International Relations Study Guide

8/10/2019 International Relations Study Guide

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Vocab for International Relations


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Chapter 7 Vocab

Developing countries-states in the global south

Millennium Development Goals-UN targets for basic needs measures such as

reducing poverty and hunger- adopted 2002 and target 2015

Basic human needs-fundamental needs for people to survive (food, shelter, health

care, sanitation, and education)

Malnutrition-lack of needed foods including protein and vitamins

Subsistence farming- rural communities growing food mainly for their own

consumption

Cash crops- an agricultural good produced as a commodity for export to worldmarkets

Urbanization-shift of population from rural places to city

Land reform-policies that aim to break up large land holdings and redistribute land

to poor peasants for use in subsistence farming

Migration-movement between states

Refugees-people fleeing their countries to find refuge from war, natural disaster, or

political persecution

Remittances- money sent home by migrant workers to individuals in their country

of origin

World system-view of world in terms of regional class divisions- industrialized the

core, poorest are the periphery, and newly industrialized semi periphery

Resource curse-difficulties faced by resource rich developing countries

Neocolonialism-continuation, in a former colony, of colonial exploitation without

formal political control

Dependency theory-Marxist theory that explains the lack of capital accumulationin poor countries as a result of the interplay between domestic class relations and the

forces of foreign capital

Enclave economy-form of dependency in which foreign capital is invested in a

developing country to extract a particular raw material in a particular place-mine,

well, plantation


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Economic development-combined processes of capital accumulation, rising per

capita incomes (with falling birthrates), the increasing of skills in the population, the

adoption of new technological styles, and other related social and economic changes

Newly industrializing countries (NIC)-countries in global south that have

achieved self-sustaining capital accumulation, with impressive economic growth

Four tigers-South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore

Import substitution-strategy of developing local industries, with protectionist

barriers to produce items a country had been importing

Export-led growth-econ dev strat that seeks to develop industries capable of

competing in specific niches in the world economy

Microcredit-microfinance

Technology transfer-Developing states acquisitionof technology from foreignsources, usually in conjunction with direct foreign investment or similar business

operations

Brain drain-all the skilled workers leaving their country to go to a better nation

Default-failure to make scheduled debt payments

Debt renegotiation-to rearrange the debt payment plan

IMF conditionality-IMF will loan funds if certain political policies are adapted

Foreign Assistance- Giving money or resources to global south to help them speedup their economy

Development Assistance Committee (DAC)-a committee whose members

give 95% of foreign aid

Bilateral Aid-government assistance that goes directly to governments as state to

state aid

Multilateral Aid-government foreign aid that comes from many states and is

funneled through a third party

UN Development Program (UNDP)-program that coordinates the flow of

multilateral development assistance and manages 5k projects at once around the

world- focus on technological assistance

Peace Corps-organization that provides US volunteers for technical development

assistance in poor countries


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Oxfam America-private charitable group that works with local communities to

determine the needs of their own people and carry out development projects

Disaster Relief-short term provisions to areas of natural disasters


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Chapter 6 Vocab


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Supranational- larger institutions and groupings such as the EU to which state

authority or national identity is subordinated


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International Norms-the expectations held by participants about normal relations

among states


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International Organizations- intergovernmental organizations such as the UN

and non-governmental organizations usch as the international committee of the red

cross


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UN Charter- the founding document of the UN


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UN General Assembely- A body of representatives of all states that allocates UN

funds, passes nonbinding resolutions, and coordinates economic development

prgrams and various autonomus agencies through the economic and social council


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UN Security CouncilA body of five great powers that can veto resolutions and

ten rotating member states that makes decisions about international peace and

security, including the dispatch of UN peacekeeping forces


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UN SecretariatUN executive branch, led by the secretary general


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Peacebuilding-use of military peacekeepers, civilian administrators, police trainers,

and similar efforts to sustain eace agreements and build stable, democratic

governments in societies recovering from civil wars


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UN Conference on Trade on Development (UNCTAD)-a sturucture

established in 1964 to promote development in global South through various trade

proposals


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World Health Organizaation- an organization based in Geneva that provides

technical assistance to improve health conditions in the developing world and

conducts major immunization campaigns


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European Union-Eurpean community and associeated treaty organizations. It has

27 member states and is negotiating with other states that have applied for

membership


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International Integration- process by which supranational institutions come to

replace national ones; the gradual shifting upward of some sovreginty fromt he state

to regional or global strucutres


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Neofunctionlism- economic intregration generates a spillover effect resulting in

increased political integration


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Security community- a situation in which expectations of interstate violence

permit which degree of political cooperation as for example among NATO members


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Treaty of Rome- the founding document of the European Economic Community or

the Common Market, now subsumed by the EU


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Euratom- organization created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to coordinate nuclear

power development by pooling research, investment, and management


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Free trade area- A zone in which there are no tariffs or other restrictions on the

movement of goods and services across the border


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Customs union- a common external tariff adopted by members of a free trade area

that is participating states adopt a unified set of tariffs with regard to goods coming in

from outside


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Common Market- a zone in which labor and capital flow freely across borders


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Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)- a European union policy based on the

principle that a subsidy extended to farmers in any member country should be

extended to farmers in all member countries


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European Commission- a European union body whose members while appointed

by states are supposed to represent EU intrests. Surpported by a multinational civil

sercie in Brussels, the commissions role is to identify problems and propose solutions

to the Council of EU


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Council of the European Union- a European union institution in which the

relavant ministers of each member state meet to enact legislation and reconcile

national intrests.


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European Parliament- A QUASI-LEGISLATIVE BODY OF eu THAT OPERATES AS A

WATCHDOG OVER THE Eurpean commission and has limited legislative power


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European Court of Justice- a judicial arm of the EU,based in Luxembourg. The

court has actively established its jurisdiction and is right to overrule national law when

it conflicts with EU law


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Maastricht Treaty- a treaty signed in a dutch city (masstricht) and ratified in 1992

that commits the EU to monetary union and to a common foreign policy

Euro- single European currency that 16 countries use

World Court- (International Court of Justice)- The judicial arm of the UN located in the

hague and it only hears cases between states.


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Chapter 8 Vocab


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Tragedy of the commons- everyone destroys the common land/sea when the

states dont work effiectely


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Enclosure- giving everyone their own slice of the common land


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Global Warming- the idea that the world is getting hotter


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UN Enviroment Program (UNEP)- program that monitors environmental

conditions and works with the world meteorological organization ot measure changes

in global climate


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Greenhouse gases- carbon dioxideand other gases that when concentrated in the

atmosphere act like the glass in a greenhouse holding the energy in and leading to

global warming


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Kyoto Protocol-main international treaty on global warming which entered into

effect in 2005 and mandates cuts in carbon emissions in 2008-2012. Almost all

countries signed on minus the US


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Ozone layer-part of the atmosphere that screens out harmful ultraviolet rays fromt

eh sun, certain chemicals used in industrial economies break the ozone layer down


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Biodiversity- the tremendous diversity of plant and animal species making up the

earths (global, regional, and local) ecosystems


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International Whaling Commission-an intergovernmental organization that

sets quotas for hunting certain whale species- with state participation voluntary


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High Seas-portion of the oceans considered common territory, not under any kind

of exclusive state jurisidiction

UN Converntion on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)-a world treaty- 1982- governing use

of the oceans. The UNCLOS treaty established rules on territorial waters and a 200

mile exclusive economic zone

Antartic Treaty of 1959- one of the first environmental treaties. It forbids military

activity, sets aside territorial claims for future resolution, and establishes a regime

under which various tates conduct scientific research in Antartica


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Acid Rain- rain caused by air pollution that damages trees and often crosses borders


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Demographic transition- pattern of falling death rates, followed by falling

birthrates that generally accompanies industrialization and econ dev


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Pronatalist-a governemtn policy that encourgages/forces childbreaing and otulaws

or limits access to contraception


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Digital Divide- gap in access to information technologies between rich and poor

people, global north and south


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Cultural Imperaialism- term critical of US dominance of the emerging global

culture


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UngerBy 2033, two states, Israel and Palestine, will be living side-by-side in an uneasy peace, with the risk of war between them and terrorism across their common

border diminishing year by year. This two-state sol ution will not be imposed by the United States or the Arab world. It will be freely chosen by the Israelis and

Palestinians themselves. The growing Palestinian majority living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River will continue to insist o n nothing less. And a solid

majority of Israelis will by then have come to see a two-state partition of Palestine as essential to Israels survival as a tolerable place to live and raise their families.

That is not the only outcome poss ible for 2033. But it is the most likelyand it is the most attractive one for Israelis, Palestinians and the outside world. Consider

the alternatives. The safest prediction for anywhere is normally some version of p resent realities, projected forward. But there is not hing safe or normal about the

existing situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These territories are neither Israel nor Palestine, and their unfolding demographic arithmetic assures that they

are not going to evolve into one or the other without very bold political decisions being taken by both sides. Currently, mor e than five million Jews live between the

Mediterranean and the Jordan River along with somewhat less than five million Arabs. Because of continuing changes in the bir th rates of both populations and the

uncertainties surrounding future inward and outward migration, precise population estimates for 2033 are impossible. But most experts agree in

a quarter century, there will be more Arabs than Jews, with both totals falling somewhere

between six and seven million. With no two-state solution, most of the Arab population would

be outside the green line, the boundary between pre- 1967 Israel and the territory added

after the Six Day War in June of that year. Much of it would also live outside the new security

fence built to separate mainly Jewish-inhabited areas from neighboring Palestinian-inhabited

zones, and which in some areas extends well beyond the green line.(Currently, about 80 percent of the Palestinianpopulation lives in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.) Palestinian Arabs make up 100 percent of the 1.5 million people now living in the Gaza Strip and more than 90 percent of

the 2.6 million now living in the West Bank. In all of Jerusalem, the current numbers are roughly 500,000 Jews and 250,000 Arabs. Approximately another 1.2 million Arabs now live inside

Israels 1967 borders, mainly in the Galilee and i n areas near the green line i n the Haifa region. Of course this leaves aside the more than five million other Palestinians now living beyond the

Jordan River. More than half of them live in the Kingdom of Jordan and more than 800,000 are in Lebanon and Syria. Some 300,000 of the Palestinians in Jordan, 200,000 of those in Lebanon,

and 100,000 of those in Syria are still living in the United Nations recognized refugee camps set up after the 1948 and 1967 wars. And then there are also roughly eight million Jews living

outside Israel, some twothirds of them in the United States. Over the next 25 years, net Jewish migration into Israel is l ikely fall off and, in the absence of peace with the Pa lestinians, perhaps

even reverse. Jews have moved to Israel for all kin ds of reasons. But the biggest numbers came from three main feardriven mig rations. First came the Holocaust survivors and other displaced

Jews of postWorld War II Europe. Soon after came the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced from the Arab world after Israels creation (and more recently from Iran, fol lowing the Islamic

Revolution there). Then, over the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of more have grasped at the chance to flee the historic anti-Semitic prejudices and new uncertainties of Russia and

other former Soviet republics.Those ready pools of the uprooted and uneasy have, for the most part, been depleted. Roughly half the former SovietJewish population has already emigrated, most of it to Israel. The rest, numbering a little less than one million, has chosen to stay put, although

it is conceivable that new spasms of nationalist anti-Semitism could change their minds. Fewer than 10,000 Jews still live in Arab countries, less

than 40,000 in Iran, and less than 30,000 in Turkey. And the number of Jews now likely to leave the relative safety and security of the large

diaspora communities of North and South America and Western Europe for an increasingly militarized Israel, while not negligible, might well be

smaller than the reverse flow of comfortable and cosmopolitan Israelis headed for Europe and the New World. Without significant inward

Jewish migration, the demographic balance in Palestine is likely to turn even more sharply in favor of the Palestinian Arabs over the next 25years. Yet in the absence of a comprehensive two-state solution, there is little chance that Israel can muster the political will to dismantle

vulnerable West Bank settlements lying well beyond the green line over the next quarter century. The security barriers needed to protect them,

in the face of an increasingly adverse demographic balance, will stifle any hope of real economic development in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip,

presumably still under the control of Hamas or an even more radical successor, will remain economically blockaded. Escalating Repression The

nearly seven million Arabs of Palestine will be poor, desperate, and with little to lose by 2033. Permanent insurgency, with terrorist and rocket

attacks on Jewish settlements, Israeli soldiers, and Israelis living across the green line are a certainty. Israel has the military capability of

suppressing an occupied Palestinian majority indefinitelyprovided three crucial conditions continue to be met.First, Israelis would

have to continue to be willing to provide their sons, daughters, and political support for the kind of all-

out repression that would frequently include killing children and other innocent civilians, systematic

torture, and international obloquy. Second, in the face of this, Washington and American public opinion

would have to remain willing to provide the kind of uncritical diplomatic support and military and

economic aid that George W. Bush has provided the governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmertwithout regard to Israeli policies, negotiating positions, or defiance of American requests. Third, all or

most of Israels landborderswith Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanonwould have to remain under the

control of governments willing and able to deny passage to Palestinian fighters and arms. (It matters far

less whether Iran or any of Israels neighbors would have acquired anuclear deterrent, since nothing

Israel does within the confines of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would likely cross any states nuclearred

lines and so trigger a credible nuclear response.) All three of these conditions are subject to change over

the next 25 years. In fact, all three are more likely to change than not. While the second two conditions are largely


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beyond the scope of this examination, the kind of changes likely in Israel absent a two-state solutionthe erosion of democracy and human

rights and the declining political influence of the shrinking proportion of Ashkenazi Jews from Northern and Eastern Europe and the United

Statescould also lead to more critical and nuanced views of Israeli policy from Jewish and non-Jewish voters in the United States.

Nevertheless, its important to considerthe first condition. Mounting Costs of Occupation Every Israeli Jewish (except for the ultra orthodox,

who are exempt), Druse, and Circassian male serves three years of active military duty starting at age 18. Women from these groups serve at

least two years. After that, the men (and some of the women) are assigned to the reserves. Shortcut to a lasting peace? Quique

Kierszenbaum The Inevitable Two-State Solution 6162 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL FALL 2008 Male reservists can be called to duty for up to one

month per year until their 40s. Reservists can be ordered to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during periods of heightened violence orwhen regular army troops are engaged in other missions, like the 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Even when Israels only military operations are

against Palestinians living inside its post-1967 borders, it has had to rely on reserve callups. Thats what happened in the spring of2002, when

30,000 reservists were called up during Israeli military operations to reoccupy West Bank towns. At that point, with Israel engaged in no foreign

wars and its only combat or occupation operations confined to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, almost one in ten of all Israelis between the ages

of 17 and 49 fit for military service was in uniform. Failure to achieve a two-state solution by 2033 would likely require an even higher state of

national military mobilization. That could create strains throughout society as never before. Israel is no longer a land of self-denying pioneers. It

is a consumerist democracy. Its citizens are increasingly rich, comfortable, and more interested in the individual pursuit of happiness than the

ideological pursuit of Arab-inhabited territory. Under such conditions, live-andlet-live pragmatism can be counted on to eventually trump

traditional Zionist ideology. That includes such deeply embedded ideological precepts as the claim to Jewish rights to settle in the entire Biblical

land of Israel. It includes the dream of an indivisible, Israeli-ruled Jerusalem (as defined by its greatly expanded 1967 boundaries). And it

includes the insistence that almost all of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in 1948 left voluntarily,

ignoring the increasingly welldocumented historical record of a deliberate campaign of armed coercion, endorsed by the highest levels of Israeli

political and military authority, designed to drive them out. Once these three ideological precepts lose their grip, peace based on pragmatic

compromise becomes an almost irresistibly appealing alternative. Of course it is not just ideological stubbornness that makes many Israelis

wary of a compromise peace. The Arab invasions of 1948 and 1973, along with decades of terrorist infiltration, convinced many Israelis that the

countryspre-1967 borders did not provide adequate secur ity. Todays rocket attacks from theHamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the evident

ineffectiveness of Fatah control in the West Bank, and the specter of political volatility and Islamic radicalism throughout the Arab and Muslim

world powerfully reinforce those anxieties. Creating an Israeli consensus for farreaching compromise could take a long time. But eventually, I

expect it to come about. Because if it doesnt come about,Jewish democracy in Israel will likely have to be sacrificed, with some acknowledged

or unacknowledged form of national security dictatorship taking its place. Impossible One-state Solution Theoretically, there exists another

choice besides the two-state solution or indefinite military occupation. Palestinians, whether they live inside the green line, in greater

Jerusalem, or in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, could simply be granted the full range of legal rights enjoyed by Jewish Israelis, including the

right to live anywhere they choose between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, the right to serve in the armed forces and the right of those

living anywhere in the diaspora to return to live in Palestine. This is what many Palestinian intellectuals claimed to want before Yasir Arafat

accepted the idea of a two-state solution beginning in the 1970s, though it was not until 1988 that Arafats Palestine LiberationOrganization

(PLO) formally recognized Israel as a Jewish state. And, in the face of the continued carving up of the West Bank with Jewish settlements,

Jewish-only access roads, and Israeli military checkpoints and barriers, and the continued unwillingness of any Israeli government to bargain

seriously about Jerusalem, Palestinian statehood, or refugees, it is what an increasing minority of Palestinian intellectuals has begun calling for

again. There is also a minute constituency for this one-state approach among so-called post-Zionist Israeli Jewish intellectuals. Superficially, thiswould seem the perfect liberal solutionassuming, and this is a very big assumption, that a future Palestinian majority (inevitable by 2033,

giving the demographic realities) would not impose its own restrictions on the legal rights of the Jewish minority and the rights of Jews

elsewhere to immigrate to a bi-national Palestine. The record of the Arab world, indeed of most of the world, is not very encouraging on this

score. A bi-national state would negate Zionism, even Zionisms raison detrea Jewish majority government as a guarantee of Jewish security,

Jewish political and civil rights, and the right of any Jew in the world to resettle in a Jewish-controlled homeland in Palestine. At best, a bi-

national Palestine would offer the conditions Jews now enjoy in the United Statesa Jewish minority living in peace, prosperity, and harmony

with its non-Jewish neighbors. At worst, it would reproduce conditions resembling those of pre-1939 Poland or present day Irana Jewish

minority living in fear of mob violence, economic expropriation, and physical expulsion. If Israeli Jews are going to commit their future to that

range of possibilities, it is hard to see much reason for having an Israel at all. And that is exactly the point. A binational state means the end ofthe state of Israel. Getting There That leaves a two-state solution as the only realistic possibility for 2033. But it still leaves the problem of

getting from a here in which the territorial integrity of the West Bank keeps receding, communitarian boundaries in Jerusalem become

increasingly scrambled, internal Palestinian political divisions solidify, and trust between the population on both sides diminishes; and a there in

which an economically and politically viable Palestinian state emerges and both peoples agree to live side-by-side in peace forevermore. How

would the difficult and frustrating details of Jerusalem, borders, Palestinian refugees, and Israeli security finally be resolved? And, more

fundamentally, how would Israeli society and Palestinian society each arrive at their own stable consensus that whatever deal is finally struck

on these issues is not subject to future reopening, but is for keeps and thus the legal and legitimate end of their historic conflict over the land of

Palestine? Apart from these all-important details, the broad parameters of a two-state solution have to some extent already been worked out.

Bill Clintons attempt to get YasirArafat and Ehud Barak to agree on final terms at Camp David in the summer of 2000 broke down in

recriminations, followed by the outbreak of the second intifada. But President Clinton persisted, and in December 2000, he offered a detailed

set of American parameters that can still serve as a useful starting point for a final status agreement. It provides for Palestinian sovereignty over

94 to 96 percent of the West Bank (allowing Israel to keep a compact bloc of settlements around the green line). An area roughly equivalent to

what Israel retains in the West Bank would be ceded to the Palestinians from inside the green line. Israel would retain sovereignty over Jewish

areas of Jerusalem while Palestine would have sovereignty over Arab areas. The most religiously significant areas of the Temple Mount complex

would be similarly divided. Palestinian refugees would have an absolute right of return to Palestine, but no specific right of return to Israel.


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Over the following few weeks, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt, and tried to fill in some of the details of the Clinton

proposals. Both sides accepted the broad parameters, but could not bridge important differences over refugees and some aspects of

designating respective sovereignties in Jerusalem. The talks were broken off in early 2001 shortly before the Barak government left office,

giving way to the much more hawkish cabinet led by Ariel Sharon. The following year, the Arab League adopted a Saudi plan that offered full

Arab recognition of Israel in return for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and a just

solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem, to be agreed upon in accordance with section 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Section

11 has been around since its adoption in 1948, and its meaning continuously disputed between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The text states

that refugees wishing to return to their homesand live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicabledate, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which,

under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.No one should

underestimate the difficulties of turning these overlapping sets of broadly agreed principles into specific boundaries and concrete security

arrangements, particularly in an atmosphere of (well-deserved) mutual mistrust. And not even a mutually agreed framework exists for resolving

perhaps the most emotionally explosive issue of allthe rights and future of Palestinian refugees. Israelis believe there can be no

concessionseven symbolic concessions involving the careful readmission of strictly limited numbers of the now mostly elderly Palestinians

who actually lived within the borders of present-day Israel prior to 1948. Almost all Israelis feel that to do so would be to deny the essence of

the two-states-fortwo-peoples formula, open the door to further Palestinian refugee claims, and impugn the Israeli national narrative of a

sometimes messy but wholly legitimate Jewish reclaiming of the land of Israel. Palestinians believe that their refugee rights have been solemnly

enshrined in United Nations General Assembly resolutions and should not be simply wiped off the negotiating slate, that an Israel that refuses

to recognize the historical injustices done to Palestinians in 1948 is not an Israel they can trust to keep its promises today, and, perhaps most

tellingly, that the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees now living in squalid camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria cannot be left to

their present fate. Indeed, there are also nearly 500,000 Palestinians still living in official refugee camps in Gaza and roughly another 175,000 in

the West Bank. The logic of a two-state solution is, of course, that the state of Israel should be a homeland for Jews and that the state of

Palestine should be a homeland for Palestinians. But since it is hard to see how the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be able to support even

that fraction of the Palestinian diaspora now living in foreign refugee camps, that logic will not seem very satisfying to those Palestinians and

their unwilling Arab hosts. Needless to say, these refugees cannot be accommodated in Israel either, without negating its status as a Jewish

state. Still, a two-state solution that provides no solution for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in foreign refugee camps will

not be a very stable solution for anyone. The two state solution that I see as the only realistic possibility for 2033 will have to be accepted not

just by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but by most of the Palestinian diaspora and all, or virtually all, of the Arab world as a historic end to the

morethan-a-century-old conflict over Palestine and the end to any justification for further violence over these issues. Stuck in the Present But

lets not get ahead of ourselves. There islittle point to fleshing out the details of these 200002 near-solutions when none of them is currently

on the negotiating table between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Those partial frameworks were thrashed out between the most dovish

elements of the Israeli and Palestinian political classes. They have never been accepted by the top political leadership on either side. And while

polls taken in times of relative tranquility suggest majorities of both societies might accept such arrangements in the abstract there is a big

difference between being polled about abstract ideas and agreeing to give up land or refugee rights, particularly when there will be no shortage

of rejectionist politicians on both sides urging intransigence. Even if we want to be optimistic and assume reasonably congenial conditions an

extended period of relative tranquility, courageous leaders on both sides, and broader populations recognizing where their enlightened self-

interests might liethere are still some major political and constitutional problems that must be overcome. Where in the current Israeli andPalestinian political spectrums, for example, would those leaders who might seal such a deal come from? And how they would mobilize the

kind of solid majority support that would be needed from both peoples? On the Palestinian side, the most obvious division today is between

the moderate nationalists of Fatah and the radical Islamists of Hamas. Hamas clearly won the last round of Palestinian elections in 2006, taking

74 seats to Fatahs 45. It would mostlikely win again if elections could be held today. Such elections are nowhere on the horizon. Hamas is in

full control of the Gaza Strip after defeating an armed Fatah attempt to crush its power in June 2007. Fatah, militarily backed by Israel, has

imposed an emergency government in the West Bank. For the forseeable future, neither party can seriously pretend to speak on behalf of all

Palestinians or deliver Palestinian consent to any negotiated peace formula. Fatah has lost much of its earlier legitimacy in Palestinian eyes, not

so much because of its moderation or cooperation with Israel, but because of its failures to deliver basic services, its pervasive corruption, and

its internal divisions and rivalries. But while Fatahs past willingness to negotiate with Israel is not the cause of its eroding legitimacy, its

continued cooperation with Israel under the unequal conditions that now prevail is further undermining Fatahs standing. Fatah is becoming

less legitimate to Palestinians even as it becomes more acceptable to Israelis. Fatahs loss of legitimacy would growstill more acute if it began

to compromise over the next quarter century on sensitive and long-standing Palestinian national demands like claims to Jerusalem, the rights of

Palestinian refugees, and adjustments (even equitable adjustments) to the 1967 borders. Whatever Fatah agreed to at the negotiating table on

these issues could well be violently resisted by large sections of the Palestinian populationproviding Israel with a perfect (and perfectly

reasonable) excuse for backing out of its own difficult compromises. This is a seemingly fatal problem for the current Annapolis round of peace

talks that first assembled most of the Arab world last year, at least as presently structured. Serious Palestinian compromises on the most

difficult issues will only be possible with much of Hamas, and its constituency, represented on the Palestinian negotiating team. This cannot be

a Hamas that refuses to abide by past agreements, accept Israels legitimacy,or disavow terrorism, to be sure. But neither can it be a Hamas

that is reshaped to Israeli specifications in the way that Fatah has been reshaped since the demise of Yasir Arafat. Deep political divisions on the

Israeli side also pose huge obstacles to negotiating a two-state solution. Polls regularly show a majority of Israelis in favor of a two-state

solution based on something like a return to the 1967 borders. But there has never been a stable political majority in Israel for a peace involving

painful compromises and concessions on Jerusalem or refugees, or fully turning over security responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to

the Palestinians. Building Confidence in a Vacuum Because reaching an agreement on the hard issues is so difficult for both sides, there is an

understandable temptation to fall back on supposedly easier confidence-buildingsteps, like periodic releases of Palestinian prisoners, and


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easily reversible steps that involve the likes of freezing and unfreezing budget funds, or easing and tightening border checkpoints. The biggest

single lesson of the breakdown of the Oslo peace agreements of 1993 is that such symbolic steps do not build much confidence if they leave

fundamental grievances on both sides unaddressed, and if they are not lubricated with visible and steady progress toward a clearly defined

two-state solution. There is no point going down that dead-end street again. For example, Israeli governments like to reward Palestinian

moderation with prisoner releases. These are strongly sought by groups like Fatah and Hamas (to which the prisoners usually belong) and are a

popular national cause among the broader Palestinian population. But while these releases may build goodwill around the negotiat ing table,

they do little to build peace. Arguably, they lower the threshold for Palestinian violence by showing those tempted to attack Israeli targets that

even if caught, they probably will not have to serve out their full sentences. What would much more clearly build peace are steps that wouldvisibly change the lives of ordinary Palestinianslike dismantling internal security barriers and roadblocks between West Bank cities, except for

those clearly and directly related to the security of Israelis living inside the border fence. The single most important step any Israeli government

could take to rebuild Palestinian faith in progress toward a twostate solution is an absolute freeze on all settlement expansion. The number of

Jewish settlers on the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) has more than doubled since the Oslo agreements were signed. It has increased by

roughly another 10,000 since the Annapolis talks last November, and is now approaching 300,000 . How can Palestinians ever be expected tobelieve that Israel will agree to a viable two-state solution unless this process is immediately brought to a complete halt, and all settlement

outposts created in violation of Israeli law are dismantled? This is much harder for any Israeli government to do than release prisoners, not just

because of the size and political power of the settler community, but because such a decision would rightly be seen by Israelis and Palestinians

alike as the most significant concrete step that could be taken today toward preparing the way for a two-state solution. Achieving a two-state

solution by 2033 means that the current impasses must somehow be overcome. Outside powers, especially the United States, can help, by

stepping in with credible security guarantees, conferring international legitimacy on courageous and innovative Israeli and Palestinian leaders,

and withholding it from time-servers and obstructionists. Arab leaders can help by legitimating necessary Palestinian compromises, helping

configure internationalized solutions for Jerusalems religious sites, and facilitating the resettlement of Palestinian refugees. But outsiders can

only help. The main work will have to be done by Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Ultimately Israelis will decide their own fate. So will thePalestinians. Even long before 2033, however, Israels available options will be reduced to a nation besieged in continued occupation, a Jewish

population of Palestine submerged in a binational state, or a political agreement between stable majorities of Israelis and Palestinians on a

compromise two-state solution. Both sides will surely see that historic compromise as less than ideal. But they will also see it as clearly superior

to any of the available alternatives for two populations determined to build and defend their homelands in the same narrow strip of land.


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Homer-Dixonfour main, causally interrelated social effects: reduced agricultural production, economic decline,

population displacement, and disruption of regular and legitimized social relations.

Enviromental degredation will ultimately hurt the developing countries worse than anyone else.


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1. Economic Arguments

A RAND study indicates that a Palestinian state would not be economically viable. It would require$33 billion for the first ten years of its existenceand this study was made before the economic crisis nowconfronting the United States and the entire world.

Besides, to confine morethan two million Arabs to the 2,323 square miles of the so-called West Bank, andto squeeze an-other million into the 141 square miles of Gaza, is to doom these Arabsto economic stagnation and discontent. The projected state would be a cauldron of envioushatred of Israel fueled by the leaders of one or another group of Arab clans or thugs parading under the banner of Allah.

Moreover, to compensate perhaps 300,000 Jews expelled from the West Bankor even halfthat numberwould bankrupt Israels government, to say nothing of the resulting trauma and civil discord.


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2. Demographic Arguments

Two-state solution advocates warn that the Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterraneanwill soonoutnumber the Jews, and that this necessitates a Palestinian state. The Sharon government, without publicargumentation, used this demographic contention to justify its perfidious implementation of Labors policy of unilateral

disengagement from Gaza in 2005. The Olmert-Livni government is using the same policy to withdraw from Judea and Samaria,including eastern Jerusalem.

However, a ground-breaking study by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (www.aidrg.com) revealed in 2005that Israel does not need to retreat from Judea and Samaria to secure Jewishdemography. The study shows that the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statisticsexaggerated the Arab population in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza by nearly 50%. Rather than3.8 million Palestinians, it was no more than 2.4 million. Since those registered as Jews in Israel comprise almost80% of Israels population, they make up a 59% majority with Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and a solid 67% majority with Judea

and Samaria without Gaza!

The American and Israeli researchers also found that Jewish fertility rates are steadilyincreasing while Arab fertility rates are steadily decreasing . Not only is there no demographic timebomb necessitating the surrender of Judea and Samaria to Palestinian terrorists, but Israels demographic position should

encourage its governm ent to develop a strategy for annexing Judea and Samaria.


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3. Political Arguments

According to Major General (res.) Giora Eiland, former head of Israels National Security Council, ...the Palestinians do not truly

desire the conventional two-state solution. The Arab worldespecially Jordan and Egyptdoes not truly support it either

(Jerusalem Post, September 23, 2008).

Dr. Yuval Steinitz, former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman, said that the idea of a two-state solution

should be dead. A Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, he said, would bring about Israels demise. Such a Palestinian state

would immediately become an outpost for Iran (Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2008).

Advocates of a Palestinian state live in a fantasy world or lack the intellectual courage to acknowledge the obvious: thatPalestinians are committed to Israels annihilation.A generation of Arab children has been educated tohate Jews and emulate suicide bombers. Daniel Pipes said it would take at least two generations to undo such indoctrination. (This

would re-quire, among other things, basic changes in the Quran. Musl ims w ould have to renounce the ethos of Jihad. No

American or Israeli official has the guts to speak of this religious-cultural issue.)


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4. Strategic Arguments

On December 29, 2002, the freighter Karin-A set sail from Iran en route to the Suez Canal. It was boarded by Israeli commandos

without opposition from the four crewmen, who were members of the Palestinian naval force. When the commandoes examined the

ships cargo, they discovered launchers and rockets, mortars, anti-tank weapons, mines, two tons of explosives, assault rifles,

machine guns, sniper rifles with telescope lenses, hand grenades, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunitionenoughweaponry to tilt the balance of terror against Israel. The destination of the Karin-A was Gaza. Consistent with Dr. Steinitzs warning,

this Iranian arms shipment signifies that Iran views the Palestinians as a battlefield in its 30-year war with Israel. (See Ronen

Bergman, The Secret War with Iran, 2008, p. 270.)

Even if it were agreed that a Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized, only foolswould believe that the Arabs would abide by such an agreementno more than they adhered tothe arms limitations in the Oslo Agreement.

Some 80 percent of Israels population is concentrated on the coastal plain. Arab control of the Judean and Samarian hills would

expose those people to constant missile attack. Preoccupied with such attacks, Israel could no longer serve effectively as Americas

strategic ally in the Middle East. No longer could it provide the U.S. with priceless intelligence and techno-logical assistance whose

value far exceeds the value of U.S. military aid. And I have not mentioned the multibillion dollar economic market Israel provides thefifty states of the American Union.

Ponder also the fact that rewarding the Palestinians with statehood would promote irredentist movements or civil war and terrorism

throughout the world.


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5. Democratic Arguments

Doctrinaire adherence to the democratic principle of self-determination wouldencourage any ethnic group to seek independent statehood. It would endow any ethnicgroup with the right to elect a tyrannical form of government, whether fascist,

communist, or Islamic.

Hamas, an Islamic terrorist group dedicated to Israels destruction, was victorious in the 2006 democratic elections. Lincolnechoed

Jefferson when he said, No people have a right to do what is wrong. Ponder the American Declaration of Independence: We hold

these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Underlying these words is the Biblical conception of mans creation in the image of God. The Declaration portrays man as a rational

being possessing free will and capable of distinguishing right from wrong. Without such a conception of human nature, the signers of

the Declaration would have had no rational or moral grounds for rebelling against Britain, whose colonial governments violated the

Laws of Nature and of Natures God.

This Higher Law doctrine of the Declaration provides a set of standa rds by which todetermine whether granting national self-determination to any ethnic group can be

justified. It cannot be justified among people steeped in ignorance or habituated toviolence and servitude. In his classic,Representative Government, John Stuart Mill said that a people may lack themoderation that representative government requires of them: Their passions may be too violent, or their personal pride too

exacting, to forego private conflict, and leave to the laws the avenging of their real or supposed wrongs.

The Palestinians have bungled every chance of self-government by making Fatah and Hamas terrorists their leaders. Having

educated their children to emulate suicide bombers, the goal of these thugs is not statehood but Israels annihilation. The

democratic principle of self-determination is not an absolute; it is limited by rational and ethical considerations. It would be

irrationalindeed, criminalto establish a Palestinian state on Israels doorstep.


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HuntingtonWORL D POLITICS IS entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be the end of history, the

return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism,

among others. Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global

politics is likely to be in the coming years. It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily

ideological or primarily economic.The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source

of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerflil actors in world

affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and

groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.

The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. Conflict

between civilizations Avill be the latest phase in the evolution of conflict in the

modern world.

For a century and a half after the emergence of the modern international system with the Peace of Westphalia, the conflicts of the Western

world were largely among

princesemperors, absolute monarchs and constitutional monarchs attempting to expand their bureaucracies, their armies, their mercantilist

economic strength and, most important, the territory they ruled. In the process they created nation states, and beginning with the French

Revolution the principal lines of conflict were between nations rather than princes. In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it, "The wars of kings were over;

the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenthcentury pattern lasted until the end of World War I. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution

and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal

democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this latter conflict became embodied in the struggle

between the two superpowers, neither of which was a nation state in the classical European sense and each of which defined its identity in

terms of its ideology. These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarily conflicts within Western civilization,

"Western civil wars," as William Lind has labeled them. This was as true of the Cold War as it was of the world wars and the earlier wars of the

seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its

centerpiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of

civilizations, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as targets of Western

colonialism but join the West as movers and shapers of history. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATIONS DURIN G TH E COLD WAR the world was divided

into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Those divisions are no longer relevant. It is far more meaningful now to group countries not in terms of

their political or economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture and civilization. What

do we mean when we talk of a civilization?A civilization is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic

groups, nationalities, reli gious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of

cultural heterogeneity.The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but bothwill share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural features

that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity.

They constitute civilizations. A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the

broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes

humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as

language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-

identification of people.People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensityas a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of

identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of

civilizations change. Civilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("a civilization pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put

it), or a very small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A civilization may include several nation states, as is the case with

Western, Latin American and Arab civilizations, or only one, as is the case with Japanese civilization. Civilizations obviously blend and overlap,

and may include subcivilizations. Western civilization has two major variants, European and North American, and Islam has its Arab, Turkic and

Malay subdivisions. Civilizations are nonetheless meaningfiil entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real.

Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and fall; they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civilizations disappear and are buried

in the sands of time. Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in global affairs. They have been that, however, for only a


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the traditional clanshas been described as the backbone of the East Asian economy^ Culture and religion also form the basis of the Economic

Cooperation Organization, which brings together ten non-Arab Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,

Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. One impetus to the revival and expansion of this organization, founded originally in the

1960s by Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the leaders of several of these countries that they had no chance of admission to the

European Community. Similarly, Caricom, the Central American Common Market and Mercosur rest

on common cultural foundations. Efforts to build a broader Caribbean-Central American economic entity bridging the AngloLatin divide,

however, have to date failed. As people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms, they are likely to see an "us" versus "them" relation

existing between themselves and people of different ethnicity or religion. The end of ideologically defined states in Eastern Europe and theformer Soviet Union permits traditional ethnic identities and animosities to come to the fore. Differences in culture and religion create

differences over policy issues, ranging from human rights to immigration to trade and commerce to the environment. Geographical propinquity

gives rise to conflicting territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao. Most important, the efforts of the West to promote its values of democracy

and liberalism as universal values, to maintain its military predominance and to advance its economic interests engender countering responses

from other civilizations. Decreasingly able to mobilize support and form coalitions on the basis of ideology, governments and groups will

increasingly attempt to mobilize support by appealing to common religion and civilization identity. The clash of civilizations thus occurs at two

levels. At the microlevel, adjacent groups along the fault lines between civilizations struggle, often violently, over the control of territory and

each other. At the macro-level, states from different civilizations compete for relative military and economic power, struggle over the control of

international institutions and third parties, and competitively promote their particular political and religious values. THE FAULT LINES BETWEEN

CIVILIZATIONS T H E FAULT LINES between civilizations are replacing the political and ideological boundaries of the Cold War as the fiash points

for crisis and bloodshed. The Cold War began when the Iron Curtain divided Europe politically and ideologically. The Cold War ended with the

end of the Iron Curtain. As the ideological division of Europe has disappeared, the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity, on

the one hand, and Orthodox Christianity FOREIGN AFFAIRS -Saww^r/ppj [29]Western Christianity cirea 1500 Orthodox Christianity and Islam

MILES Source: W. Wallace, THE TRANSFORMATION OF WESTERN EUROPE. London: Pinter, 1990. M a p by Ib Ohlsson for POHHON AFFAIRS.

Samuel P. Huntington and Islam, on the other, has reemerged. The most significant dividing line in Europe, as William Wallace has suggested,

may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are now the boundaries between Finland

and Russia and between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from

Orthodox eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost

exactly along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans this line, of course, coincides with the

historic boundary between the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The peoples to the north and west of this line are Protestant or Catholic; they

shared the common experiences of European historyfeudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution,

the Industrial Revolution; they are generally economically better off than the peoples to the east; and they may now look forward to increasing

involvement in a common European economy and to the consolidation of democratic political systems. The peoples to the east and south of

this line are Orthodox or Muslim; they historically belonged to the Ottoman or Tsarist empires and were only lightly touched by the shaping

events in the rest of Europe; they are generally less advanced economically; they seem much less likely to develop stable democratic political

systems. The Velvet Curtain of culture has replaced the Iron Curtain of ideology as the most significant dividing line in Europe. As the events in

Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line of difference; it is also at times a line of bloody conflict. Conflict along the fault line between Western and

Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years. After the founding of Islam, the Arab and Moorish surge west and north only ended at

Tours in 732. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century the Crusaders attempted with temporary success to bring Christianity and Christianrule to the Holy Land. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Turks reversed the balance, extended their sway over the

Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople, and twice laid siege to Vienna. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as

Ottoman power declined Britain, France, and Italy established Western control over most of North Africa and the Middle East. After World War

II, the West, in turn, began to retreat; the colonial empires disappeared; first Arab nationalism and then Islamic fundamentalism manifested

themselves; the West became heavily dependent on the Persian Gulf countries for its energy; the oil-rich Muslim countries became money-rich

and, when they vîshed to, weapons-rich. Several wars occurred betwêen Arabs and Israel (created by the West). France fought a bloody and

ruthless war in Algeria for most of the 1950s; British and French forces invaded Egypt in 1956; American forces went into Lebanon in 1958;

subsequently American forces returned to Lebanon, attacked Libya, and engaged in various military encounters with Iran; Arab and Islamic

terrorists, supported by at least three Middle Eastern governments, employed the weapon of the weak and bombed Western planes and

installations and seized Western hostages. This warfare betwêen Arabs and the West culminated in 1990, when the United States sent a

massive army to the Persian Gulf to defend some Arab countries against aggression by another. In its aftermath NATO planning is increasingly

directed to potential threats and instability along its "southern tier." This centuries-old military interaction between the West and FOREIGN

AFFAIRS 5OTOTfr/99j [31]Samuel p. Huntington Islam is unlikely to decline. It could become more virulent. The Gulf War left some Arabs

feeling proud that Saddam Hussein had attacked Israel and stood up to the West. It also left many feeling humiliated and resentful of the

West's military presence in the Persian Gulf, the West's overwhelming military dominance, and their apparent inability to shape their own

destiny. Many Arab countries, in addition to the oil exporters, are reaching levels of economic and social development where autocratic forms

of government become inappropriate and efforts to introduce democracy become stronger. Some openings in Arab political systems have

already occurred. The principal beneficiaries of these openings have been Islamist movements. In the Arab world, in short. Western democracy

strengthens anti-Western political forces. This may be a passing phenomenon, but it surely complicates relations between Islamic countries and

the West. Those relations are also complicated by demography. The spectacular population growth in Arab countries, particularly in North

Africa, has led to increased migration to Western Europe. The movement within Western Europe toward minimizing internal boundaries has

sharpened political sensitivities with respect to this development. In Italy, France and Germany, racism is increasingly open, and political

reactions and violence against Arab and Turkish migrants have become more intense and more widespread since 1990. On both sides the

interaction between Islam and the West is seen as a clash of civilizations. The West's "next confrontation," observes M. J. Akbar, an Indian


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Muslim author, "is definitely going to come from the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Maghreb to Pakistan that

the struggle for a new world order will begin." Bernard Lewis comes to a similar conclusion: We are facing a mood and a movement far

transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations the perhaps

irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion

of both.^ ^Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 266, September 1990, p. 60; Time, June 15,1992, pp. 24-28.

[32] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volumey2No.jThe Clash of Civilizations fHistorically, the other great antagonistic interaction of Arab Islamic civilization

has been with the pagan, animist, and now increasingly Christian black peoples to the south. In the past, this antagonism was epitomized in the

image of Arab slave dealers and black slaves. It has been reflected in the on-going civil war in the Sudan between Arabs and blacks, the fightingin Chad between Libyan-supported insurgents and the government, the tensions between (Orthodox Christians and Muslims in the Horn of

Africa, and the political conflicts, recurring riots and communal violence between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The modernization of Africa

and the spread of Christianity are likely to enhance the probability of violence along this fault line. Symptomatic of the intensification of this

conflict was the Pope John Paul Us speech in Khartoum in February 1993 attacking the actions of the Sudan's Islamist government against the

Christian minority there. On the northern border of Islam, conflict has increasingly erupted between Orthodox and Muslim peoples, including

the carnage of Bosnia and Sarajevo, the simmering violence between Serb and Albanian, the tenuous relations between Bulgarians and their

Turkish minority, the violence between Ossetians and Ingush, the unremitting slaughter of each other by Armenians and Azeris, the tense

relations between Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, and the deployment of Russian troops to protect Russian interests in the Caucasus and

Central Asia. Religion reinforces the revival of ethnic identities and restimulates Russian fears about the security of their southern borders. This

concern is well captured by Archie Roosevelt: Much of Russian history concerns the struggle between the Slavs and the Turkic peoples on their

borders, which dates back to the foundation of the Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In the Slavs' millennium-long confrontation

with their eastern neighbors lies the key to an understanding not only of Russian history, but Russian character. To understand Russian realities

today one has to have a concept of the great Turkic ethnic group that has preoccupied Russians through the centuries.-' The conflict of

civilizations is deeply rooted elsewhere in Asia. The historic clash between Muslim and Hindu in the subcontinent ^Archie Roosevelt, For Lust of

Knowing, Boston: Little, Brown, 1988, pp. 332-333.

manifests itself now not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India but also in intensifying religious strife within India between increasingly

militant Hindu groups and India's substantial Muslim minority. The destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in December 1992 brought to the fore

the issue of whether India will remain a secular democratic state or become a Hindu one. In East Asia, China has outstanding territorial disputes

with most of its The crescent-shaped neighbors. It has pursued a ruthless policy toward the Buddhist people of Tibet, and it is Islamic bloc, trom

the pursuing an increasingly ruthless policy toward bulge of Africa to ^^^ Turkic-Muslim minority. With the Cold War over, the underlying

differences between central Asia, has C\{m2i and the United States have reasserted bloody borders. themselves in areas such as human rights,

trade and weapons proliferation. These differences are unlikely to moderate. A "new cold war," Deng Xaioping reportedly asserted in 1991, is

under way between China and America. The same phrase has been applied to the increasingly difficult relations between Japan and the United

States. Here cultural difference exacerbates economic conflict. People on each side allege racism on the other, but at least on the American side

the antipathies are not racial but cultural. The basic values, attitudes, behavioral patterns of the two societies could hardly be more different.

The economic issues between the United States and Europe are no less serious than those between the United States and Japan, but they do

not have the same political salience and emotional intensity because the differences between American culture and European culture are so

much less than those between American civilization and Japanese civilization. The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent

to which they are likely to be characterized by violence. Economic competition clearly predominates between the American and Europeansubcivilizations of the West and between both of them and Japan. On the Eurasian continent, however, the proliferation of ethnic conflict,

epitomized at the extreme in "ethnic cleansing," has not been totally random. It has been most frequent and most violent between groups

belonging to different civilizations. In Eurasia the great historic fault [34] FOREIGN AFFAIRSThe Clash of Civilizations? lines between civilizations

are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to

central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India,

Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders. CIVILIZATION RALLYING: TH E KIN-COUNTRY SYNDROME GROUPS

OR STATES belonging to one civilization that become involved in war with people from a different civilization naturally try to rally support from

other members of their own civilization. As the post-Cold War world evolves, civilization commonality, what H. D. S. Greenway has termed the

"kin-country" syndrome, is replacing political ideology and traditional balance of power considerations as the principal basis for cooperation

and coalitions. It can be seen gradually emerging in the post-Cold War conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia. None of these was

a fiill-scale war between civilizations, but each involved some elements of civilizational rallying, which seemed to become more important as

the conflict continued and which may provide a foretaste of the future. First, in the Gulf War one Arab state invaded another and then fought a

coalition of Arab, Western and other states. While only a few Muslim governments overtly supported Saddam Hussein, many Arab elites

privately cheered him on, and he was highly popular among large sections of the Arab publics. Islamic fundamentalist movements universally

supported Iraq rather than the Westernbacked governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Forswearing Arab nationalism, Saddam Hussein

explicitly invoked an Islamic appeal. He and his supporters attempted to deflne the war as a war between civilizations. "It is not the world

against Iraq," as Safar Al-Hawali, dean of Islamic Studies at the Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, put it in a widely circulated tape. "It is the

West against Islam." Ignoring the rivalry between Iran and Iraq, the chief Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for a holy war

against the West: "The struggle against American aggression, greed, plans and policies wiU be counted as a jihad, and anybody who is killed on

that path is a martyr." "This is a war," King Hussein of Jordan argued, "against all Arabs and aU Muslims and not against Iraq alone." The rallying

of substantial sections of Arab elites and publics behind Saddam Hussein caused those Arab governments in the antiIraq coalition to moderate

their activities and temper their public statements. Arab governments opposed or distanced themselves from subsequent Western efforts to

apply pressure on Iraq, including enforcement of a no-fly zone in the summer of 1992 and the bombing of Iraq in January 1993. The Western-

Soviet-Turkish-Arab antiIraq coalition of 1990 had by 1993 become a coalition of almost only the West and Kuwait against Iraq. Muslims


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ideas produce instead a reaction [40] FOREIGN AFFAIRSThe Clash of Civilizations? against "human rights imperialism" and a reaffirmation of

indigenous values, as can be seen in the support for religious fundamentalism by the younger generation in non-Western cultures. The very

notion that there could be a "universal civilization" is a Western idea, directly at odds with the particularism of most Asian societies and their

emphasis on what distinguishes one people from another. Indeed, the author of a review of ioo comparative studies of values in different

societies concluded that "the values that are most important in the West are least important worldwide."^ In the political realm, of course,

these differences are most manifest in the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to induce other peoples to adopt Western

ideas concerning democracy and human rights. Modern democratic government originated in the West. When it has developed in non-Western

societies it has usually been the product of Western colonialism or imposition. The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be, inKishore Mahbubani's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest" and the responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power

and values.^ Those responses generally take one or a combination of three forms. At one extreme, non-Western states can, like Burma and

North Korea, attempt to pursue a course of isolation, to insulate their societies from penetration or "corruption" by the West, and, in effect, to

opt out of participation in the Western-dominated global community. The costs of this course, however, are high, and few states have pursued

it exclusively. A second alternative, the equivalent of "band-wagoning" in international relations theory, is to attempt to join the West and

accept its values and institutions. The third alternative is to attempt to "balance" the West by developing economic and military power and

cooperating with other nonWestern societies against the West, while preserving indigenous values and institutions; in short, to modernize but

not to Westernize.

IN TH E FUTURE, as people differentiate themselves by civilization, countries with

large numbers of peoples of different civilizations, such as the Soviet Union and

Yugoslavia, are candidates for dismemberment. Some other countries have a fair

degree of cultural homogeneity but are divided over v^hether their society belongs toone civilization or another. These are torn countries. Their leaders typically wish to

pursue a bandwagoning strategy and to make their countries members of the West,

but the history, culture and traditions of their countries are non-Western.The most obviousand prototypical torn country is Turkey. The late twentieth-century leaders of Turkey have followed in the Attatiirk tradition and defined Turkey

as a modern, secular, Western nation state. They allied Turkey with the West in NATO and in the Gulf War; they applied for membership in the

European Community. At the same time, however, elements in Turkish society have supported an Islamic revival and have argued that Turkey is

basically a Middle Eastern Muslim society. In addition, while the elite of Turkey has defined Turkey as a Western society, the elite of the West

refuses to accept Turkey as such. Turkey will not become a member of the European Community, and the real reason, as President Ozal said, "is

that we are Muslim and they are Christian and they don't say that." Having rejected Mecca, and then being rejected by Brussels, where does

Turkey look? Tashkent may be the ansv^er. The end of the Soviet Union gives Turkey the opportunity to become the leader of a revived Turkic

civilization involving seven countries from the borders of Greece to those of China. Encouraged by the West, Turkey is making strenuous efforts

to carve out this new identity for itself. During the past decade Mexico has assumed a position somewhat similar to that of Turkey. Just as

Turkey abandoned its historic opposition to Europe and attempted to join Europe, Mexico has stopped defining itself by its opposition to the

United States and is instead attempting to imitate the United States and to join it in the North American Free Trade Area. Mexican leaders are

engaged in the great task of redefining Mexican identity and have introduced fundamen- [42] FOREIGN AFFAIRSThe Clash of Civilizations? tal

economic reforms that eventually will lead to fundamental political change. In 1991 a top adviser to President Carlos Salinas de Gortari

described at length to me all the changes the Salinas government was making. When he finished, I remarked: "That's most impressive. It seems

to me that basically you want to change Mexico from a Latin American country into a North American country." He looked at me with surprise

and exclaimed: "Exactly! That's precisely what we are trying to do, but of course we could never say so publicly." As his remark indicates, in

Mexico as in Turkey, significant elements in society resist the redefinition of their country's identity. In Turkey, European-oriented leaders have

to make gestures to Islam ((Dzal's pilgrimage to Mecca); so also Mexico's North American-oriented leaders have to make gestures to those who

hold Mexico to be a Latin American country (Salinas' Ibero-American Guadalajara summit). Historically Turkey has been the most profoundly

torn country. For the United States, Mexico is the most immediate torn country. Globally the most important torn country is Russia. The

question of whether Russia is part of the West or the leader of a distinct SlavicOrthodox civilization has been a recurring one in Russian history.

That issue was obscured by the communist victory in Russia, which imported a Western ideology, adapted it to Russian conditions and then

challenged the West in the name of that ideology. The dominance of communism shut off the historic debate over Westernization versus

Russification. With communism discredited Russians once again face that question. President Yeltsin is adopting Western principles and goalsand seeking to make Russia a "normal" country and a part of the West. Yet both the Russian elite and the Russian public are divided on this

issue. Among the more moderate dissenters, Sergei Stankevich argues that Russia should reject the "Atlanticist" course, which would lead it "to

become European, to become a part of the world economy in rapid and organized fashion, to become the eighth member of the Seven, and to

put particular emphasis on Germany and the United States as the two dominant members of the Atlantic alliance." While also rejecting an

exclusively Eurasian policy, Stankevich nonethele argues that Russia should give priority to the protection of Russians in other countries,

emphasize its Turkic and Muslim connections, and promote "an appreciable redistribution of our resources, our options, our ties, and our

interests in favor of Asia, of the eastern direction." People of this persuasion criticize Yeltsin for subordinating Russia's interests to those of the

West, for reducing Russian military strength, for failing to support traditional friends such as Serbia, and for pushing economic and political

reform in ways injurious to the Russian people. Indicative of this trend is the new popularity of the ideas of Petr Savitsky, who in the 1920s

argued that Russia was a unique Eurasian civilization.^ More extreme dissidents voice much more blatantly nationalist, anti-Western and anti-


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Semitic views, and urge Russia to redevelop its military strength and to establish closer ties with China and Muslim countries. The people of

Russia are as divided as the elite. An opinion survey in European Russia in the spring of 1992 revealed that 40 percent of the public had positive

attitudes toward the West and 36 percent had negative attitudes. As it has been for much of its history, Russia in the early 1990s is truly a torn

country. To redefine its civilization identity, a torn country must meet three requirements. First, its political and economic elite has to be

generally supportive of and enthusiastic about this move. Second, its public has to be willing to acquiesce in the redefinition. Third, the

dominant groups in the recipient civilization have to be willing to embrace the convert. All three requirements in large part exist with respect to

Mexico. The first two in large part exist with respect to Turkey. It is not clear that any of them exist with respect to Russia's joining the West.

The confiict between liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism was between ideologies which, despite their major differences, ostensiblyshared ultimate goals of freedom, equality and prosperity. A traditional, authoritarian, nationalist Russia could have quite different goals. A

Western democrat could carry on an intellectual debate with a Soviet Marxist. It would be virtually 'Sergei Stankevich, "Russia in Search of

Itself," The National Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 47-51; Daniel Schneider, "A Russian Movement Rejects Western Tilt," Christian Science

Monitor, Feb. 5,1993, pp. 5-7. [44] FOREIGN AFFAIRSThe Clash of Civilizations^ impossible for him to do that with a Russian traditionalist. If, as

the Russians stop behaving like Marxists, they reject liberal democracy and begin behaving like Russians but not like Westerners, the relations

between Russia and the West could again become distant and conflictual.^ THE CONFUCIAN-ISLAMIC CONNECTION T H E OBSTACLES TO non-

Western countries joining the West vary considerably. They are least for Latin American and East European countries. They are greater for the

Orthodox countries of the former Soviet Union. They are still greater for Muslim, Confucian, Hindu and Buddhist societies. Japan has

established a unique position for itself as an associate member of the West: it is in the West in some respects but clearly not of the West in

important dimensions. Those countries that for reason of culture and power do not wish to, or cannot, join the West compete with the West by

developing their own economic, military and political power. They do this by promoting their internal development and by cooperating with

other nonWestern countries. The most prominent form of this cooperation is the Confucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge

Western interests, values and power. Almost without exception. Western countries are reducing their military power; under Yeltsin's leadership

so also is Russia. China, North Korea and several Middle Eastern states, however, are significantly expanding their military capabilities. They are

doing this by the import of arms from Western and non-Western sources and by the development of indigenous arms industries. One result is

the emergence of what Charles Krauthammer has called "Weapon side is attempting not to balance but to limit and prevent that arms build-up

while at the same time reducing its own military capabilities. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WEST THI S ARTICLE DOES not argue that civilization

identities will replace all other identities, that nation states will disappear, that each civilization will become a single coherent political entity,

that groups within a civilization v\dll not conflict with and even fight each other. This paper does set forth the hypotheses that differences

between civilizations are real and important; civilization-consciousness is increasing; conflict between civilizations wall supplant ideological and

other forms of conflict as the dominant global form of conflict; international relations, historically a game played out within Western

civilization, vnll increasingly be de-Westernized and become a game in which non-Western civilizations are actors and not simply objects;

successful political, security and economic international institutions are more likely to develop within civilizations than across civilizations;

conflicts between groups in different civilizations will

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International Relations Study Guide