# RIP Samuel Huntington



## a_majoor (28 Dec 2008)

An influential academic has passed away:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/samuel-huntington-foreign-policy-theorist-dies-at-81/



> December 27, 2008, 2:25 pm
> *Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard Dies at 81*
> By Sarah Wheaton
> 
> ...


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## Infanteer (28 Dec 2008)

Sad.

Huntington was often seen as a figurehead of the "Realist" school of political thought - I've enjoyed his writings (as my tagline suggests).

His "Soldier and the State" is considered a keystone text on the military as a profession and civil-military relations.


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## Kilo_302 (28 Dec 2008)

Can't say I'm sorry to see him go. His "Clash of Civilizations" theory was garbage, and an excellent example of the "short, simple, provocative" method of labeling an academic theory for the purpose of furthering one's career. Anyone remember Fukuyama and "the end of history?"....and how right HE turned out to be.....


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## Infanteer (28 Dec 2008)

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> Can't say I'm sorry to see him go. His "Clash of Civilizations" theory was garbage, and an excellent example of the "short, simple, provocative" method of labeling an academic theory for the purpose of furthering one's career.



Wow - good riddance to him because you didn't agree with his theory?  That's classy.   :

As for the garbage theory, his career was quite established before he wrote "Clash", so your critique falls short.  As for "short, simple, provocative" - it seemed to have generated quite a substantial discussion in _Foreign Affairs_, so again, your critique probably falls short.

Well done on the short, simple, provocative post though....


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## Edward Campbell (28 Dec 2008)

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> Can't say I'm sorry to see him go. His "Clash of Civilizations" theory was garbage, and an excellent example of the "short, simple, provocative" method of labeling an academic theory for the purpose of furthering one's career. Anyone remember Fukuyama and "the end of history?"....and how right HE turned out to be.....



Actually, if one bothers to really *read* both Fukuyama and Huntington - something only a very few 'critics' ever bother to do - one finds much of value in each. The real 'problem' for most critics is that both Fukuyama and Huntington committed the ultimate sin: they proposed theses that actually explained what we could all see happening around us in ways that the ultra-liberal, _kumbaya and brotherhood_ elites find discomforting.

Sam Huntington was a first rate scholar – see e,g, _Political Order in Changing Societies_ – and a good _wordsmith_  with a profitable knack for popularizing (simplifying) his often complex and quite sophisticated ideas - see e.g. _The Soldier and State_ - and for making provocative ideas such as the dangers (as he perceived them) of sub-national identities (the Mexican _diaspora_ in the USA, Québec in Canada) – see e.g. _ WHO ARE WE? The Challenges to America's National Identity_ - topics of reasoned debate by reasonable people, rather than Lou Dobbs style shouting matches.

He will be missed, but, fortunately, he has taught widely and well and others – his equals – will take his place.

I had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Huntington a couple of times – most recently about seven or eight years ago. He was, by turn, engaged, provocative, patriotic, optimistic, funny and, above all, modest.

Kilo_302’s assessment is, undoubtedly, popular; it is, likely, the majority view; but it is also wrong – as is so often the fate of the majority.


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## a_majoor (30 Dec 2008)

A retrospective on Samuel Huntington's career:

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/28/huntinton-political-science-oped-cx_rs_1229salam.html



> *The Clash Of Huntingtons*
> Reihan Salam 12.29.08, 12:01 AM ET
> 
> Samuel P. Huntington, one of the most creative social scientists of our time, died this Christmas Eve. In 1950, when Huntington began his long tenure at Harvard's government department, there was a great deal of optimism about our capacity to solve social problems. After all, the Second World War seemed to demonstrate that a little elbow grease and Yankee know-how was enough to fix the world. Many very smart people--we'd later call them "the best and the brightest"--believed the impoverished states just then emerging from colonialism could be "fixed" with a little New Deal-style rural electrification.
> ...


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## Kilo_302 (5 Jan 2009)

> Kilo_302’s assessment is, undoubtedly, popular; it is, likely, the majority view; but it is also wrong – as is so often the fate of the majority.



Actually I would say the majority of people agree with Huntington's theory regarding the clash of civilizations. His opposition is mostly found in academic circles.


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## Edward Campbell (5 Jan 2009)

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> Actually I would say the majority of people agree with Huntington's theory regarding the clash of civilizations. His opposition is mostly found in academic circles.



The majority of people, including most of his critics, never read anything Sam Huntington wrote from cover to cover - they have a *right* to their opinions, just as I have the *right* to blissfully ignore everything the majority says.

Most _academic_ critics of Huntington and Fukuyama come from two big groups:

1. Those who could not believe that the Cold War is over and "we" won - the 'last Marxists standing' (still a large number but with, universally, tiny IQs) led this charge; and

2. Those who believe that all will be well if we just sit in a circle and sing _Kumbaya_ - the _McGovernites_ are at the fore of this group.

Neither group has much of a grip on reality.

Of course Sam Huntington's biggest academic sin was that he wrote provocative, *popular* stuff - and made good money by so doing. As political scientist Wallace Sayre said (long before the quote was attributed to Kissinger) "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." That's why so many academics disagree with Huntington and Fukuyama: jealousy, pure and simple.


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## Kilo_302 (5 Jan 2009)

Most rational people SHOULD disagree with Fukuyama. The end of the Cold War was not the end of history, this should be pretty obvious. Liberal democracies will still face challenges, and I think it is arrogance to assume the current international political economy will remain in its current form for the next 20 years, never mind the entirety of this century and beyond.

 Huntington lumped several groups that would traditionally have nothing in common together in the interest of creating an "other" for the West. Most of his critics argue that his view of the world is simplistic, and disregards regional trends, and assumes that democracy and liberalism ( in the economic sense) are unique to the Western world at a cultural level. 

While no doubt many critics of these men could be called "Marxists" or "McGovernites" many more are simply rational intellectuals who choose to study the theories and then compare them with reality, which I must say has borne neither theory out.


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## Edward Campbell (5 Jan 2009)

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> Most rational people SHOULD disagree with Fukuyama. The end of the Cold War was not the end of history, this should be pretty obvious. Liberal democracies will still face challenges …



Which is precisely what Fukuyama said:
--------------------

… And the death of this [Marxist-Leninist] ideology means the growing "Common Marketization" of international relations, and the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states.

This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se. For the world at that point would be divided between a part that was historical and a part that was post-historical. Conflict between states still in history, and between those states and those at the end of history, would still be possible. There would still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethnic and nationalist violence, since those are impulses incompletely played out, even in parts of the post-historical world. Palestinians and Kurds, Sikhs and Tamils, Irish Catholics and Walloons, Armenians and Azeris, will continue to have their unresolved grievances. This implies that terrorism and wars of national liberation will continue to be an important item on the international agenda. But large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene.
--------------------

Therefore, I suggest, most rational people SHOULD NOT disagree with Fukuyama - many irrational university professors will, however, continue to do so.

Fukuyams has, himself, critiqued his “End of history” thesis in e.g. _Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution_  where he says "The more science tells us about human nature, the more implications there are for human rights, and hence for the design of institutions and public policies that protect them,” thus explicitly acknowledging that another ‘chapter’ of history, with a new “design of institutions and public policies” – different from those of liberal, illiberal and conservative democracies – is possible.




			
				Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> Huntington lumped several groups that would traditionally have nothing in common together in the interest of creating an "other" for the West.



Would you care to provide a few examples - perhaps little list of unrelated groups Huntington lumped together - from either the original article (in _Foreign Affairs_, Summer 1993) or the expanded version (book form) published in ’96?


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## Kilo_302 (6 Jan 2009)

By defining "civilizations" as primary actors rather than nations, Huntington ignored the reality of international relations,  ie get what you can, while you can. Every realist recognizes this reality. Civilizations are secondary to national governments, and while the future may change ( I think we will see more regionalism), that is the reality right now.


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## Edward Campbell (6 Jan 2009)

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> By defining "civilizations" as primary actors rather than nations, Huntington ignored the reality of international relations,  ie get what you can, while you can. Every realist recognizes this reality. Civilizations are secondary to national governments, and while the future may change ( I think we will see more regionalism), that is the reality right now.




Is that it, now? Is the problem not groups of "unrelated" entities but, rather, that Sam Huntington decided to ignore the past/present in order to explain the present/future?

Huntington's _problem_, it seems to me, is that he developed and published a theory, in 1993, that explained what we were seeing then and would see in the future, in 1998, 2000 and 2001. That's what good theories are supposed to do: explain the things we observe. Worse, from an academic perspective, Huntington explained things in a way that _ordinary_ people could understand. I understand some professors will never forgive him for that.

I have a criticism or two. I wish Huntington had used the word *culture* rather than *civilization*; I think that's what he meant, based on my reading of the book length version of "Clash of Civilizations" and Culture Matters. I also wish he had grouped a couple of civilizations (three or four in the book length version), ignored a couple more and then subdivided at least one other.

But, on balance, "Clash" is a good product because it helps frame the bigger debates and because it annoys the hell out of so many puffed up, petty pseudo-academics.


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## Infanteer (6 Jan 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Huntington's _problem_, it seems to me, is that he developed and published a theory, in 1993, that explained what we were seeing then and would see in the future, in 1998, 2000 and 2001. That's what good theories are supposed to do: explain the things we observe.



My sigline is taken right from the book "Clash"

_"The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness."  Samuel Huntington_

Seems to be pretty accurate these days.

The theory is not the be all and end all of IR Theory, and Samual Huntington would have never presented it as such, but it is a very useful lens to view the world through.


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## MarkOttawa (6 Jan 2009)

From Fouad Ajami, quite a bit of relevance to Canada:
http://apps.sais-jhu.edu/faculty_bios/faculty_bio1.php?ID=24

Samuel Huntington's Warning
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123060172023141417.html



> He wrote in that book [Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity]
> http://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-We-Challenges-Americas/dp/0684870541
> of the "American Creed," and of its erosion among the elites. Its key elements -- the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals -- he said are derived from the "distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."
> 
> Critics who branded the book as a work of undisguised nativism missed an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an "argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people." The success of this great republic, he said, had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep attachments to America's national identity. "The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast," he wrote in "Who Are We?", "and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of American identities."..



Prof. Ajami later describes a conversion:



> In the 1990s, when the Davos crowd and other believers in a borderless world reigned supreme, Huntington crossed over from the academy into global renown, with his "clash of civilizations" thesis. In an article first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (then expanded into a book), Huntington foresaw the shape of the post-Cold War world. The war of ideologies would yield to a civilizational struggle of soil and blood. It would be the West versus the eight civilizations dividing the rest -- Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese.
> 
> In this civilizational struggle, Islam would emerge as the principal challenge to the West...
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## Edward Campbell (6 Jan 2009)

Here, using his own words is _Foreign Affairs'_ memorial to Samuel P Huntington, and here is Harvard's tribute.

While some will disagree, I think both are fitting.


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