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COPYRIGHT 2006 Professors World Peace Academy
In this commentary, the authors focus on Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, which they regard as more an ideological work underpinning a neoconservative agenda for a global American Empire than a work of scholarship or accurate representation of historical reality. They question why Huntington's theories continue to stimulate so many articles and studies. Nevertheless, Dr. Imai's conclusion is that the Confucian and Islamic states showed greater progress toward democracy and economic freedom than other less developed countries. This further undermines the thesis of a civilizational clash, and shows that other civilizations are integrating into the world economy.
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The article by Dr. Kunihiko Imai is an extension of the debate launched by Samuel Huntington's 1993 article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations." The present article transports the discussion from civilizational clashes viewed in terms of past militarized interstate disputes to the current debate on globalization and growth of democracies and the market economies. Thus, it sets out to examine the more subtle manifestations of the hypothesized civilizational divide by investigating (1) issues of global convergence; (2) the weakening of the nation state; and it challenges the convergence thesis of globalization i.e., that globalization brings about a standardization of institutions and practices world wide.
To set the stage for this commentary, let us start with the stated objective of Dr. Imai's study, which "... examines whether Huntington's 'civilizational differences' have any effect on the nexus between the internationalization of developing (LDC) economies and the democratization of those countries. More specifically, this article explores whether Confucian or Islamic states react differently from all other states to the increased internationalization of their economy by not allowing as much democratization of their societies as other states." Such a reductionist conversion of Huntington's far-reaching position into a hypothesis to be tested by using statistical techniques is a quantitative panacea. Although useful as a methodological exercise, Imai's study does not engage Huntington in a serious intellectual debate on the grounds of historical distortions and, counter his ideological motives.
We contend that to comment on Imai's article without dissecting its foundational roots--Huntington's worldview, that is--is an exercise of marginal value that does little to advance the debate that has refused to subside even after the years since its thunderous appearance in 1993. The fact that Imai has tested it in his current article informs that we can still hear the echo of Huntington's drumbeat for US neoimperialism, a clear indication that it continues to stir many raw nerves. If nothing else, "the clash of civilizations" is a seductive and catchy phrase. There is even a video (strategy) game with the same title (see clash.apolyton.net). To add some flavor to the present commentary, we first go to its roots and then come back to the article.
Second, in going to the roots, we posit that what Huntington is advancing in his 1993 Foreign Affairs article, "The Clash of Civilizations," is not a hypothesis to be statistically tested, it is an agenda, a worldview to be globally implemented by the US against its invented enemies, all in the name of global domination. It constitutes a new geography and world order to serve overlapping geopolitical and geoeconomic interests of the United States: one world under one nation.
Finally, we look at Imai's article itself and examine its empirically tested hypothesis of global convergence which provides a platform of cross-cultural encounter.
Our premise is that Huntington's article advocates an ideological position rooted in the Cold War mentality but drawn up in the shadow of post-Cold War geopolitics. It is a worldview stemming from his selective read of the post-Cold War landscape of geopolitics and globalization, which has been dominated by the West, at least...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
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