Clash of Civilizations vs. the End of History

Not so many years ago, the world made a lot more sense.

At the very least you could pretend to understand it. This illusion of comprehensibility was a fringe benefit of the Cold War. Every international skirmish could be explained as part of the epic struggle between democracy (or "the free world," as we put it) and the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat ("the godless Commies").

The prospect of thermonuclear war had a way of clarifying the mind; anyone seeking a framework for thinking about the destiny of humankind could start with, at one extreme,

Armageddon. The United States and the Soviet Union enforced their national security with a wonderfully acronymed strategy called Mutual Assured Destruction. The academics described this world as "bipolar." There was a method to the madness.

Then the unthinkable happened: One side gave up without anyone firing a shot.The theorists had to scramble in a suddenly unipolar (multipolar?) environment. Things were flying apart, breaking up, disintegrating. Two theories ?€” dramatic, bombastic and immediately controversial ?€” emerged from the convoluted mass of academic jabber.

The first idea was triumphalist. It came from an obscure young Washington think tank dweller named Francis Fukuyama. He called his thesis "The End of History," and although that sounded apocalyptic, he was attempting to deliver good news. Fukuyama argued that the historical process that had seen the rise of feudalism, monarchism, communism, fascism and various other isms had come to its conclusion. Democracy and free markets ?€” the core values of Western civilization ?€” had proved victorious over all competing systems. There was no better way to organize human affairs. Game over. But there was this other idea. It was darker. Indeed it sounded like a medieval nightmare. The theorist was a Harvard professor named Samuel Huntington, Fukuyama's former teacher, as it happens. Huntington summed up his theory in a dramatic phrase: "The Clash of Civilizations."

The Huntington thesis mocked the feel-good notions of the Fukuyama camp. Huntington saw a world of tribes. Tribalism was increasing. Ancient hatreds were rising to the surface. In Huntington's world there was little danger that everyone would join hands around a campfire and sing "Kumbaya."

The reason is culture. Culture, said Huntington, is the preeminent force of conflict in the modern world. Politics, economics, ideology and national interests remain important, but culture trumps everything. Culture is bone deep, essential to a person's identity, and transcends national boundaries. Cultural conflict, Huntington said, was erupting along civilizational fault lines.

The two theories may suffer from nearly lethal cases of overstatement and oversimplification. For political scientists, however, these are the two touchstones of any debate about the direction of the world. Many people who reject both theories still cite them dutifully ?€” they're the theoretical elephants in the room. The old debate about capitalism vs. communism has been replaced by Fukuyama vs. Huntington.

We're deep in the land of theory here, of abstractions and esoterica. Even so, these ideas seem more relevant and potentially more useful since the calamity of Sept. 11.

If Fukuyama is right, the current crisis is a momentary detour in humanity's inexorable march toward global brotherhood.

If Huntington is right, you might want to start digging that bunker in the backyard.

It was early November, and on the bulletin boards in Coolidge Hall, on the campus of Harvard University, fliers announced a bewildering array of upcoming seminars.

Obviously there were some big ideas here, and some medium-size ideas, and some ideas too fuzzy to have any distinct dimension. In this peculiar universe I found Sam Huntington, in a book-cluttered office on the fourth floor, tending an idea so huge it was heard around the world.

Seventy-four years old, tenured, Huntington is a mild-mannered, balding man who, on this day, was wearing a regulation herringbone tweed jacket. I had imagined him as an Old Testament figure, maybe with a bushy white beard, definitely a severe countenance, but in fact he's strikingly bland and bookwormish, a bit reticent, someone who'd rather be reading and writing than giving an interview.

Did he feel vindicated by the events of Sept. 11? No, he said. He felt outrage and horror. The terrorists did not represent Islam ?€” this wasn't an authentic civilizational clash. It just might lead to one.

"These events have divided the whole world into two sides," Osama bin Laden said in a videotape aired in October, "the side of believers and the side of infidels."

Benjamin Barber, a University of Maryland political scientist and author of "Jihad vs. McWorld," said, "Bin Laden is the primary publicist for Huntington's theory." For Huntington, a clash of civilizations was a worst-case scenario. For bin Laden it was a game plan.

Perhaps the most damning assessment of Huntington's thesis comes from Francis Fukuyama.

"It had a mischievous impact on the way people around the world thought about these things," Fukuyama said. "I think it's not just wrong, it's also not helpful to world politics. It gives aid and comfort to people who want to reject Western values."

Fukuyama operates out of a tidy office on the seventh floor of a Johns Hopkins think tank in Washington. For a big thinker with bold ideas, he's a soft-spoken man who largely avoids the media spotlight. He says he and Huntington remain on friendly terms, even if there have been some tense moments over the years.

After wading into this quagmire of theory, it's fair to call the question. Who's right, Huntington or Fukuyama?

There's no doubt that Huntington has been in ascendancy since Sept. 11. His book, five years after publication, has rocketed onto the bestseller lists. Fukuyama has been on the defensive. He says he remains as optimistic as ever, but concedes that there are exceptions to this process that he labeled the End of History.

When we spoke in his office, I asked Huntington, "If you had your druthers, would Fukuyama be right?" Meaning, Western civilization would spread around the world and this nasty thing called History would effectively be over.

"Oh sure," he answered. "But that's not going to happen."

Political prophecy is always chancy. The hot theory today may seem hopelessly naive in two years. The future always holds surprises.

There might even come a day ?€” hard as it is to imagine now ?€” when the world suddenly makes sense again.

Joel Achenbach is a Staff Writer for The Washington Post, to which he contributed this comment.