One may feel inclined to avoid the obvious, but most thinking readers and writers will say that the defining factor of our century is fundamentalism. And yet, there is something that goes hand-in-hand with fundamentalism: the material savage that is raging around our planet. Wasn’t it always, one way or another, about God versus Mammon? It is hardly surprising that we should connect the strife as we know it today with money. “Of course,” the citizen in the street will say, “it is all about oil.” But is oil the real cause? As a tongue-in-cheek proposition, one might say that right now the cause could be solar panels—or more likely, the capacity to build electric- or solar-driven automobiles. As far as America and the West in general is concerned, it will be, and probably already is, all about energy independence. But perhaps personal independence for the citizen on the street could be approached in a different and more appropriate manner.

The German-speaking world, which gave us the likes of Freud and Adler and Jung, has also given us a word that expresses it all so neatly, so precisely. It was what National Socialism was founded on. Existenzangst is the explanation for most things deplorable within the human frame and is ultimately the forming factor of the human condition. Feelings of insecurity and fear are obviously not to be desired, and people will fight to avoid or subdue them. It is noticeable that panic fostered by poverty demonstrably leads to fanaticism—but that only according to the level of so-called civilized sophistication and through manipulative politics. In the developing world, where poverty is usually the given norm, apathy rules until parties with an interest start to exercise pressure. Apathy in the West, however, has never been seen when a nation hits a bad patch in its collective history; that nation gets up and fights. The extreme exaggerations of the fundamentalists today are financed—but by whom or what, is often not known. But they are financed to the point where warfare is an easily accessed option and the general public are coerced, often unwittingly, into taking part.

Money makes the world go round! How awful to be obliged to admit it. But the human psyche would have it so. Many years ago, an astute social observer was reported to have maintained that the hippy movement of the 1960s was made possible because the kids, supported by their perfectly solvent parents, were financially able to drop out. America was enjoying an upturn in fiscal endeavor. Things were going swimmingly. What to do? Well, the kids didn’t really rebel against materialism; they rebelled against a vague stirring within themselves. It was a stirring, a burgeoning feeling of frustration. They wished for freedom and were looking for the same through a medium that had not made them captive. Most never found that medium. To put it bluntly, they were—we are—very much of this world.

It means that when a certain material level has been achieved and sufficient outlets have been provided for disposing of one’s wealth, restlessness sets in. Restlessness among the young is no great novelty, and, one way or another, every generation pushes past the frontiers of convention. New standards are set, and old regimes are torn down.

It has always been so. The terrorists of today have been recorded in dismal similarity at regular intervals throughout what we are pleased to call human history. But why? What was really behind the so-called Protestant versus Catholic conflict in Ireland, or the war in Vietnam, or the mass-murder of Jews in World War II? What makes humans so inhuman? Is it simply a lack of money? Is it desperation to maintain a few bits of inconsequential civilization? Perhaps, even, the need to “be something,” or someone?

Physical attack admittedly requires defense, but for all else, one does have the option of simply turning away. “Brushing the dust from one’s heels,” so to speak. One finds the word “perverse” perfectly apt for describing the world’s ills, as perpetrated by the world’s troublemakers. My dictionary offers: wayward or contrary; obstinate; cantankerous as an explanation for perversity. It is all the stuff of self-will, and that sometimes to the point of madness. If one points out to world leaders that their policies and actions are costing the lives of women and children (men, too, of course), they seem incapable or resolutely contrary, nay oblivious, to what would be seen as being truly human. Our technological advance has apparently gone hand in glove with our decline as humans. One remembers Albert Einstein and his famous words after splitting the atom for us; “My God, what have we done?” Well, two steps forward, one step back really does seem to be the mode.

The age of connections. Rebirth of faith. Clash of civilizations. Age of the Internet. Rise of fundamentalism. Interstellar travel. Gender equality. Human trafficking. WWIII. Artificial intelligence. Genetics. Cooperation. Competition. Spiritual revolution. Secularism. Values and Ethics…

All will loom large in public awareness in the 21^st century. Nevertheless, the last theme on the list, Ethics, will possibly be our only hope if we wish to manage all of the rest in the future. An ethical approach is, of course, paramount for dealing with what will be our lot as we continue to flounder in our sea of uncertainty. Mr. and Mrs. Average, people like you and me, will be made subject to matters far beyond our control. It will be this lack of control—having everything out of our hands—that could foster frustration anew. This is where ethics will be of the essence.

Could there be a better way to live life? As humans awaken and walk forward into their day, their global difficulties will continue to flow towards them. For many a “heads down” approach will be all that is left to them. Heads down and somehow struggle or barge through. It may be well to remember Ernest Hemmingway’s admonition to “not confuse movement with action.” This will, for many, and especially our opinion makers, go against the intellectual grain. Listening to any of the news and discussion programs one must be aware that the name of the game is action and counteraction, which is obviously and commonly known as treating the symptom and not the cause.

Since ethics are sometimes to be first sought, one could find it useful to simply stand still. It could mean a neat sidestep from the shenanigans of what we may be forced to countenance. To make light for a moment of a serious matter, a sort of olé response could be adopted to counteract the obvious perversity that rushes, bull-like, at us. Imagine an elegant stance, a numbing of the thinking mind, a quietening of the jabbering mental voice. There would be no hectic rush when the body and mind are in accord. A mind slowly fading into its own background noise—almost you might say, a mind being modest. A modest mind would be quite an innovation. But standing still, reflecting a little, taking it easy, will give us time to really understand what is going on around us. After all, a headlong rush into the fray will usually only add fire to an already raging inferno.

Our children—my wife and I have four—are already pulling back, withdrawing their time, their money, and their energies from a world that is no longer governed by ethics. In their own small way they are refusing to be a part of the global materialism that is being thrust at them. They do not leap to buy the latest technology, do not need to have, come what may, the latest gadget or carefully construed merchandise. Perhaps the children of the 1960s were not so wrong in principle after all. But now could be the time to not only drop out in an endeavor to attain freedom from the advertised life; we may now be able to see freedom in a different light.

We can say “no” because it is our right and privilege. This may well imply division between the warring classes and the pacifists, but the division is already becoming a reality. To recap on the theme of perversity, one should try to understand that there is no way to counter it. This is a given fact. As obvious as it may be, a person or party bent on action that defies all reason will be beyond their capacity to be reasoned with. There are hard-headed policies to contend with; they tell of a need to somehow “win” at all costs. Escape from the round of win-and-lose could be seen in the sophist’s claim: “I cannot be beaten by you because I have no wish to win.”

Ethics must prevail or all else will be lost. In the end we may be able to become responsible for our ideas, endeavors and attitudes, and above all our feelings. “Live and let live” must sooner or later become more than an empty phrase because it is clear that humans are largely unable to leave each other alone. Going one’s own ethical way and proceeding in a quiet and sincere manner seems reasonable, I feel.

I remember reading an observation by a literary light who suggested that there existed a very special club that people can join. There are no badges or insignia, and its members do not know each other, but when they chance to cross paths recognition is instant, although they may never even converse. Perhaps a nod sponsored by a deep awareness may be given. The club, of course, comprises true ladies and gentlemen. They are people of a quiet, even reticent, demeanor. They display no attitude or flair. They are slow to anger, and they are to be encountered at places and in situations that means they are where they are due to purpose and not whim. It is often these people who anonymously sponsor charities and are much involved in giving aid to the world’s poor and oppressed.

Is it too much to ask that we become ladies and gentlemen? The inner world of humans is fraught with desires and feelings that are all too often less than useful. It is by now common knowledge that the real meaning of jihad, a word largely associated with terror, is all about a personal inner battle and not a battle with someone else. One need not be a Muslim to see the possibility of undertaking our own inner battles. One may perhaps not become a superstar, but one does have the chance of becoming truly human.

“Change yourself if you wish to change the world,” is the old adage. I believe it is not even a matter of changing ourselves in the accepted sense (although I for one could discard a few bad habits) but tapping into a long-forgotten birthright. A birthright that is still there but has been overcharged with “needs” that are not really needs.

Personal ethics as the given norm would be a good place to start, for without them all else that is damnable is a foregone conclusion.

Leiden is a small picture-perfect postcard Dutch university town, full of canals, cobbled streets, windmills, high-roofed 17th century houses, cheerful blond girls whizzing by on bicycles, imposing churches, and markets full of tulips and aged cheese. If Hollywood needed a stage for a film about Holland, it would be here. Yet this is no stereotypical Dutch town: Leiden is also a city unique in Europe, for it has a longstanding relationship with the Arabic and Muslim world. If there was anywhere I could feel the potential of human endeavor among peoples, it would be here.

On a bright, sunny Saturday morning at the end of January, I visited the bustling market and crossed bridges over canals, discovering the back streets, courtyards, and narrow alleys of this romantic town. The Mayflower pilgrims set forth to America from here; Rembrandt grew up here and went on to paint the heartbreak of humanity in oils; fellow Leiden painter, Jan Steen, captured the exuberance of existence in his. I ducked into the local public library for a visit, and when I stepped out the door, I came face to face with a brick wall covered by a mural written in Arabic script. This was the “Wereldwinkel” (fair trade shop.) The mural was a poem written by Nasir Kazmi (1925-1972) in Urdu, an important South-Asian language with over 250 million speakers in India, Pakistan, and other countries, and which uses Arabic script. I soon learned that it is one of the some 100 poems written by international poets that grace walls throughout the city: Shakespeare, Neruda, Sugawara no Michizane, Verlaine, Reverdy, Sapho, and William Carlos Williams all have their words immortalized in their native languages and scripts on high for all to contemplate as they pass. As I wandered along the streets of the city, I took delight in discovering many poems surprising me in unexpected places, and I even found one in Turkish, written by Fakir Baykurt (1929-1999). Yet, I could not help but wonder why a poem in Arabic had been set in such a prominent place.

I soon learned that this was but the tip of the Oriental iceberg. For over 400 years, Leiden has been deeply involved in Arabic studies, and the Islamic world has played a significant part in the history and culture of this European city. In 1575, stadtholder William of Orange granted Leiden the first university in the Northern Netherlands. A few years later, in 1613, the gifted linguist Thomas van Erpe (1584-1624) – better known by his Latinized name, Erpenius – became the first occupant of Leiden University’s chair for Arabic. The decision to create the position was taken in 1599, when the University was just 24 years old. In our world of jet travel and instant internet globalism, it is hard for us to realize that in the days of 16th century Europe, the Oriental world was still akin to outer space: manuscripts, printed books, and savants were rare – only a few handful existed in Europe – and lexicons and grammars were unheard of, so it is impressive that the University of Leiden took this initiative. Such a daring move was all the more impressive because wars, starvation, and plague had left 1/3 of the city’s population dead. Leiden was fighting for its life, and during these difficult days they turned to a light from the east as a beacon of hope, and not as a scourge of destruction. Could our world, in January 2015, think the same way? Erpenius, after learning Arabic in Paris from an Egyptian Copt and a Spanish Muslim, dreamed of setting sail to Istanbul to study Oriental languages, but he never made it. He published an Arab grammar book, which remained in use until the 19th century and established Leiden as the center of Arabic studies in Europe: students came from all over the European continent to study here. He spent his last years translating the Qur’an into Latin, but unfortunately never completed it, as he died of the plague in 1624 at the young age of 40. More than four centuries after Erpenius was appointed, Leiden is still the center for Arabic studies in the Netherlands.

The first recorded Muslim to live in Leiden was a North African named Omar Boek, probably from Morocco, who settled here in 1596. As every good Muslim strives to be, he was charitable: it is recorded that he donated money to help the poor by rebuilding a local convent. Why he came here we do not know, but he must have cut an exotic figure as he strolled along the canals, and I often wonder if the young Rembrandt ever crossed his path.

Indeed, since the beginning of the 16th century, Leiden’s scholars, businesses, and citizens have used their knowledge of the Islamic world to make Leiden a culturally and economically richer city. The creation of the chair for Arabic was done for pragmatic reasons, motivated by the Dutch logic for commerce and trade. The teaching of Arabic would benefit the Netherland’s commercial activities, especially in Southeast Asia, where the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602. It was not just commerce, however, that motivated this move, for the study of Arabic allowed the University to put itself on the European map of academic excellence and allowed philologists to better understand and teach others of the human achievement as witnessed by history and other cultural viewpoints. Learning Arabic allowed students to access Arab sapientia, or wisdom. The ability to read Arabic texts in the original offered a gateway to the Arab’s exceptional contributions in the fields of medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and geography, and gave insight to a civilization longer lived than that of Rome. It opened a door to a rich and extensive world; a provocative world of expanded and arresting knowledge.

In addition, printers and publishers clustered around the university scholars. The oriental collections of the University Library are some of the most impressive in Europe, but there is more in Leiden: it is the home of the international publishing house, E.J. Brill. Say the world “Brill” to an Orientalist and you will see his face light up and hear the awe of admiration in his voice. Brill is, quite simply, the most erudite publishing house in the field.

The first printer of Arabic in the Netherlands was a certain E. J. Brill of Leiden, whose business became known in the publishing world for their ability to type set and print many Oriental and uncommon languages. Brill focused on Orientalist materials in Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit, Malay, and Japanese. The famous Encyclopedia of Islam is one of the highlights of this house, first printed from 1913-1938 in 4 volumes and supplements. In the 1960’s Brill moved its modernized printing activity away from the original building on the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine Canal), and the type-setting presses and blocks of 5,100 characters in the famous “Brill Typeface” offering a complete coverage of the Latin script with the full range of diacritic characters needed to display any language correctly were shut down – but do not fear, the typeface is now available for downloading for free on the Brill website.

In architecture, too, you can discover traces of the Islamic culture in Leiden. Walk down Leiden’s main street, the Breestraat, and you will see at the top of the V-D emporium an impressive piece of sculpture in the tympanum, known as the Guilded Turk. The carving comprises a bust wearing a turban, reigning above the house of two merchant brothers, Jan and Adriaen Le Pla, who had made their wealth primarily through trade in the Levant. The brothers even lived in Istanbul at one point. This gilded figure expresses the longstanding commercial relationship between Leiden and the Middle East. Look closely and you will discover the story of their business: Neptune, the god of the sea, is at the left, and Mercury, the god of trade, is on the right. Mercury coddles a bundle of ‘grein’ or ‘Turkish cloth’ under his arm, a fabric produced using either silk or angora wool, as hinted by the Angora goat peeping from behind his feet. Angora wool was shipped from Ankara to Smyrna (Izmir) to Leiden, where it was combined with European wool, dyed and processed in 7 different guild halls. This cloth was exported to Europe and even back to the Levant, making rich not only the merchants of Leiden, but also those of Ankara. Peasant goat herders in Anatolia made the Burghers of Leiden the richest men of Holland, all from the hair of a Turkish goat.

You can also look up to the top of the facade of Leiden’s monumental City Hall, and notice a curious embellishment on the edge of the roof: yes, you are right; those are alems, the crescent moon finials seen on every mosque in Turkey. It is believed that the crescent moons are there in reference to the Dutch Protestant protesters who rebelled against the Spanish Crown in 1574, and who held as their motto “Rather Turkish than Papist!” Led by William of Orange, these rebels affirmed that they would rather become Muslim subjects than remain subjects of the Catholic King of Spain, for they had observed that the Ottoman Turks under Selim II were more tolerant of other religions than Catholicism was at the time, an attitude perhaps not held by all the current European Common Market leaders today.

It is not just in books and commerce and architecture that Leiden formed bonds with the Middle East, but also in botany. In 1587, Leiden University decided to create a medicinal herb garden and teach botany. A botanist named Carolus Clusius (1526-1609) accepted the University’s commission to create the garden. When the Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522-1592) returned from the Court of Suleiman the Magnificent with a tulip bulb in his saddlebags, it was to Clusius that he turned. In Vienna, he passed it on to Clusius, who was at the time the prefect of the Austrian imperial garden. When Clusius took up an appointment at the University of Leiden in 1593, he planted that bulb in the botanical garden of the University. His detailed planting lists have made it possible to recreate his garden, and a small, fenced-in area at the entry of the Horus Botanicus Garden honors the spot where it was planted, next to a statue of the legendary horticulturist. Thus bloomed the first tulips in Western Europe, and as the story goes, the rest is history. The tulip became much sought after by collectors, and ultimately the tulip market got completely out of hand, with tulip bulbs changing hands for astronomical prices. Tulipmania reached its peak in 1636-37, after which the market collapsed and many traders went bankrupt. Also in the Botanical Gardens of Leiden is an old observatory originally founded by Jacobus Golius (1596-1677), professor of Arabic, who traveled to Istanbul and Aleppo and collected many astronomy manuscripts for Leiden University, including one created by Ottoman Sultan Murad IV’s court astronomer.

I looked at the ordered, calm, and industrious Dutch of this city and realized not only how much we need to see, read, hear, and ask about the life and ways of thinking in the lands far beyond these canals, but also of the lives of those “different” ones now living among us. Is the legacy of Erpenius alive today in Leiden?

Yes, it is. Today, Leiden University has one of the largest and most extensive departments covering the Muslim world – from Morocco to Indonesia; from the rise of Islam to the present. Today, some 6,000 priceless manuscripts from the Middle East in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish can be found in Leiden University Library’s Middle East and Islam Collections, such as the “Ring of the Dove” by Tawq al-hamamafi’l-ulfa wa ‘l-ullaf, an 11th century Arabic book about love.

Today, you can see the Turkish Mimar Sinan Mosque, built in 1995 for the Turkish community in the precinct of a former Dutch Reformed Church, and which offered the first minaret on the skyline of Leiden.

Today, there are halal Islamic butcher shops and Turkish barbers scattered on the streets of the city and Moroccans selling olives in the market, driving taxis and tending municipal bicycle garages.

A former church building on Rembrandtstraat housed the Moroccan Al Hijra Mosque, present in Leiden for 30 years. Al-Hijra commemorates the migration of Mohammed and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622, a reference not lost on these immigrants. This building was replaced in 2012, when a brand new mosque opened in northern Leiden in a neighborhood more convenient to the Moroccan community.

Today, one can hope that Arabic is studied not to decipher ancient scientific texts, but to have an increased knowledge about the modern Middle East and Islamic culture. The sudden and pressing relevance of the events of January 7th bring all of this activity to imperative consciousness. Perhaps the goals of the University are not the same as in the 17th century, and most certainly the social structure of the Islamic world has changed since then – but what remains the same is that this city maintains a welcoming and appreciative place for that voice coming from afar – whether it manifests itself as medieval manuscripts, Arabic poems on walls, or Turkish butcher shops. This is a lesson for all of us to heed.

In the late January afternoon, a cold wind picked up and I wrapped my wool scarf more tightly around my neck as I strolled along the picturesque canals of the city. I was reminded that we must wrap our lives in optimism and beauty, or else we are doomed to live a perpetual polar winter of cultural, racial, and religious misunderstandings. Like those 17th century tulip dealers in Holland, we, too, will go bankrupt if we let our mania get out of control in the wrong way. I thought of the last lines of the poem of Nasir Kazmi that I saw on the wall opposite the public library:

If the cruel wind of the times continues to sway,
Earth will lie drained of water, the sun deceived of rays.

Spring is soon coming, and the beds of the Leiden Botanical Garden and all of Holland will be ablaze with dancing floral turbans, of many colors and varieties. I think of the mountains of freshly-cut blooms that fill the cargo holds of hundreds of planes departing from Schiphol Airport each day, bringing their splendor to the entire world. It all started here in Leiden, with one bulb from a foreign land planted in peace; with the will of one community to work together and live not as enemies, but friends; with Europeans willing to embrace the difference of the other and to learn from it. I take the inspiration gleaned on my walks along those cobblestone streets of Leiden in the suitcase of my mind as a souvenir more precious than any piece of Delft china: the hope for a world where we, too, can bloom in harmonious color with our neighbors, and where we can share our lives with Islam – not as enemies, but as blossoms in one garden of beauty.

In his studies, (1993, 1996) Huntington suggests alternative explanations to understanding conflicts and disputes in the post-Cold War period. To him, “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War” (Huntington 1996, 20).

The purpose of this paper is to test Huntington’s argument (1996) by addressing the following question: “Does a civilizational difference cause militarized interstate dispute?” The significance of the answer to this question is obvious: if Huntington’s claim is empirically supported, then dominant theories of international politics, which do not base conflicts on civilizational differences, have to be revised. And, therefore, Huntington’s theory will be useful in understanding the emerging world-order and explaining militarized disputes and conflicts that have occurred in the post-Cold War era.

Literature review

There were many responses and objections to Huntington’s argument that resulted in an extensive debate. Many of them claimed that the civilization theory is unable to explain the causes of conflicts and international order. In spite of the great number of responses and studies, few of these have been supported by quantitative research.

One of the important studies that evaluated Huntington’s argument and which deserves close attention was conducted by Russett, Oneal, and Cox in 2000 (in Triangulating Peace 2001, 239-305). The main question to be answered was “Does a difference in civilization increase the likelihood that a pair of states will become involved in a militarized interstate dispute?” (Russett et al 2001, 248). To perform their study, they used the University of Michigan’s Correlates of War (COW) database that provided Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). In their view, limiting their analysis to MID that occurred during the 1950-92 period was appropriate, because “Huntington addressed events in these years when he first presented his argument in 1993” (249). Variables of liberal and realist theories were also added to their analysis in order to observe which theory had had higher explanatory and predictive power. Results of logistic regression indicated that variables of liberal and realist theories had much more influence on the probability of conflict than on civilization theory. Belonging to different civilizations increases the risk of dispute between two states only by 12 percent with .30 level of statistical significance. (255).

Huntington (2000, 609) replied to Russett et al, suggesting that they retest their argument as it was dealing with the post-Cold War period. Russett et al (2000, 611), in turn, argued that Huntington (1993) had used many disputes and conflicts that had not occurred in the post-Cold War era to justify and support his argument. That was the reason why they used MID of the 1950-92 period.

Another study to test Huntington’s argument was conducted by Jonathan Fox in 2001. He tried to examine whether conflicts between civilizations, particularly Western and Islamic conflicts, had increased with the end of the Cold War (Fox 2001, 459). He used the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset for his quantitative research and came up with interesting results. From a global perspective, the ratio of non-civilizational conflicts to civilizational conflicts had not changed significantly after the end of the Cold War. From an Islamic civilization perspective, there had been little change in the amount of conflicts among Islamic and other civilizations. However, from the perspective of Western civilizations, the proportion of conflicts between Western and Islamic civilizations had significantly increased since the end of the Cold War. Fox concludes that the findings illustrate that it is important which perspective one looks at conflicts from. If one looks from the Western perspective, they will find an increased amount of conflicts between Western and Islamic civilizations, which supports Huntington’s argument. But from the global and Islamic civilization perspective, little evidence can be found for a “clash of civilizations” in the post-Cold War period (459).

Although Fox’s study deserves attention, it does not examine conflicts among the other seven civilizations, but only focuses on the Western versus Islamic civilizations. Furthermore, his units of analysis are conflicts within states, not interstate. Interstate disputes are important in analyzing Huntington’s argument, because a nation as a whole has specific civilizational characteristics. According to Huntington’s map (1996, 26-27) of civilizations, each nation belongs to one of the nine civilizations and conflicts mostly arise among these. Conflicts that occur within states are only one minor part of Huntington’s argument.

Many other scholars have qualitatively criticized Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory. Ali Mazrui (1997) finds three major problems in Huntington’s argument. First, there is a “factual fallacy.” “It may not be factually true that the main lines of conflict of the future, following the Cold War, will be lines of clash of civilizations. It could be states or economic blocs” (Mazrui in Rashid 97, 27). Second, there could also be a “conceptual fallacy” in Huntington’s argument. Mazrui suggests a “clash of races” as an alternative to the clash of civilizations (27). Thirdly, there is a “temporal fallacy,” which means that inter-civilizational conflicts are not phenomena of the emerging world, but rather that they have been the most important issue of the world for at least the past four to five hundred years; within these conflicts we can include the Crusades, the “trans-Atlantic slave-trade, and European colonization of much of the world” (29).

In response to his critics (Foreign Affairs 1996, 67), Huntington stated that none of these scholars had come up with a better alternative to explain the conflicts of the new era. To him, the clash of civilizations remains the most powerful theory to understand disputes in the post-Cold War period.

In this context, this paper is of a crucial importance because 1) it will focus on militarized disputes of the post-Cold War period; 2) the disputes are among the states and civilizations they belong to; 3) and the study will conduct a quantitative method to analyze the clash of civilizations. Thus, this paper takes into account the weaknesses of previous studies and establishes a strong critique to Huntington’s argument.

Research design

This analysis uses the Correlates of War (COW) project’s Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). The COW provides MID starting from 1816 to 2001. As Huntington (2000, 609) claims, the clash of civilizations theory is helpful in understanding conflicts that occurred after the end of the Cold War, specifically after 1989 (Huntington 1996, 21; Huntington 2000, 609). The COW project had MID reaching up to 2001, so I chose those MID which occurred from 1989 to 2001. Although the number of disputes in this period seems to be small to test any theory, it should be quite enough to evaluate Huntington’s argument, as post-Cold War disputes were the basis of his theory. I had 620 militarized interstate disputes in total. Each dispute occurred between at least two states; one state in side A, and another on side B. The sides are coded as 0 and 1. I had information on which pair of states had disputes. Some disputes had more than two sides. I rearranged these coalitions as if they had disputes separately as dyads. For instance, if there were two states on side A and two states on side B in a dispute, than there would be four dyads involved in the same dispute.

States in these disputes belong to one of the nine civilizations, which are Western, coded as 1, Latin American (2), African (3), Islamic (4), Sinic (5), Hindu (6), Orthodox (7), Buddhist (8), and Japanese (9). Huntington (1993, 1996) does not explicitly specify the number of civilizations. In his article (1993) he mentions about “seven or eight major civilizations.” To him, Buddhism “has not been the basis of a major civilization.” (Huntington 1996, 48). Also Japan has not founded any civilization as there are no nations that share the same religion, language, or cultural values with Japanese culture. However, map 1.3 (The World of Civilizations: Post-1990) in his book (1996, 26-27) shows that there are nine civilizations in the world, including Buddhist and Japanese. I used nine civilizations as shown in the map. Russett et al (2001, 251) used eight, excluding Japanese. I wonder how they dealt with disputes that had Japan on one of the sides.

Having nine coded civilizations and many more states in the dataset, I coded all states as any of the nine civilizations they belonged to, according to map 1.3. (Huntington 1996, 26-27). I had difficulties, as did Russett et al (2001, 251), in classifying some states, because the map was not clear and Huntington did not explicitly mention them in the text. For example Nigeria, according to the map is separated into two civilizations, Islamic and African. Since religion is the most important factor that distinguishes each civilization, I have used the CIA’s World Factbook to find out the proportion of religion in Nigeria, and classified it as Islamic. India is shown as a state of both Islamic and Hindu civilizations, but I have classified it as Hindu. Sri Lanka was classified as Buddhist in relevance with Russett et al (2001). The Philippines, in my classification, go into Sinic civilization, but Russett et al (2001) classify it as Western. The most interesting problem that occurred in classification was to which civilization Israel belongs. The question is significant, as Israel has had many disputes with its neighboring states. Huntington thinks Israel is an Islamic civilization according to the map. It is ironic that Israel is considered as an Islamic civilization, first because it has nothing to do with the religion of Islam, and second because such an approach decreases empirical support for Huntington’s argument. Although it does not make sense, I classified Israel as Islamic, strictly adhering to the map.

To answer my research question I had to use civilization dyads and observe if these dyads are prone to clash or not and how frequently they have disputes. Thus, I arranged these nine civilizations in dyadic form and came up with 45 civilization dyads, extracting each one of the same dyads as 1,2 v. 2,1. A dyad is labeled 0 if the civilizations in it are the same and 1 if the civilizations are different. After arranging civilization dyads, I plugged each dispute into one of the dyads and totaled it in regard to the 45 civilization dyads. Then I arranged the number of disputes in each dyad according to the proportion to the total number of disputes.

Huntington’s main hypothesis is that civilizations have mattered and have had positive impact on disputes in the post-Cold War period. I have my doubts about his argument and hypothesize that civilizations do not matter in interstate.

Data analysis

After running my Probit model, I have found that difference in civilizations had negative impact on interstate disputes with relatively small statistical significance (10). The findings of this paper contradict what Huntington (1993, 1996) suggests as his explanation for the causes of interstate disputes in the post-Cold War era. In other words, civilization differences do not cause interstate conflicts.

There have been a total of 620 militarized interstate disputes during the 1989-2001 period, according to the COW dataset (see Table 1). Some of civilization dyads did not have any disputes, whereas other dyads conflicted several times. Huntington’s argument that different civilizations clash does not find support with the results of this study. We can see from Table 1 that 19 dyads that consist of different civilizations have not had any militarized dispute since the end the Cold War. How can Huntington explain this phenomenon on the basis of his clash of civilizations argument? Can interstate disputes be explained by civilizational differences? The answers to these questions are obviously negative. Different variables of realist and liberal theories may explain the findings, but that is not within the scope of this study.

Limitations

One of the important limitations is the absence of a clear list of civilizations and states in these civilizations. If Huntington had provided these data then there would be no dissimilarities among the scholars who tried to test his argument. Some studies used eight civilizations while others used nine. Some states, like Israel and the Philippines were placed in different civilizations in different studies. This may influence the results of these studies, as these states have had many militarized disputes.

Conclusion

This study shows that Huntington’s argument is insufficient to explain conflicts in the new world order. As he argues, “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War” (Huntington 1996, 20). However, he did not carry out a quantitative analysis of the argument. He provided only case studies and offered qualitative analysis as support. Many studies, including this one, have been conducted in response to his clash of civilizations argument, with the conflicts of the post-Cold War period being analyzed quantitatively. None of these studies has found evidence to support Huntington’s argument. The finding of this study illustrates that a difference in civilization is not sufficient on its own to understand what causes conflicts these days nor does it have a positive impact on militarized disputes.

References

• Foreign Affairs. 1996. Samuel P. Huntington’s the Clash of Civilizations? The Debate. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
• Fox, Jonathan. 2001. Two Civilizations and Ethnic Conflict: Islam and the West. Journal of Peace Research 38(4): 459-472.
• Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22-49
• If Not Civilizations, What? Foreign Affairs 72(4): 186-94, 1993.
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1996.
• Try Again: A Reply to Russett, Oneal & Cox. Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 609-610, 2000.
• Rashid, Salim. 1997. The Clash of Civilizations? Asian Responses. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Russett, Bruce M. and John R. Oneal. 2000. A Response to Huntington. Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 611-612.
• Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Inter dependence, and International Organizations. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.