Back in 2001, in a geopolitics class, I was introduced to Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, as tow leading scholars with radically opposed views. In 'The End of History and the Last Man', Fukuyama argues that we are converging towards one common universal civilization, and since history traces the development of civilizations, we are now approaching a status quo in our development. In 'The Clash of Civilizations', Huntington argues that on the contrary, the world has moved from a former unified world (Europe), to a bipolar world during the Cold War to a world dominated by 9 global civilizations, based on culture and religion. These offer a paragidm through which one can analyse our current state of the world.
I had read only excerpts of the book in B-school; coming back thourgh Heathrow T4 the other day, I grabbed a copy of the book. I have to tell you folks, it is a fantastic read. Kudos to Sam.
It is written like a textbook, walking the reader through a number of historic developments we have - it seems - forgotten, developping, quite convincingly this theory. The man is very articulate, well documented and well argued. Of course, at times you wonder whether he forgot one angle in his analysis, but he is basically very convincing. He even predicted correctly the recent events in Ukraine (his book was published in 1998...
Of course, after I finish reading it, I'm getting a copy of the Debate book summarizing reactions to his original article in Foreign Affairs.
In retrospect, this book is already answering many questions I've had for many years on the role and future of Europe in the world, on the development of the North-South divide (which Huntington dismisses), on the difficulties of understanding the Middle-East conflicts, etc.
Sheer ignorance is not an excuse I suppose, with amazon.com just a click away...
Highly recommended.
