Civilizational Conflicts Research Articles

Нездоланна енергетика розуму – освіти, науки і культури – в стратегії цивілізаційного розвитку людства

Perhaps, the most mysterious phenomenon in the world is man, and among his qualities it is the mind. Whether created “from the dust of the earth” or brought from distant cosmic depths, formed as a result of the evolution of nature or some other yet to be recognized miracle, man has conquered nature, created a univer­sally artificial world, a «second nature» – culture, and has now become not only the master of the Planet but is also looking more and more pragmatically into the Cosmos. The first attempts to master it (as well as the entire previous path of conquering nature) suggest that man possesses some incredibly secret power that allows him to rise and dominate the world. This power is the power of the mind – science, education and culture. It united all other human qualities into a single energy complex, concentrated them in the ability to work, thanks to which it mastered nature, and directed man into a civilized path. Philosophers studied both the historical sources of the origin of the mind, as well as the patterns of its development and the prospects for further application in society and the world. The mind finds various, sometimes unexpected ways for its embodiment – not only in science, philosophy, education, but also in folk traditions, in the prophecies of mystics and maxims of sages. At the same time, the loss of reason can take vari­ous forms – from “mind loss” to the loss of human values at work to the madness of war. The departure from “reason” creates civilizational conflicts, which mostly end in war. The current one is the deepest and most threatening. It is exacerbated by the ruscists’ threat to use nuclear weapons. To put an end to ruscism, to eradi­cate violence, to ensure the Ukrainian victory and to establish guaranteed peace and cooperation between nations – this is the «wisdom» of the mind, its inex­haustible energy, which guarantees new prospects for the civilizational progress of mankind.

Review of Religion in International Relations Theory

While religion’s presence in society is not disputed, its significance in international relations (ir) and the severity of its challenge to the largely ‘secular’ international relations discipline (IR) is still debatable. Also noteworthy is the way IR (theoretical) literature has defined and considered religion: caged in certain dimensions and constrained to specific roles. While Huntington started the debate on civilizational conflicts, several studies in the past few decades have contested the validity of not only ‘warring’ civilizations thesis but also how to incorporate religion in IR. There are fewer studies that discuss in-depth, various theoretical challenges that different groups of scholars have tried to tackle in IR, and the main gaps in those studies. This paper seeks to fill that gap by proposing a different review of the existing IR literature, i.e., in light of key trends in the IR’s quest to incorporate religion into existing theories or newer frameworks. In that context, the paper argues that key works in the field can be classified according to where they place religion in (existing) IR. Three important developments in the IR scholarship as thus proposed: i) studies incorporating Religion in traditional IR theory, ii) Religious IR theories/approaches and frameworks of analysis, and iii) finding secular in the post-secularizing IR. The paper examines the above trends in detail and critically analyzes each development, followed by a brief discussion on the methodological avenues for studying different religions under the same framework.

Трансформация духовно-нравственных исканий общества (от премодерна к постмодерну) и ее влияние на государственно-правовые институты

The article analyzes the dynamics of the development of spiritual and moral searches of society in historical retrospect, including identifying current trends and evaluating the transformation of religiosity in the current period under the influence of postmodern ideas. Correlations between changes in fundamental paradigms and changes in the ideological foundations of the functioning of state and legal institutions are revealed. It is determined that each of the four types of society — archaic, traditional, industrial and post-industrial (informational) — has its own specific forms of religiosity that determine the worldview and directly affect the social (state) system. Thus, the early forms of religious beliefs of an archaic society did not create prerequisites for the emergence of a social hierarchy, and, consequently, statehood (which is confirmed by the social practice of preserved archaic societies of our time). The archaic society is gradually replaced by the traditional one, hierarchy, social inequality, Patriarchy appear, political Genesis is carried out, and power is legitimized through religious institutions. It is in traditional societies that polytheism is replaced by monotheism, which promotes (and is used for this purpose as a state ideology) the strengthening of statehood. The state-legal institutions of traditional societies have no alternative but to be sacred. The main form of government of the state is monarchy (theocratic or clerical). The transition to modernity takes place under the slogan of desacralization and rationalization, in the ideological field this is manifested in the formation of “quasi-religions” or secular “religions”: Nazism, communism, liberalism (these ideologies replace God in the public consciousness, Absolute (Ultimate) reality — the ultimate reality, while preserving certain features of the religious: ritual, dogmas, symbolism, meaning-making, mythological, etc.). These ideologies determine the global transformation of the geopolitical picture of the world in the XIX—XX centuries. There is the overthrow of the monarchy (or the transition to parliamentary forms of monarchies), the collapse of empires, the establishment of the Republican form of government as the dominant one, with the choice of the appropriate ideology as the basis for state-legal construction. Spiritual search in modern societies was pushed out of public discourse into the area of personal choice. By the end of the XX — beginning of the XXI century, the West begins processes that can be described as the beginning of the transition from modern to postmodern. The transformation of society’s religiosity is characterized by contradictory trends — the emergence of «hyperreal religions» (parody religions, Internet religions, alternative (non-traditional) religious movements), a return to archaic beliefs (neo-paganism), and the activation of fundamentalism. In the context of globalization and legal integration, these processes directly affect other countries (paradigmally still at the stage of modernity and even pre-modernity), which causes civilizational conflicts and destabilizes international relations. Taking these trends into account, as well as understanding the paradigmatic heterogeneity of both the world as a whole and Russian society, is necessary in the implementation of law-making and management activities, domestic and foreign policy.
 Acknowledgments: The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 20-011-31235 “Non-traditio­nal religiosity as a form of social activity in the postmo­dern era”.

Приклад періодизації всесвітньої історії архівів у світлі цивілізаційного підходу та еволюції носія інформації

The purpose of the study is to develop a version of the periodization of the Universal history of archives, taking into account the civilizational approach and the evolution of the data medium. The research methodology is based on the proposals of the Soviet-Russian historian-archivist Eugeny Starostin concerning the significance of the data medium for periodization of the Universal history of archives and the ideas of civilizationists. The scientific research is new in the development of the periodization of the Universal history of archives in a horizontal plane, which takes into consideration the interaction and mutual influences of civilizations as well as demonstrates the results of their archival efforts. Also, the author identifies a data medium typical for each civilization. Conclusion. Applying a civilizational approach to develop the periodization of the Universal history of archives, scientists are not limited to building linear (rising) models with rigid links between components. Since each civilization is a unique, autonomous, self-sufficient, and self-governing system, it is possible to create a horizontal model of the periodization of the history of archives. In this case, the scholars can integrate more civilizations in the horizontal model or separate them into subgroups without difficulty. Human history demonstrates the mutual influence of civilizations; civilizational conflicts often have devastating consequences in the field of preserving the collective human memory and transferring it to future generations. Sometimes, civilizations destroy their historical heritage voluntarily. However, in general, the archives are often taken away by the implacable brutality of the time. In this context, the nature of the information data medium plays a decisive role in the periodization of the Universal history of archives. The function of documents storage is mainly determined by the nature of the data media. In the presented version of the periodization, 10 civilizations are taken into account, including the modern civilization. Each possessed specific typical data media identified below. Thus, the offered version of periodization is as follows: «the epoch of clay tablets» – Mesopotamian civilization (6000–300 BC); «the epoch of papyrus» – Egyptian civilization (5500–300 BC); «the epoch of the wooden tabula» – Greco-Roman (classical) civilization (1500 (1100) BC – (500) 600 AD); «the epoch of steatite tablets» – the Indus Valley (Harappa) civilization (3700–1300 BC); «the epoch of bamboo slips» – the Ancient Chinese Civilization (2000 BC – 400 AD); «the epoch of Amate» – the Mesoamerican civilization (1000 BC – 1550 AD); «the epoch of khipu» – the Andean civilization (3700–1800 BC); «the epoch of tanned parchment» – the Byzantine civilization (395–1453); «the epoch of paper» – Northwest Old World (Western, Orthodox and Islamic) civilization (from Christmas to the end of XX cent.); «the epoch of digital data medium» – modern civilization (from the late XXth – early XXI cent. and going).

The Importance of Civilizational Imagination in Contemporary Geopolitics

The heritage of civilizations in geopolitics is progressively used to consolidate the vision of a multipolar world and, thereby, to establish its important place in the arena of international affairs. Civilizational heritage and civilizational imagination become increasingly important geopolitical factors which begin to shape the relations between China, Russia, Turkey, the United States and the European Union. In global politics during the last decades, in one way or another, Samuel Huntington’s ideas of the interactions between civilizations and their development externalised with the stress on the increase of civilizational conflicts. These ideas made great impact on political elites of main world powers. The author of this article—drawing attention to the importance of cultural and especially religious factors for civilizational processes and the interactions between civilizations, which were also raised by Huntington—examines the peculiarities of the Russian and Turkish civilizational and geopolitical discourses, and connects to those discourses the current geopolitics pursued by the political elites of these countries. The promotion of the current role of the civilization and its geopolitical legacy highlights the uniqueness of civilizations and creates an effort to strengthen the civilizational imagination and to use the civilizational imperial experience and its cultural heritage in current political events. The Russian discourse is characterised by the historical anti-Western and anti-European attitude of Eurasian Messianic civilizational distinctiveness, while the Turkish rhetoric is characterised by the elevation of the imperial Ottoman Islamic cultural and political heritage. Both the discourses are linked by an imperial mentality, orientation towards a multi-civilizational and multi-polar world as well as the demand to create a new world order in line with such an emerging worldview. The article also discusses some of the ideas prevailing in the European Union that underpin the policy of creating a post-national European cosmopolitan community. However, such discourse lacks a cultural, civilizational as well as religious heritage, which brings people together and can form a long-lasting sense of civilizational community.

Civilizational Structure of Regional Integration Organizations

The paper advances a new comprehensive complex approach to the investigation of the civilizational aspects in the development of regional associations of countries. The research starts with the overview of historical dimensions of the civilizational approach and the contribution of the founding scholars to its development. It continues with the analysis of the scientific and methodological input of the followers and the critics of this approach. The authors suggest their theoretical approach to the identification of the modern local civilizations according to six parameters: natural, biological, technical, economic, social, and governing. The civilizational affiliation of countries and the civilizational structure of major 17 regional associations of countries are identified. The results demonstrate that some regional groups have been more homogeneous in terms of civilizational composition, others – less homogeneous, which does not interfere with their dynamic development. However, the logic of the historical dynamics of human development indicates the inevitability of changing the current situation through prolonged civilizational conflicts resulting in significant changes in the global social dynamics and the civilizational structure of the world and of regional associations of countries. The identification of the civilization structure of countries and regional associations contributes to the rational decision-making in the areas of international economic relations and to the formation of the integration/disintegration policies on the national and regional levels. It is predicted that from 2030 global social dynamics will undergo a fundamental break- through that will radically change the civilizational structure of the world and regional unions of countries.

JEWISH MUSEUMS IN EUROPE: GENESIS AND PROFILE

In the last decades of the 20th c. and following 2000, a real 'boom' in founding Jewish museums throughout Europe could be observed. A lot of new institutions were established, and old ones were modernized. All this resulting from the growing urge to overcome silence over the Holocaust, to square up with the past, and to open the debate on the multiethnicity of the history of Europe. This, in turn, was favoured by the occurring phenomena: Europe’s integration, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the development of democratic civil societies. New Jewish museums established in Europe, though inevitably making a reference to the Shoah, are not Holocaust museums as such, and they do not tell the story of the genocide. Their goal is mainly to restore the memory of the centuries of the Jewish presence in a given country, region, and town: they tell this story as part of the history of the given place, and aim at having it incorporated into the official national history. Moreover, their mission is to show the presence and importance of the Jewish heritage in today’s world, as well as to ask questions related to Jewish identity in contemporary Europe. The civilizational conflicts that arose after the relatively peaceful 1990s, outlined a new framework for the activity of Jewish museums which, interestingly, gradually go beyond the peculiar Jewish experience in order to reach a universal level. With such activities they try to promote pluralism and multicultural experience, shape inclusive attitudes, give voice to minorities, speak out against all the manifestations of discrimination and exclusion. Since these museums deal with such sensitive challenging issues, they have to well master the structure of their message on every level: that of architecture, script, exhibition layout, and accompanying programmes, thanks to which they unquestionably contribute to creating new standards and marking out new trends in today’s museology as well as in museum learning.

Управление и экономика: к вопросу о целях развития

The article discusses the relationship of economic management with the economic basis. The thesis is substantiated that effective economic management depends on economic ideal, to which society will strive to achieve. The world surrounding a person constantly retains its essential fundamental properties. And in this way it is perfect. Man spiritually assumes himself above nature. Potentially, he sees himself as a master of the natural world. However, acting in nature as an independent free force, he constantly reveals his imperfect. Because of his limited knowledge of the infinitely complex nature, everything that a person creates is imperfect. The path to perfection is the natural goal of man’s life on earth. However, on this common path, all nations and their large groups – civilizations – are moving along different roads. And in modern conditions, these differences have reached a dangerous feature – more and more the confrontation of civilizations is emerging. The historical feature of the Russian economic worldview is the absolute priority of moral ideals. Its deep economic ideals are not aggressive in relation to other countries and peoples. These ideals are in finding and multiplying of good. Therefore, potentially, Russia can counteract the negative scenario of the development of civilizational conflicts.

Religious legal systems: challenges of the modernity

The influence of world globalization processes on the development of the religious legal systems has been analyzed in the paper. Globalization processes in the XXI century are regarding individuals, nations, and civilizations. Global transformations lead to qualitative changes in the socio-cultural relations and actualize a wide range of issues which are related to the formation of a new world culture. Modern globalization takes diverse range of public relations in its own orbit. The relationship between the legal systems in the twentieth century is some of the most important aspects of this process. However, the interaction of legal systems has significant differences from the interaction of economies of different countries. There are actual economic relations domination of Western financial and economic institutions and standardization of relevant rules. But the attempts to apply this approach to law lead to resistance to Western standards and the spread of major civilizational conflicts in different parts of the world. Globalization should be based on respect for cultural, religious and legal diversity. It has to ensure preservation of forced “Westernisation”. Significant differences in the impact of globalization on the convergence of legal systems of Western law (Romano-Germanic and Anglo-American) and their impact on religious legal systems of Muslim, Hindu and Jewish law must be emphasized. The religious legal systems are not exposed to other systems and the related changes. This is due to such features as the divine nature, increased stability, specific sources of law etc. An important issue that requires further study is the reverse influence which religious law exercises to secularized modern legal system.

A Cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism

This essay explores anti-Islamic sentiment in black Africa, specifically in the period of decolonization and national independence. The primary rhetorical strategy of the anti-Islamism in question was to couple Islam as a religion with the ‘Arab race’ for the purpose of portraying the religion as a foreign and colonial one. While there was conflict and antagonism between Muslim and non-Muslim Africans prior to European colonialism, these civilizational conflicts were retooled as racial categories and conflicts, a development that reflected the impact of European colonialism and its epistemologies. In response, many African novelists have used fiction as an instrument to revisit and explore Islam's presence in black Africa, to revalidate its formative and historical importance, and to observe its autonomy from any race or ethnicity.

The rise of religion and the fall of the civilization paradigm as explanations for intra-state conflict

The study presented here compares the impact of Samuel Huntington's concept of civilizations and that of religion on domestic conflict between 1960 and 2004 using the State Failure data set. The results show that examining the religious dimension of domestic conflict provides a better understanding of the dynamics of domestic conflict than does Huntington's concept of civilization. The results show that Huntington's predictions for conflict have not come to fruition as of 2004. Civilizational conflicts are a minority of all conflicts. Muslims, while engaging in a significant amount of inter-civilizational or inter-religious conflict, primarily fight other Muslims. When one takes population size into account, Muslims participate in a disproportionate amount of conflict. In absolute terms, Muslims participated in the majority of all religious conflict for the entire period covered by this study and in 2003 and 2004. Finally, religion increasingly impacts on domestic conflict. Religious conflicts—including religious wars like those in Afghanistan and Algeria, which are not civilizational but clearly between factions within the same religion—are consistently more common than civilizational conflict and became a majority of all conflict starting in 2002. This rise in religious conflict as a proportion of all domestic conflict is not a post-9/11 phenomenon, but is, rather, the result of processes that date back at least to the late 1970s.

Why geography matters: three challenges facing America: climate change, the rise of China, and global terrorism

Over the next half century, the human population, divided by culture and economics and armed with weapons of mass destruction, will expand to nearly 9 billion people. Abrupt climate change may throw the global system into chaos; China will emerge as a superpower; and Islamic terrorism and insurgency will threaten vital American interests. How can we understand these and other global challenges? Harm de Blij has a simple answer: by improving our understanding of the world's geography. De Blij demonstrates how geography's perspectives yield unique and penetrating insights into the interconnections that mark our shrinking world. Centuries ago a surge of climate change halted China's maritime plans; more recently, environmental calamity altered the course of geopolitical events in East Asia; today, terrorists look for failed and malfunctioning states to base their operations--and some of these are in our own hemisphere. Preparing for climate change, averting a cold war with China, defeating terrorism: all of this requires geographic knowledge. In Why Geography Matters, de Blij makes an urgent call to restore geography to America's educational curriculum. He shows how and why the U.S. has become the world's most geographically illiterate society of consequence--and demonstrates that this geographic illiteracy is a direct risk to America's national security. In this personal and engaging book, de Blij provides a geographer's perspective on the challenges of this new century. As he states, We are crossing the threshold to a century that will witness massive environmental change, major population shifts, persistent civilizational conflicts [and] while geographic knowledge by itself cannot solve these problems, they will not be effectively approached without it.

Paradigm Lost: Huntington's Unfulfilled Clash of Civilizations Prediction into the 21st Century

This study addresses a gap in the quantitative literature which tests Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization theory (CoC). Nearly all of the quantitative studies which directly address the theory and most of those which indirectly test it find Huntington's theory lacking. However, few of these studies include data more recent than the mid-1990s. As the CoC theory posits that its predictions apply to the post-Cold War era (1990 onward) and will become increasingly apparent as time goes on, these predictions need to be examined for time periods more recent than the mid-1990s; however, some studies do not even have data as recent as 1990. Accordingly, this study examines domestic conflict using the Minorities at Risk data set (1945–2000) and the State Failure data set (1955–2001). The findings of this study are consistent with previous ones in that there is no sufficient evidence to support Huntington's paradigmatical claims. Civilizational conflicts were less common than non-civilizational ones for the entire time period tested. Also, civilizational conflicts did not become more violent relative to non-civilizational conflicts in the post-Cold War era. While the data used in this study are current only through the end of 2001, anecdotal evidence suggests that even after 9/11 his predictions, including those regarding an Islamic—Western clash, are unlikely to come true unless the prediction itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America; Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism

Over the next half century, the human population, divided by culture and economics and armed with weapons of mass destruction, will expand to nearly 9 billion people. Abrupt climate change may throw the global system into chaos; China will emerge as a superpower; and Islamic terrorism and insurgency will threaten vital American interests. How can we understand these and other global challenges? Harm de Blij has a simple answer: by improving our understanding of the world's geography. De Blij demonstrates how geography's perspectives yield unique and penetrating insights into the interconnections that mark our shrinking world. Centuries ago a surge of climate change halted China's maritime plans; more recently, environmental calamity altered the course of geopolitical events in East Asia; today, terrorists look for failed and malfunctioning states to base their operations--and some of these are in our own hemisphere. Preparing for climate change, averting a cold war with China, defeating terrorism: all of this requires geographic knowledge. In Why Geography Matters, de Blij makes an urgent call to restore geography to America's educational curriculum. He shows how and why the U.S. has become the world's most geographically illiterate society of consequence--and demonstrates that this geographic illiteracy is a direct risk to America's national security. In this personal and engaging book, de Blij provides a geographer's perspective on the challenges of this new century. As he states, We are crossing the threshold to a century that will witness massive environmental change, major population shifts, persistent civilizational conflicts [and] while geographic knowledge by itself cannot solve these problems, they will not be effectively approached without it.

Civilizational Conflicts: More Frequent, Longer, and Bloodier?

Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis considers interstate and intrastate conflicts between groups of different civilizations to be more frequent, longer, and more violent than conflicts within civilizations. The clash of civilizations should be the principal issue in world politics after the end of the Cold War, and it should especially shape the relationship between the West and Islam. This article examines Huntington’s hypotheses on the basis of a dataset derived from the Uppsala Conflict Data Project. A new research design uses conflict-years in order to deal with conflicts both between and within states. It also tries to find the ‘core’ intercivilizational conflicts. The analyses distinguish three periods after World War II, and each of them is characterized by a higher number of intercivilizational conflict-years than the previous one. There are two points of transition, in the 1960s and 1980s, but the trends in the clash of civilizations seem to be unaffected by the end of the Cold War. The relationship between civilizational difference and duration of conflict is not statistically significant. Conflicts within civilizations are less likely to escalate into war during the post-Cold War period than during the Cold War period, while the intensity of conflicts between civilizations remains as high as in the Cold War. The majority of intercivilizational conflict-years during the post-Cold War period have involved Islamic groups. Nevertheless, the frequency of conflict between the Islamic and Sinic (Confucian) civilizations and the West remains marginal.

A Newer, Truer, and More Moral Realism?

Fire on the Rim: The Cultural Dynamics of East/West Power Politics. By William H. Thornton. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 240 pp., $72.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-7425-1706-3), $26.95 paper (ISBN: 0-7425-1707-1). William H. Thornton's Fire on the Rim: The Cultural Dynamics of East/West Power Politics is a sustained, eloquent, and combative critique of realism, neorealism, reactionary modernization, and neoliberal globalization. It is also a bold effort to construct a framework of moral realism through the systematic incorporation of culture into international relations theory. Thornton's new moral geopolitics represents a cultural realism of the Left (p. 22), but more than anything else, Fire on the Rim convincingly demonstrates that it is quite possible to theorize about global politics from places other than Europe and North America. Fire on the Rim will no doubt make its mark on the debates about cultural and civilizational conflicts that are bound to increase and deepen as globalization continues. In the first chapter Thornton sets the stage for his in-depth analysis of Asian countries with a general critique of the theories and models used to understand the dynamics of Asia's integration into a global system dominated by Western values and ideas. He derides the sterility of the idealist–realist debates in international relations theory, but follows up with attacks on postmodernism and postcolonialism as well. Postmodernism is criticized for its alleged antipolitics; postcolonialism for its anti-Westernism and supposed fetish for difference. Asian theories and models also come under Thornton's scrutiny. The Chinese model of development, namely authoritarian developmentalism, is the subject of a spirited critique; but Taiwan and Korea are highly praised for balancing development and democracy. In Thornton's view, Japan falls somewhere in between. The South Korean political-economic model is painted as radical (unlike Singapore's growth-first strategy), but also as the one approach that might lead other Asian countries to prosperity combined with …

Ethnic Minorities and the Clash of Civilizations: A Quantitative Analysis of Huntington's Thesis

Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis has sparked considerable debate. Huntington argues that post-Cold War conflicts will revolve primarily around civilizations. This article uses the Minorities at Risk dataset to provide a quantitative element to the civilizations debate, which, thus far, has been based mostly on anecdotal arguments. The article focuses on whether there has been a rise in both the quantity and intensity of ethnic conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations since the end of the Cold War. Overall, the analysis reveals several problems with Huntington's argument. First, Huntington's classification of civilizations is difficult to operationalize. Secondly, civilizational conflicts constitute a minority of ethnic conflicts. Thirdly, conflicts between the West and both the Sinic/Confucian and Islamic civilizations, which Huntington predicts will be the major conflicts in the post-Cold War era, constitute a small minority of civilizational conflicts. Finally, there is no statistically significant evidence that the intensity of civilizational ethnic conflicts have risen relative to other types of ethnic conflicts since the end of the Cold War.

Two Civilizations and Ethnic Conflict: Islam and the West

Samuel Huntington's controversial `Clash of Civilizations' argument posits, among other things, that the extent of both international and domestic conflict between `civilizations' will increase with the end of the Cold War. This is expected to be especially true of clashes involving the Western and Islamic civilizations and even more so for clashes between these two civilizations. This article uses the Minorities at Risk dataset, along with independently collected variables, to test these propositions with regard to ethnic conflict, which Huntington includes in his theory under the title of `fault line' conflicts within states. The results are examined from three perspectives: globally, from the perspective of the Islamic civilization, and from the perspective of the Western civilization. Globally, there has been little change in the ratio of civilizational versus non-civilizational ethnic conflict since the end of the Cold War. There has also been little change in Islamic involvement in civilizational ethnic conflict since the end of the Cold War. However, from a Western perspective, the proportion of civilizational conflicts involving Western groups that are with Islamic groups increased dramatically after the end of the Cold War. Thus, the results show that if one focuses narrowly on the perspective of the Western civilization, there is some support for Huntington's claims regarding Islam, but not for a general increase in civilizational conflict. However, from the perspective of the Islamic civilization and from a broader global perspective, there is little support for Huntington's arguments.

Past as Preface: Civilizational Politics and the `Third' Balkan War

The concept of civilization has gained political as well as theoretical attention in the 1990s owing to Samuel P. Huntington's influential thesis about civilizational conflicts being the new conflict formation of the post-Cold War era. It is the aim of this article to problematize Huntington's claim that one particular reading of the Bosnian War follows from adopting a civilizational optic. Huntington argues that the war took place between three different civilizations and that the West should have abstained from intervention. I will draw out competing accounts of the war through detailed examination of three sets of texts - George Kennan, the Carnegie Commission investigating the First and Second Balkan Wars and the second Carnegie Commission examining the Bosnian War - each of which is representative of a common position within the Western debate. These texts specifically foreground `civilization' as the key analytical concept but they challenge Huntington both in terms of the construction of `Balkan civilization' and in terms of the policy prescription that should be adopted by the West. Whether to read the Balkan Wars as products of civilizational continuity or Western neglect is ultimately not simply a matter of objectively measuring historical facts, but of political and moral interpretation.

Why Women Can't Run the World: International Politics According to Francis Fukuyama

This article critiques Francis Fukuyama's “Women and the Evolution of World Politics.” Questioning feminists' commitment to social constructivism, Fukuyama uses a sociobiological argument to make the claim that a world run by women would be more peaceful than one ruled by men, whose aggressive instincts he compares to those of chimpanzees at Gombe. While he sees a possibility of this “feminized world” being realized in the West, Fukuyama argues for keeping men in charge as protection against the non-Western world where aggressive men will continue to dominate politics. This article claims that, in spite of seemingly sympathetic attitudes toward feminist politics, Fukuyama's argument is deeply conservative and has the effect of not only keeping women out of politics, but also reinforcing recent arguments in IR about civilizational conflicts. His claims divert attention from more pressing feminist agendas, which include a better understanding of the disadvantaged political, economic, and social status of so many of the world's women. Rather than running the world, these disadvantages are closer to the realities of most women's lives. Preferred futures are ones in which both women and men work together to reduce unequal social structures, including hierarchical gender structures, which prevent the achievement of real security and social justice.