English Asg of International Relations IC UMY--Oct 9th 2009

DISAGREEMENT TO THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATION

I disagree to theory of the Clash of Civilizations and I do have some arguments that will affirm my opinion. Samuel P. Huntington said that the primary sources of conflict after Cold War are religious and cultural identity instead of ideology and economic. I agree that religious and cultural identity cause conflicts, tensions and disputes among the countries in the world. Like the war between Chechnya and Russia, it is caused by religious tensions. The dispute between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir is also caused by religious and cultural clash.

Although, I do believe that the theory has some truth according to some evidences. But I totally disagree to his hypothesis when he said “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental sources of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

Considering Afghan war, we see people from the west are fighting the people from the east in Afghanistan over ideology. The west has democracy and liberalism and the Muslims have Islam as their ideology and the way of life. Once the former prime minister of Australia, John Howard said in BBC the main reason of Iraq war is OIL and Sadam Hussein. If the west could get rid of Sadam Hussein they would not be worried about some threats from their socialist eternal rivals in Arabia. So Iraq war was also caused by Economic and Ideology tensions.

Even the professor of Comparative Legal History in the Faculty of Law at the University of Sarajevo, Fikret Karcic believes that Huntington’s theory is not proven by the world’s events today “I believe that we cannot really talk about a global Islamic entity, nor about the Christian entity as its antipode. These two opposing worlds are just fictional. The truth is that so-called Christian and Islamic cultural elements are so intertwined today that this notion of the two rival and monolithic worlds is for the most part just imaginary.”