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Originally Posted by Ironduke
Have you read Huntington's Clash of Civilizations? I'd recommend doing a full read before making an argument on behalf of his analysis. Standing opposite of Huntington is Fukuyama's The End of History.
Fukuyama argues that liberal democracy will eventually triumph throughout the world, while Huntington maintains that the main source of conflict will be among different civilizations lead by their respective core states (of which Latin America, Africa, and Islam are completely lacking).
I've thoroughly read Huntington's work, and there are a lot gross cultural generalizations, the type of which have been consistently disproved by future course of events. For example, Latin America and Iberia were seen to be corporatist, authoritarian, devoutly religious, etc., as late as 1970, that these were intrinsic flaws in the cultures that were unlikely to be overcome. And yet within 15 years, liberal democracy was established in virtually every one of those countries. There are many parallels between Latin America/Iberia of then and the Islamic world of now... I see the Islamic world of potentially following the same course.
Instead of Russia being a core state of the Orthodox civilization with other Orthodox states bandwagoning around it as Huntington predicted was likely, we have seen that Greece has remained in the EU, Romania and Bulgaria have joined, Ukraine has liberalized and is negotiating a path towards the EU and away from Russia, Georgia as well. Russia plays what cards it can, but it only has a few hands with which it can play.
At any rate, in the 14 years since his article was published, 11 years since the book, their really hasn't been much in the course of events to validate his hypothesis.
This isn't anything civilization-related, its balancing, plain and simple. The US and India will align themselves together to balance growing Chinese power in the region. Nothing new, China aligned itself with the United States in the 1970s to balance to the Soviet Union, as India aligned itself with the USSR to balance the West in the 1950s.
Russia's been on the rebound recently if you hadn't noticed -- it has recovered from the economic shocks of the 1990s. GDP per capita has moved into the higher end of the middle-income countries. The fertility rate has rebounded to 1.4 children/woman and shows signs of growing more. There were 1 million live births in Russia last year. The death rate has fallen drastically. Its population shows signs it will stabilize in the near future.
With Putin's rebuilding, the Russian military is a potent threat, and even if it wasn't, Russia has enough nukes to deter acts of aggression by its neighbors. The only "neighbors" who may covet Russian territory is China, who wouldn't dream of it after they had their asses handed to them in the 70s.
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I thought about what you said and I can equally agree and disagree with that. Huntington theory that any future conflict will go along civilization lines as he draw them on the map – is indeed a generalization and should be revised. Most of his civilization blocks have internal differences and disputes – so we will not see a unified front in any possible clash. But this united front may not be there because of the one of the countries government position which can choose to remain friendly to another civilization due to whatever reason. In the same time population of the same country can support moving along with their “brethren” from other members of the civilization as a united movement. So in other words government will say no, but popular opinion will say yes. So in a way this is dual truth, so to speak. In details his theory is wrong, but in general it has a point.
What you call balancing also can be argued. I agree with your logic – but it is not only India for example that is trying to get together with USA against possible Chinese problems in the future. It is also Vietnam, Korea, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan (which is not truly part of only Islamic civilization). Even Japan which was feared by some in USA in 1980s for its economic pressures has changed its position and is much more accommodating today with USA partly due to the strengthening China. So here you go - you have a whole block of countries which are trying to balance, as you put it, Chinese influence. Smaller members group around bigger ones – but it is very close to his scenarios for civilization conflicts. What I see wrong in his theory is that – we should not paint the whole civilization by the same brush – it has rather different shades – so it is not a united entity.
Coming back to Russia. Russia today is quickly becoming much more aggressive and dangerous to its former republics than it used to be. Take Ukraine for example. It is equally divided between opposing Russia and supporting Russia. So it may turn out to be a part of a bigger Orthodox front against the west like Huntington predicted or it may go other way by getting even cozier with the west.
Unfortunately I didn’t read Fukuyama and cannot argue on the merits of his book – but in my mind Huntington do have a point. Despite his generalizations and mistakes in the way he produced his broad civilizations – the fault lines that he was describing are most of the time very precise. But once again - it is a matter of an opinion.