International Relations POL 720

International Relations
Institution
Date
Introduction
The post-cold war era has been of interest to scholars. The significant interest has been revealing new sources of conflicts and resolving them. While the biggest question has been what would be the cause of conflict in the post-cold war era. Various theorists have been applied to the topic with liberalists claiming it is possible to avoid war while realist was claiming that there is no promise of stability. Other scientists have characterized post-cold war era with affirmations of about the importance of democracy, freedom, and prosperity. However theorists Samuel Huntington did not view the period like that and in his ‘clash of civilization' theory, Huntington foresees emerging conflicts due to cultural dissimilarities.
The argument makes a succinct prediction on the conflicts and their causes and also specifies the types of wars that would be fought. It is in this background that the paper seeks to examine Huntington's theory. The paper will be divided into five parts with the first part giving Huntington's reflection on the fundamental sources of conflicts, his view on Arab strongmen regime, the dynamic interaction between Islamic civilization and the West. Additionally, the paper will explain the relationship between the theory and the core premises of realist and liberal international relations.
Huntington theory details what he believes would cause war in the post-cold war era. One of the belief is that the war would be caused by cultural differences rather than economic or ideological. On this basis, he argues that politics will revolve around civilizations which he defines as the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identities. The cultural difference is what distinguishes humans from other species Huntington (as cited in Cashman, & Robinson, 2007) at the center of civilization is religion according to Huntington.
He claims eight significant cultures is, Western Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-orthodox, Latin America, and sub-Saharan African civilization, and Huntington argues that the present-day cultural, political, technological and economical process all combine to intensify people a consciousness of their civilization.
According to Huntington, conflict in post –cold war era will cause by different culture between groups and states. This is a shift from the intra-civilization between states within the western civilizations that had happened in several centuries ago. That interstate wars were most likely to break along the geographical fault line between civilizations. Still on the difference in culture, he argues that conflicts between states within same civilization are most liable to be less frequent as compared to those of different civilizations. The assumption is that similar civilizational membership reduces the chances that conflict is likely to spread thus creating civilizational peace.
The likelihood of spread of conflict are most liable to happen via the standard civilizational group. According to Huntington, the concept is known as ‘civilizational rallying.' Moreover, membership of alliances will be formed by civilizational tie...