC. IN THERE, HOPE OF A BETTER LIFE IS EXPRESSED BY BURNING CANDLES, IN GENUFLEXION AND IN PROSTRATIONS (HEAD KISSING THE DIRT WHILE THE ARSE IS IN THE AIR). 

IN MOST CASES, GOVERNMENTS ARE IN CAHOOTS WITH THE RELIGIOUS MOBS TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE CONFORMS TO THE KULTUR…

DEMOCRACY THUS IS STRONGLY TAINTED WITH THE CHOICE AND TRADITIONS OF RELIGIOUS FERVOUR.

FOR THE RICH, MOST OF THEIR BELIEF TEMPLES ARE BANKS, STOCK MARKETS, FAMILY TRUSTS, TAX HAVENS AND OWNERSHIP OF EVERYTHING. THEY RARELY PROSTRATE, AS GOD (THE DOLLAR) IS THEIR SLAVE.

 

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

civilisations’ roles....

 

The current age of turmoil defines civilizations’ roles in a new world
The Ukrainian front extends the great decolonization wave of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

BY Constantin von Hoffmeister

 

In the twilight of the unipolar age, the illusion of Western permanence begins to fracture. The world that once moved to the beat of Washington’s decrees now quivers under the emergence of new centers of gravity.

Civilizations, long compressed under the liberal order, rise again as living entities with distinct souls, memories, and horizons. The Multipolar Age does not promise peace; it promises reality. It restores importance to words like sovereignty, destiny, and culture. In this shifting geopolitical landscape, diplomacy becomes the final instrument of sanity: the art of survival between nuclear titans and exhausted empires.

Diplomacy is the single instrument capable of responsible scale in a world armed with atomic power. Dialogue sustains order in a field prone to entropy. Communication surpasses silence. The barren hostility of earlier American leadership revealed the danger of disengagement. Conversation signifies neither defeat nor submission; it reveals that each civilization bears solid boundaries of fear, memory, and identity.

To grasp this moment, one must examine Washington and London, rather than Moscow. The decisive variables remain Western: electoral appetites, donor webs, ideological blindness, and the dread of forfeiting planetary control. “Russia expertise” distracts from the true paralysis within the Atlanticist citadel, which still imagines itself righteous and indispensable. The transoceanic fraternity of power – stretching from Anglo-America to Brussels – crowns its dominance with the halo of virtue.

The Alaska summit stirred brief optimism among lucid minds, yet structures outlive moods. Real dialogue might rekindle that spark through a shared reckoning: who bears pain longer, and at what price? Peace will surface when Western elites see that war drains them more than concession does, that clinging to empire bankrupts both purse and spirit.

The peril remains constant; each side holds apocalyptic force. The issue lies in channeling power towards equilibrium rather than ruin. Western Europe’s tragedy flows from its obedience: a vassal bleeding industry, sovereignty, and posterity while claiming strength through sacrifice. A wiser Europe would seek reconciliation with Russia, restoring dignity and production instead of performing martyrdom for American strategy.

Western Europe’s impotence reveals itself most clearly in Germany. Once the beating heart of continental industry, it now functions as a workshop under foreign supervision. Its factories falter, its trains stall, its engineers emigrate, and its leaders confuse submission with virtue. The moralism of its elites replaces strategy, while its political class kneels before imported energy prices and foreign commands. Before 2022, Germany drew most of its gas from Russia: cheap, steady, and continental. Then came the rupture: sanctions, explosions, and moral crusades that severed the very arteries of its economy. Today, a civilization once famed for precision runs on gas drawn from Norwegian depths and American tanks: symbols of a continent that traded energy sovereignty for ideological purity. Europe watches its engine fade, its self-respect drain away, and its destiny outsourced to powers that view the continent as both buffet and buffer.

Drone hysteria feeds spectacle. The question “who benefits?” matters more than accusations. Bright drones soaring across midnight skies serve the media, not battlefields. They light the stage for fear, budgets, and mobilized anxiety: nourishment for both Kiev’s publicity machine and Europe’s armament cartels. Russia earns advantage from silence and uncertainty, never from theatrics. Hence the sane request: evidence, debris, radar data, and an independent review. In a culture of panic, truth itself turns radical.

The danger grows sharper through weapons that erase time. Long-range Tomahawk systems compress reaction windows to seconds, birthing a “use-or-lose” tension where one error may unleash the abyss. Economically, seizing Russia’s reserves would bury the myth of a “rules-based order” – a fiction crafted by the West to mask privilege as principle. Such robbery would expose the global financial system as an imperial tool rather than a neutral platform.

Observers across the Global South follow intently. If Russian wealth can vanish, so can theirs. Hence the rush towards gold, the rise of BRICS+, and the slow dethroning of the dollar. When the conflict transforms from a security dispute into a civilizational revolt, compromise recedes. Washington accelerates its own undoing: turning a decaying empire into the midwife of multipolar awakening.

NATO expansion forms the surface; beneath lies the essence. Russia refuses to orbit within a Western solar system. It stands as an independent civilization – Eurasian and Orthodox – resisting the dissolving current of Atlanticist modernity. The Ukrainian front resembles an ancient polarity: land power facing sea power, sacred order facing mercantile fluidity. Earth civilizations draw their strength from soil and memory; maritime empires expand through commerce and abstraction. The present struggle pits Tradition against Liberalism, remembrance against amnesia.

The Great Game returns, yet its board now spans entire civilizations. Eurasia, Bharat, Sinic Asia, the Islamic world, and Latin America renew the covenant of Being, reclaiming authorship from the Western world. The contest concerns the authorship of modernity: whether the future belongs to self-determining cultures or to an Atlanticist imperium that masks dominance as democracy. Russia reacts to encirclement yet also creates a system of balance where power is distributed across manifold poles.

Talk of crisis exaggerates reality. Border zones endure pressure, yet central Russia stands firm. Drone strikes on Russian refineries, orchestrated through Western intelligence, aim to slow logistics. Their strategic effect backfires on Ukraine. For every strike on Russian fuel, Ukraine suffers tenfold retaliation. Russia absorbs shock; Ukraine endures collapse. Attrition punishes Kiev and strengthens Moscow’s will.

Russia’s public stance remains steady: Ukrainian neutrality, recognition of territorial realities, demilitarization, and assurance against NATO advance. Privately, the question turns metaphysical. Anything can be discussed once a trust architecture exists. After Minsk and decades of deceit, verbal promises carry zero weight. Durable peace demands guarantees backed by cost and enforced through nations with leverage: powers such as India and China, whose magnitude ensures that promises carry consequence. A conflict born from Western refusal to share parity can end only through multipolar mediation. Why would Russia trust those whose history consists of violated treaties?

Russia evokes multiple pasts to speak to multiple hearts. For the people, the memory of the Great Patriotic War defines endurance: the victory that shaped identity, the eternal symbol of sacrifice transfigured into faith. It is the myth of survival through fire, the sacred proof that the Russian earth itself resists annihilation. For the spiritual elite, Holy Rus’ continues its defense of divine space: the invisible frontier where Orthodoxy shields the eternal against the corrosion of nihilistic modernity. The icons of faith stand where the flags of ideology fall, and in that continuity the nation sees its unbroken soul. For the strategists, the Cold War remains the template of siege and survival: a long twilight struggle in which containment became the modern word for encirclement. They study balance, escalation, and deterrence: the arithmetic of survival in a hostile system. The collapse of 1991 marked the Versailles of the East, the imposed peace of humiliation and fragmentation, when empire gave way to dependency. That wound became the seed of restoration.

The Ukrainian front thus extends the great decolonization wave of the 20th and 21st centuries: Eurasia liberating itself from the ideological and financial hegemony of the West, as Africa and Asia once freed themselves from colonial rule, reclaiming the right to define its own history, geography, and destiny.

Thus Russia’s story becomes the anti-imperialist mirror to Western propaganda. The former empire born of revolution once carried liberation to the Third World, arming the colonized with faith in sovereignty. Its banners flew over Havana, Hanoi, and Addis Ababa: symbols of a world rising from European rule. That same civilizational current now carries the banner of balance. Once Russia exported ideology; now it defends plurality. The moral language changes, yet the pattern remains: the Western powers still pursue dominion while speaking as victims, and the nations once subdued continue their long ascent towards destiny. The West, which once preached freedom, now administers obedience. Russia, once the axis of revolt, now stands as the still point in a turning world: the measure of continuity amid the disguises of power.

Peace demands realism rather than moral theater. The unipolar age born in 1991 dissolves, gently through wisdom or violently through pride. A dialogue between Trump and Putin could mark the birth of a new equilibrium beyond the Atlanticist myth.

For such peace to endure, the West must shed its crusade for global mastery. Europe must rediscover its industrial and continental soul. The Global South must assume its role as the planet’s moral compass. Its unity draws strength from centuries of endurance, from cultures that remember both suffering and survival. Through cooperation and confidence, these nations can restore fairness to a world that forgot its own measure. Multipolarity embodies neither disorder nor chaos. It restores proportion: the planetary act of mental and material decolonization.

https://www.rt.com/news/627255-turmoil-civilizations-new-world/

 

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Fyodor Lukyanov: As the US and China collide, other civilizations prepare their own course
The era of polite globalization is over and civilizations are back

The well-worn business phrase “push and pull” neatly captures the essence of today’s US–China relations. What once looked like a competitive partnership has hardened into a contest of wills, power, and identity. One that will shape the global order for years to come. 

For much of the late 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, the dominant Western assumption was that the world was moving toward a liberal, universal order. Economic interdependence, global markets and single rule-sets were supposed to smooth away historical grievances and cultural differences. In that vision, civilizational identities – the deep structures of tradition, culture, and worldview – were treated almost as relics. 

That era is over. The liberal order began to crack long before Donald Trump entered the White House, but his arrival made the rupture visible and irreversible. As the old framework faltered, the pendulum swung back toward identity, difference, and civilizational self-assertion. The question now is not whether this shift is happening, it clearly is, but how the world will function within it.

The Trump effect

George W. Bush once promised “compassionate conservatism.” Barack Obama framed power in eloquent multilateral terms. Trump dispensed with such packaging. In less than a year in office, he changed not only American diplomacy but the global expectations surrounding it. Washington, under Trump, rediscovered a bluntness that previous generations tried to bury under layers of institutional polish.

Part of this is personal theater: his brusqueness, his disregard for protocol, and his habit of airing grievances and demands in public. His supporters view this as refreshing authenticity, a break from the professionalized hypocrisy of the establishment. His critics call it dangerous. Either way, it has been effective in forcing other players to adjust. 

Form dictates substance. “Peace through strength,” long a core American formula, now translates into coercive bargaining, tariff threats, open blackmail, and public humiliation of rivals and allies alike. The administration has embraced this as a governing philosophy. Diplomacy is a battlefield; hesitation is weakness; and courtesy is optional. 

In a cultural sense, Trump resurrects a caricature Europeans once drew of Americans: brash, self-assured, contemptuous of nuance, convinced that power is the most honest argument. The “farmer republic” instincts that 19th-century observers attributed to America – confidence in one’s rightness, suspicion of subtlety – are back on display. Trump is proud of this. And whether one likes it or not, he remains leader of the most powerful country on earth. Everyone must factor that reality into their strategies.

There is a paradox here: Trump’s bluntness, while abrasive, can be easier to deal with than Washington’s more polished double-speak. As President Vladimir Putin has implied, it is simpler to negotiate with someone who states his demands plainly than with a smiling technocrat who buries intent under abstractions. But bluntness without proportion is dangerous, and Trump often treats diplomacy as if it were a television stage. Where escalation is drama rather than consequence. 

A different civilization

The most revealing contrast to this style is China. In raw capacity, Beijing has either reached parity with Washington or will soon do so. That makes it America’s primary geopolitical rival. A structural fact that transcends personalities. 

Culturally, the two powers could not be more different. Where Trump prizes dominance and spectacle, Beijing values continuity, disciplined patience, face-saving compromise, and a belief in gradual, managed evolution. China entered the global system expecting mutual benefit and predictable rules. It did not expect, and doesn’t particularly like, the American turn toward open intimidation.

During Trump’s first term, Chinese officials hoped this was a passing phase. Trump’s second term disabused them. The pressure is heavier, the confidence greater, and the provocations more deliberate. China has responded in kind, abandoning its previously understated posture for sharper language and reciprocal signaling.

Beijing is learning to answer bluntness with bluntness, though it does so reluctantly. It is still culturally uncomfortable with open confrontation. Yet the leadership understands that the era of polite strategic ambiguity is gone. This phase – coercion versus resolve, threat versus counter-threat – is no temporary disruption. It is the new normal.

Push, pull, and the new order

The future of US–China relations will follow a rhythm familiar to business negotiators: pressure, pause, partial deal, breakdown, repeat. Each side will test how much harm it can threaten without tipping into disaster. Washington will push first. That is Trump’s instinct. Beijing will push back, no longer willing to absorb blows silently.

This is not a new Cold War. It is something more fluid and unpredictable. Today’s world is not bipolar; it is a system in which other major actors – from Russia and India to regional coalitions in the Middle East, Eurasia, and Latin America – will assert themselves. But the central axis of the transformation is US–China divergence. The symbiosis of interests that defined the last forty years has ended. Interdependence is now a battlefield, not a stabilizing force.

After Trump?

Trump will not remain president forever, and China itself is evolving. A calmer phase may follow, or tensions may sharpen even further. The decisive variable will not be ideology but power distribution. Civilizational identity adds depth to the contest; economics and technology give it urgency; leadership styles determine the tempo.

The only certainty is that we are witnessing a structural shift, not a passing quarrel. Globalization’s most ambitious phase is over. A world of civilizational players – sometimes cooperating, often competing – has arrived. And the relationship between the United States and China will define its contours more than any other single factor.

https://www.rt.com/news/627245-fyodor-lukyanov-china-us/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.