Clash of civilizations

Clash of civilizations is the name given to a theory about international relations. As it is known today, it was formulated in an article by Samuel Huntington published in the American magazine Foreign Affairs in 1993, and later transformed into a book in 1996.

Huntington has been inspired by the theses of various historians, sociologists and anthropologists, especially the texts of Arnold J. Toynbee and Carroll Quigley. For Huntington, of all the objective elements that define civilizations, the most important are usually religions. Thus, based on the description of these authors and based on the distribution of the great religions, he describes the current existence of nine civilizations: Sub-Saharan, Latin American, Sinic, Hindu, Buddhist, Japanese, Western, Orthodox and Islamic.

According to this author, during the cold war the countries related to the two superpowers as allies, satellites, clients, neutral or non-aligned; However, at the end of the war, the countries would be related as member states of each civilization, as central states, isolated countries, split countries or torn countries. For Huntington, the relationships between them will normally vary from the distant to the violent, most of the time being between the two extremes, trust and friendship being rare.

Since the publication of the book, the debate on Huntington's hypotheses had revolved around discussion and political debate rather than empirical evidence, however, in a study from Stanford University it has been observed that behaviors Internet users in the exchange of emails show tendencies to form the large groupings corresponding to the civilizations described by Huntington.

Huntington's Background and Influences

Above: Dead and living civilizations on the temporary scale. In black color dead civilizations, of living civilizations (9). Below: map deformed according to the population. Code of colors: Latin American (Naranja), Western or Judeochristian (blue), sub-Saharan (dark coffee), orthodox (green), Islamic (light coffee), Indian (violet), theravāda (morado), sinica (red) and nipona (color wine). Based on descriptions of Arnold J. Toynbee (1961), Carroll Quigley and Samuel P. Huntington (1996)).

In a broad sense, the clash of civilizations can be defined as a theory that explains the great political and cultural movements of Universal History through the reciprocal influences exerted on each other by the various civilizations (as opposed to those due to confrontations between nation-states or ideologies).

A civilization, in this context, is a more or less closed culture and with a more or less hermetic and impermeable cultural tradition, which is therefore in opposition to other civilizations with different traditions.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Although the modern concept of civilization is popularized by Oswald Spengler, the notion of a "clash of civilizations" It was introduced by Arnold J. Toynbee, although he restricted it to the geopolitical sphere, oversimplifying the phenomena of cultural contacts between civilizations. Toynbee sees the phenomenon as 'spatial contact between civilizations', and refers to it as a challenge-and-response phenomenon (integrated into his cyclical theory of the development of civilizations). That is, the first "push" that one civilization gives to another, is answered by the latter, which in turn moves the first to send a third push, and so on until one of them ends up defeated.

According to Toynbean theory, the effect of a frustrated assault is usually the retardation, or even the paralysis, of the attacked civilization, either because it takes too much pride in its own triumph, or because it has invested all available resources in the fight. The effect of a successful assault, on the other hand, is more complex, since it can end in a temporary subjugation and the expulsion of the invader, or in the destruction of the invaded civilization.

Carroll Quigley

Another character that influenced Huntington's theses are the writings of Carroll Quigley who, in addition to addressing the evolution of civilizations, established the filial and historical links between ancient and modern historical civilizations in his famous book Evolution of Civilizations. He considers the ancient Hittite, Canaanite, Minoan and Mediterranean civilizations (ancient Rome and Greece) as derivatives of the Mesopotamian civilization, as well as the modern Orthodox, Western and Islamic civilizations that Huntington deals with in his book. On the other On the other hand, Quigley views modern India and Buddhist Southeast Asia as directly derived from ancient Indic civilizations and China and Japan as derivatives of ancient Sinic civilizations.

However, Quigley thought more of a universal civilization as a product of the industrial revolution and the colonial expansion of the West, unlike Huntington who, despite technology, still sees different living civilizations according to each religious context.

Others

Other influences on Huntington have been various historians, sociologists and anthropologists who have studied civilizations including, for example, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, Alfred Weber, Alfred Kroeber, Philip Bagby, Rushton Coulborn, Christopher Dawson, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Fernand Braudel, William H. McNeill, Adda Bozeman, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations

In his 1993 article, Huntington takes up Toynbee's concept stating that the main political actors of the 21st century would be civilizations and that the main conflicts would be conflicts between civilizations (not between ideologies, as during most of the century XX nor between nation-states). Apparently, this article was a response to Francis Fukuyama's thesis that the world was approaching the end of history (in the Hegelian sense) in which Western democracy would triumph throughout the world. Quoting Huntington's article:

The nation-States will continue to be the most powerful actors in the international landscape, but the major conflicts of global policy will occur between nations and groups of nations belonging to different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The flaws among civilizations will be the battle fronts of the future.

He argues that the growth of notions like democracy or free trade since the end of the Cold War has only really affected Western Christianity, while the rest of the world has had little say.

Delimitation and classification of civilizations

Significantly, the fault lines between civilizations are almost all religious. Huntington classifies around 9 well-defined civilizations:

1. Western civilisation. It includes mainly countries of Catholic and Protestant Christianity: Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Papuan Territory and New Guinea. Although Huntington's original classification does not list the modern Jewish diaspora and Israel is considered a very close state and attach to the West.
2. Orthodox civilisation. Located in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Georgia and Armenia (coincided with Eastern Christianity).
3. Latin American Civilization. It contains South America, Central America, Mexico and much of the Caribbean. It is a feature of Western civilization, however, for an analysis focused on the international political consequences of civilizations, Huntington proposes to consider it an independent civilization.
4. La Islamic civilization. It is located in the Middle East, the Maghreb (North Africa) Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Central Asia, Comoros, Azerbaijan, Maldives, El Xinjiang (of China), The Republic of Tatarstan, Chechnya (The Last 2 of Russia) Bangladés, Malaysia, Brunéi and Indonesia.
5. La Hindu civilization. Mainly located in India and Nepal.
6. La civilization. It includes China, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, the two Koreas and the Chinese diaspora in Asia, the Pacific and the West.
7. La Japanese civilization. Archipelago of Japan. By its political and economic weight Huntington classifies it with the same weight of an entire civilization.
8. La African Civilization (Sub-Saharan Africa)
9. The Buddhist areas Northern India, Bhutan, Mongolia, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Laos and Tibet.
10. There are states with less political weight than Japan or Israel but they are equally difficult to classify as the Philippines, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guyana or Polynesian cultures. Huntington, for example, tends to classify part of the Philippines as a yesnica and other authors as part of the West because it is culturally more related to Latin America, Spain and the United States.

The clash of civilizations according to Huntington (1996), as presented in the book. West (blue), Latin America (violet), Japan (red), Chinese world (granate), Indian world (naranja), Islamic world (green), Orthodox countries (celeste), Black Africa (brown), Buddhist countries (yellow). Other colors can indicate fault lines where the clash of civilizations can occur. Transylvania (in Romania), western Ukraine, northern Serbia and others are in the "Western world" according to the book. The author considers that instead of belonging to the "greater" civilizations Ethiopia and Haiti (in light brown) are "solitary" countries, and that Israel (turchess) can be considered a single state with its own civilization, very similar to the West. The Anglo-speaking Caribbean (clear violet), former British colonies, constitute a distinct entity.

Structure of civilizations

During the Cold War, countries related to the two superpowers as allies, satellites, clients, neutral or non-aligned. However, for Huntington, after the Cold War, countries would be related according to civilizational criteria as member states, central states, isolated countries, divided countries, and torn countries.

Central States

Huntington defines them as the states with the greatest representative weight within a civilization. Sometimes all of civilization is contained in a single state like Japan. These States play an important role within their civilization, for intercivilizational relations and most have or aspire to have nuclear weapons at some point. Central or representative states are:

• Yesnic civilization. China.
• Western civilisation. United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.
• Orthodox civilisation. Russia.
• Hindu civilization. India.
• Japanese civilisation. Japan.
• Sub-Saharan civilization. South Africa.
• Latin American Civilization. Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil.
• Islamic civilisation. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia.
• Buddhist civilization. Thailand.

Divided countries

Huntington thus classifies multicultural states that contain two or more civilizations within their territory. An ancient example of this case is Yugoslavia, a multicultural country that was later divided according to civilizational criteria into countries like Croatia (Western), Serbia (Orthodox) and Bosnia (Islamic). Huntington predicts instability and source of major conflicts in such a situation as civil wars. Currently there are nations that have not fragmented and still contain the borders of two or more civilizations within their territory:

• Islamic-African Division. It is the line of fracture of two civilizations that passes within countries such as Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. Sudan was shown as a virtually split state when Huntington wrote the book, then this country was split in Sudan and South Sudan.
• Islamic-Orthodox Division. It's the fracture line that passes inside Kazakhstan's territory.
• Islamic-Buddhist Division. It is the fracture line that passes within Burma (see Romhinya genocide).
• Orthodox-Western Division. It is the fracture line that passes in the middle of Belarus, Ukraine and Romania.

One of the most contentious points that Huntington warns about is other multicultural countries with more relaxed atmospheres but which may eventually run into trouble:

• China. Buddhist Tibet and Islamic Xinjiang.
• United States. California and southern states with Latin American immigration (see Mexameric).
• Europe. Islamic immigration.

Map that shows in detail the exact edges of each civilization where, even, the lines of fracture can be seen within the so-called split or multicultural countries. Fracture lines, split states and multicultural states based on the descriptions of Joel Garreau (1981), William Wallace (1990), Huntington (1993 and 1996) and based on the current world religious and cultural demographic (2020).

Countries torn apart

Huntington thus classifies those countries that for geographical reasons and influences at some point in their history have decided to radically transform their culture, that is, change their civilization but without being completely successful. Huntington calls this phenomenon Kemalism or acculturation. The most important states that have tried to change civilization are:

• Russia. From Orthodox to Western civilization.
• Turkey. From Islamic to Western civilization.
• Mexico. From Latin American to Western civilization.
• Australia. From Western civilization to the synastic.

Atypical and isolated states

These are countries whose classification within civilizations is difficult or presents unique qualities and cultural characteristics.

• From Western civilization, Israel.
• From African civilization Ethiopia and African derivative on the American continent: Haiti.
• Western-Latin American civilization: much of the Philippines.
• Japan. Due to its power, unique culture and influence, Huntington considers it an entire civilization different from the continental synic culture (China and Koreas).
• Anglophone Caribbean.
• Polynesia cultures.
• Guyanas.

Other less atypical states whose classification within a civilization is not difficult but still have important linguistic and cultural differences with respect to the rest of the countries of the same civilization are:

• Latin American Civilization. Brazil.
• Islamic civilisation. Iran and Indonesia.

Civilizations and religions

For Huntington, of all the objective elements that define civilizations, the most important is usually religion. On the other hand, Huntington mentions that the repeated clashes between Church and State of Western civilization is almost exclusive to its history and only in Hindu civilization there is another clear separation between religion and politics. However, in the rest of the civilizations the separation between state and religion is different or non-existent. «In Islamic civilization, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God and in orthodox civilization, God is Caesar's junior partner". trust and obedience of the population are focused towards the leader.

Civilizations and Politics

Pluralism and elitism

Civilizations with a markedly dominant elite tend to occur in homogeneous (collectivist) societies as well as in heterogeneous societies but which maintain a vertical distance from power with respect to who governs them. Examples of the first can be Chinese society and examples of the second Arab and formerly Latin American societies. Normally, in these societies there is no clear separation of judicial, executive or legislative functions and power is usually concentrated in single-party systems, corporations, monarchies or dictatorships.

On the other hand, civilizations with marked pluralism tend to be heterogeneous societies but with a horizontal distribution of power, that is, in representative participation there are several elites competing to obtain political power. Characteristic plural societies can be found in Japanese, Western or Indian societies. In this type of government system, there is often a clear separation of state powers into executive, legislative and judicial branches and multiple political parties competing for a common position. representation.

Political acculturation

Political acculturation, Herodianism or Kemalism is when a dominated civilization adopts and imitates the forms of a dominant civilization. Huntington classifies these countries as torn countries. The process of political acculturation is not an exclusive process of the dominated civilizations, but also a process that usually affects the dominant civilization in its desire to encompass all cultures (universalism and globalization), as currently occurs in the case of the West through processes called multiculturalism and cultural relativism.

Levels of conflict

Huntington argues that conflicts between civilizations are inevitable, since each has significantly different value systems. For him, relations between civilizations will normally range from the distant to the violent, most of the time falling between the two extremes. Trust and friendship will be rare.

Clashes or conflicts between civilizations can occur at two levels: fault line conflicts and conflicts between central states. Micro-level or fault line conflict is when two neighboring states, but from different civilizations, come into conflict or when a civil war occurs between two different cultures in a divided country. On the other hand, the conflict between core states is a conflict between the major states of each civilization or of entire civilizations for economic power and world control.

Conflicts between States of the same civilization

Although they are also sources of conflict, Huntington argues that these conflicts will be less intense and severe than fault line conflicts between civilizations. He defines that the conflict, for example between the two Koreas, is usually to some extent exaggerated and magnified more than it really is. He argues that other internal struggles will soften, such as relations between Taiwan and mainland China or Georgia and Russia, due to the emergence of their core states. Throughout its history, the West has made instrumental use of these conflicts to benefit and position itself; however, this will lose strength.

However, due to its fragmented tribal culture into religious factions beyond the notion of the nation state and the lack of a strong central state, intracivilizational conflicts are more likely in the Islamic world. Huntington calls this phenomenon of the Islamic world "discohesive consciousness."

On the other hand, under the Toynbean and Quigley theoretical framework, Huntington only sees conflicts of internal wars between parochial States of the same civilization as important when they are prior to the establishment of a State or universal empire. In the case of the West, the First and Second World Wars, he considers to be a struggle of parochial States that preceded the establishment of the European Union and American domination, which Huntington also considers a kind of universal State made up of a group of Democratic states or federations.

Fracture Line Conflicts

Huntington calls the geographical, cultural, and religious boundaries that divide civilizations fault lines. Usually they coincide with the borders of a group of countries but in some cases they pass between countries, dividing them culturally. He argues that since the end of the Cold War, world conflicts have occurred along the boundaries of civilizations, with little conflict within civilizations. He gives as an example the wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia, the war in Chechnya or the recurring conflicts between India and Pakistan.

Rival and Swinging Civilizations

Levels of antagonism and conflict relationship among civilizations according to Huntington in 1996. More thick and black lines conflictivity greater and more thin lines of conflictivity less on the date the book was published. Since the second decade of the centuryXXI the level of antagonism between the Orthodox and Western world has risen from tone.

Huntington also argued that the rate of growth in East Asia would make the Sinic civilization a powerful rival to the West. He also states that the demographic and economic growth of other civilizations will result in a much more multipolar system of civilizations than currently exists.

Huntington classified the Islamic and Sinic civilizations as rivals to the Western and labeled the Orthodox, Hindu, and Japan as "swing" (swing civilizations). He also says that Russia and India will continue to cooperate closely, while China and Pakistan will continue to oppose India. Huntington argues that a Confucian-Islamic connection is emerging (he cites China's collaboration with Iran, Pakistan and other countries to increase its international influence).

Scenario of a Third World War in the book

This would be the maximum level of conflict that could exist between core states. Huntington initially envisioned a non-aggression pact between Russia and China against Western civilization in a Third World War, likely to be broken if the latter invaded Siberia. Japan and India, being swing states, would play a huge role in such a war as they defined their position.

Huntington argues that such a war would be so devastating that the pole of world power would shift dramatically from north to south, with Africa, Latin America and Indonesia emerging as the postwar organizers.

Checking the Clash of Civilizations Model

Throughout history after the publication of the book, academic studies have been carried out on this model and some political and historical events occurred between different nations or civilizations already foreseen by Huntington. However, there are also some flaws in his predictions about the dynamics between nations or civilizations (see criticism section).

Academic Studies on Huntington's Hypotheses

Since the book's publication, the debate on Huntington's hypotheses had revolved around political discussion and controversy rather than empirical evidence, however, in a 2013 study and a 2015 study of 90 countries, academics from Stanford University in collaboration with Cornell University, the Qatar Computing Research Institute and Yahoo! Labs in Barcelona developed a model based on the frequency of global email interactions between Yahoo! Mail. The study yielded a graph, where each country appears under a circle and some acronyms, the closer the circles are, the more interactions between users. The final result of the graph was very close to the civilizational groupings and their interactions described by Huntington.

Each civilization under a different color and each country appears under a circle and acronym, the closer the circles there are more interactions between Yahoo! Mail users. The final result of the chart was very close to the civilisation groups and their interactions described by Huntington. China, Russian Federation

Fault line conflicts in divided countries

In purple countries that supported Azerbaijan in the 2020 Upper Karabakh conflict. Most are Muslim villages of the Turkic variety

Huntington already predicted future fault line wars within the breakaway countries. A modern example of this case was Sudan, which ended up fragmenting into North Sudan (Islamic) and South Sudan (sub-Saharan). a fault line conflict is the Rohingya genocide, where thousands of Muslims have been systematically expelled by the Buddhist population of Burma. Since 2013, the situation in Ukraine has been particularly difficult as it is partially fragmented after the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia (Orthodox civilization), however, other pro-Russian regions such as the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces continue to adhere to the rest of pro-Western Ukraine, leading to a fault line conflict. Since the publication of his book, Huntington was already noticing the growing fragmentation politics in the Ukrainian elections between pro-Russian and pro-Western regions.

Examples of fault line conflicts in splinter countries of the new millennium (post-book publication)ː

• Conflict of Darfur and referendum on the independence of South Sudan of 2011 (line between Islamic and sub-Saharan civilization).
• Rohinya genocide (line of fracture between Islamic and Buddhist civilization).
• War in the Donbass, annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia and Russian invasion of Ukraine of 2022 (line of fracture between prorrusa and prowestern region).
• Conflict of Upper Karabakh 2020 between Azerbaijan against the Republic of Artsaj and Armenia.

Intra-civilizational conflicts and appeasement

Huntington predicted two scenarios in these situations tending towards appeasement. The first case is when there is a dominant emerging central state that absorbs within its sphere of control another peripheral state of the same civilization prone to discrepancies. The second case is when two nations of the same civilization of comparable specific weight find themselves reconciling, even despite the harassment of external civilizations that try to encourage a conflict. Examples of the first case are Russia's growing control with peripheral nations like Georgia, or China's growing influence over Taiwan, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian nations. An example of the second case is the growing rapprochement of relations between the two Koreas, despite the influence of the West and the United States on South Korea. For Huntington, the conflict between the two Koreas is magnified the further away they are., geographically speaking, it is the real situation between two sister nations belonging to the same civilization.

Rise of nationalism in torn countries

Huntington asserted that although the "virus of Western culture was persistent, it was not deadly" to the receiving culture. He also envisioned that in the event of a loss of strength of Western influence, torn states would resume their cultural course other than the point of departure. Western view. The deglobalization and economic protectionism movements since the second decade of the XXI century have fostered a movement of nationalist withdrawal and culture in countries such as Russia, Turkey, and Mexico. Huntington predicted the possibility that Russia and Turkey would choose to lead their civilizations as core states rather than continue to be torn countries and peripheral cultures to the West.

As of 2018, Australia-China relations on a political level have begun to fray between these two countries, mainly due to growing concerns of Chinese political influence in various sectors of Australian society, including government, universities and the media, as well as China's position on the territorial conflict in the South China Sea.

Criticism

Many and very relevant authors have criticized Huntington's thesis, on its basis or also for specific details.

Mohammad Khatami, reformist president of Iran (1997–2005), introduced the theory of Dialogue among civilizations as a response to Huntington's theories.

Dialogue between civilizations

Some who accept Huntington's thesis regarding the existence of civilizations do not agree, however, with the inevitability of the conflict between them. They argue that, except for a few extremists, the majority of the population prefers to coexist amicably.

Dialogue between civilizations was first formulated by Mohammad Khatami, President of Iran, who introduced the idea in opposition to Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory.

The term gained fame after the UN adopted a resolution with that name to promulgate 2001 as the year of dialogue between civilizations, thanks to a proposal by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who was joined by the "pacifist&# 3. 4; Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In April 2007, the same UN adopted the program called Alliance of Civilizations based on the concept of dialogue of civilizations.

Shock of ignorance

The shock of ignorance refers to a theory developed by Columbia University professor Edward Said in 2001. The shock of ignorance provides a critical response to Huntington's thesis, in which Said asserts that the uses of labels such as the West and Islam are dangerous and serve to confuse with a supposed categorical solution to an apparently disordered reality. For Said, the thesis of the clash of civilizations is a trick like that of The War of the Worlds that it only serves to reinforce defensive self-pride rather than give rise to critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our times.

Minimization of other factors

Minimization of economic and resource conflicts

For Huntington, in a globalized world, «the most widespread, important and dangerous conflicts will not be those that occur between social classes, rich and poor or other groups defined by economic criteria, but those that affect peoples belonging to different cultural entities. By focusing on religious or cultural issues as the main source of conflict, Huntington relegates to the background other important causes of conflict such as inequality or competition for natural resources, climate change (weather wars), the world's peak oil and the energy crisis.

Minimization of intracivilizational conflicts

Some have argued that the civilizations defined by Huntington are internally fractured. For example, Vietnam maintains a huge army, mainly to defend itself against China. The Islamic world features ethnic rifts between Kurds, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Pakistanis and Indonesians, and religious rifts between Shi'ism and Sunnis, each with different views of the world or religion. Likewise, the researchers Fox, Henderson and Tucker found, through a series of studies, that most of the conflicts that occurred from various eras until shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, were intracivilizational conflicts and not the product of a clash of civilizations..

Lack of prediction in interactions

Role of Japan and Russia as swing states

Two decades after the publication of the book, the assumptions about the oscillating behavior of Russia and Japan have not been so strong and in many cases their behavior is contrary to their predictions. Huntington used to describe Japan as a swing state that would head to ally with China while Russia he described as a swing state whose post-Soviet economic weakness would lead to assumptions as a Western-allied state that would always aspire to join NATO. However, Japan-US relations after two decades remain close, with Japan providing monetary and political support for US foreign policy. On the other hand, Russia for the second decade of the XXI century is an emerging economy with greater political and economic weight and with a greater antagonism to the West that the book supposes. Even the trend during the second decade has been the approximation of Sino-Russian relations in the economic and military spheres.

China-Africa Nexus

Despite the political influence of France in Africa, after the economic emergence of China, the economic and cultural ties between this country and African countries, such as Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Zambia, among others, have grown exponentially, displacing to the West as Africa's largest trading partner. This nexus between these two civilizations was also not foreseen by Huntington two decades ago.

Islamic-Confucian Connection

In the Islamic civilization, being very fragmented, only the few countries of Shiite Islam have generated ties with China (also with Russia), such as Iran or Syria. On other occasions, links are intermittently established with Pakistan (Sunni) to contain India. However, the rest of the Islamic countries, mostly Sunni Islam, have very strong commercial and oil export ties with the West and are markedly pro-Western, especially those central states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. After the Arab spring, most of the Maghreb countries, including Libya, have been taking positions more favorable to the West.

Inclusion of non-Western countries in the European Union

The enlargements of the European Union in 1995 and 2004 pushed the eastern border of the union to the boundary identified by Huntington between Orthodox and Western civilizations. With these enlargements, most of traditionally Catholic or Protestant Europe belongs to the European Union. While most historically Orthodox or Muslim countries are out (except Greece and Cyprus). It is yet to decide what happens to the countries of orthodox Europe. Bulgaria and Romania have been full members since February 1, 2007. The new Ukrainian government has declared its intention to also become a candidate. At the same time, Turkey's request to join the union is causing considerable debate. The fundamental point, not always openly recognized, is the Muslim character of Turkey (that is, its belonging to another civilization). The solution to these enigmas will be resolved in the coming years. On the one hand seeing which countries enter the European Union. On the other, depending on the political course of the Union: if it evolves towards a closer political union or becomes a simple free trade zone.

Pluralism and democracy as values that are not only Western

It has also been suggested that Western values are much less exclusive than Huntington considers. Nations like India and Japan have become successful democracies, while the West has not always been democratic and pluralistic, but for most of its history has consisted of despotism and fundamentalism. Huntington's supporters point out that there have always been tensions between democratic states and that emerging (or future) democracies within a civilization might continue to be hostile to democracies belonging to civilizations seen as hostile.

Lack of understanding of the Latin American reality

Huntington's ideas about the delimitation of the different civilizations also enter into crisis with his conception of a "Latin American civilization", which, in addition to a superficial knowledge of the region, shows an enormous ethnocentrism. In the first place, because the geopolitical abstraction that we know today as Latin America is not based on the heritage of a single pre-Colombian civilization that has irrigated the cultural and religious evolution of the entire region since antiquity, but on the ancient legacy of the high pre-Columbian cultures. it is focused on only some countries and completely absent in others. In the same way, in those nations where the pre-Hispanic legacy can be traced, it has played a marginal role in the civilizational configuration of said societies, while the national elites have been heirs to the European colonizing legacy and, therefore, the Western contribution -as true force that has given common roots to what we know as Latin America and to a lesser extent the African and indigenous influence - constitutes the true civilizational nucleus of this part of the world, which should rather be seen as a peripheral appendage of the Western heritage. In other words, one can speak of a Latin American identity, due to the more or less common traits that colonization brought to the region or due to the cultural and identity elements that this process brought to the fore in this part of the planet, but not due to the existence of a distinguishable Latin American civilization that allows differentiating the group of peoples of this part of the planet, with respect to others.