{"id":3427,"date":"2009-01-04T21:42:09","date_gmt":"2009-01-04T21:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3427"},"modified":"2009-01-04T21:42:09","modified_gmt":"2009-01-04T21:42:09","slug":"samuel_huntingt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3427","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Huntington Obituary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Economist<\/a>: <\/p>\n

IN THE early 1990s America\u2019s opinion-makers competed to outdo each other in triumphalism. Economists argued that the \u201cWashington consensus\u201d would spread peace and prosperity around the world. Politicians debated whether the \u201cpeace dividend\u201d should be used to create universal health care or be allowed to fructify in the pockets of the people or quite possibly both. Francis Fukuyama took the optimists\u2019 garland by declaring, in 1992, \u201cthe end of history\u201d and the universal triumph of Western liberalism.


\nSamuel Huntington thought that all this was bunk. In \u201cThe Clash of Civilisations?\u201d he presented a darker view. He argued that the old ideological divisions of the Cold War would be replaced not by universal harmony but by even older cultural divisions. The world was deeply divided between different civilisations. And far from being drawn together by globalisation, these different cultures were being drawn into conflict.
\n


\nHuntington added another barb to his argument by suggesting that Western civilisation was in relative decline: the American power-mongers who thought that they were the architects of a new world order were more likely to find themselves the victims of cultural forces that they did not even know existed. The future was being forged in the mosques of Tehran and the planning commissions of Beijing rather than the caf\u00e9s of Harvard Square. His original 1993 article, in Foreign Affairs, was translated into 26 languages and expanded into a best-selling book.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Economist<\/a>: <\/p>\n

IN THE early 1990s America\u2019s opinion-makers competed to outdo each other in triumphalism. Economists argued that the \u201cWashington consensus\u201d would spread peace and prosperity around the world. Politicians debated whether the \u201cpeace dividend\u201d should be used to create universal health care or be allowed to fructify in the pockets of the people or quite possibly both. Francis Fukuyama took the optimists\u2019 garland by declaring, in 1992, \u201cthe end of history\u201d and the universal triumph of Western liberalism.


\nSamuel Huntington thought that all this was bunk. In \u201cThe Clash of Civilisations?\u201d he presented a darker view. He argued that the old ideological divisions of the Cold War would be replaced not by universal harmony but by even older cultural divisions. The world was deeply divided between different civilisations. And far from being drawn together by globalisation, these different cultures were being drawn into conflict.
\n


\nHuntington added another barb to his argument by suggesting that Western civilisation was in relative decline: the American power-mongers who thought that they were the architects of a new world order were more likely to find themselves the victims of cultural forces that they did not even know existed. The future was being forged in the mosques of Tehran and the planning commissions of Beijing rather than the caf\u00e9s of Harvard Square. His original 1993 article, in Foreign Affairs, was translated into 26 languages and expanded into a best-selling book.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,39,33,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}