East Comes WestAuthor(s): David HowellSource: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1997), p. 164Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047953 .

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Responses to Huntington America as "Western," given its remark

able odyssey over the last two decades, a

journey that has brought it politically, economically, and culturally closer to

North America and Western Europe than it has been in centuries?

And if Latin America is evolving as

Western, why not others? Where in

Huntington s account are countries like

Japan, India, the Philippines, and Israel to

be found? Given his dubious list of criteria to determine who is a member of the

Western club, apparently they are no more

a part of the West than Latin America,

despite their democratic polities, liberaliz

ing economies, and, in the case of Israel

and Japan, long-standing alliance with the

West. Too bad also, we must suppose, for

latecomers like South Africa or South Korea. And the same for Russia, apparently

hopelessly foreign to the West by virtue of its Orthodox brand of Christianity?

which it shares with Greece, soon to be

drummed out of nato for no better rea

son than its Orthodox heritage. All of this frontier-drawing might be no

more than academic quibbling had Hunt

ington not issued an explicit call for the

West to don battle gear in preparation for

the conflicts he anticipates with the non

Western world?especially, we must as

sume, with the Muslim world and China.

The danger, of course, is that this kind of

thinking has the logic of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps conflicts with other civi

lizations will arise in any event, but they become all the more likely if we assume

that other civilizations are inherently evil

and raise the ramparts against them rather

than bridging our differences with them.

On both counts, then, Huntingtons

essay is a most unsatisfying statement. It

provides neither an accurate picture of

the world's evolving political boundaries

nor a credible prophecy as to what gen uine security threats the future holds.

tony smith is Chair of the Department

of Political Science at Tufts University and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Interna

tional Center for Scholars.

East Cornes West DAVID HOWELL

Huntington is behind the times. Coca

colonization is yesterday's story. The

issue today?at least in Europe?is not

the westernization of the east but the

easternization of the West.

Europeans are now debating how to

draw on the techniques and financial power of Asia in order to shore up their uncom

petitive economies and form alliances

with the new Asian corporate giants. So here we have the Meiji Restora

tion in reverse. But it goes further than

that. Political thinkers in Europe are also

looking to the strengths of Confucian

society to shore up the West's crumbling values system.

I fear that Huntingtons call to return

to the Atlantic pond, with its "precious and unique" civilization, comes far too

late. Unless we learn quickly from the

more cohesive and infinitely more suc

cessful societies of the dynamic east and

weave together the best of what they have

to offer with the best of our own traditions,

there will be little left in real Western life that is either precious or unique.

David HOWELL is a member of the British

Parliament and Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

[164] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume76No.2

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