Reflections on the clash of civilizations and the reconstruction of world order

Savor a famous book carefully, there must be a lot to share. Let's write a comment and record your gains and feelings. So do you really know how to write a review? The following are my thoughts on the clash of civilizations and the reconstruction of world order, hoping to help everyone.

1996 published the book Clash of Civilizations and Reconstruction of World Order, which still shines with wisdom.

This book starts with the fusion, differentiation and conflict of civilizations, focusing on the evolution and trend of the global political pattern after the Cold War. A series of major geopolitical events from 1996 to the present 20 years have basically fulfilled the theories and predictions in the book. After reading this book, readers can have a unique perspective and analytical tools for a series of major events since the Cold War, such as the Yugoslav War, the 9 1 1 incident, the Arab Spring Movement, the Ukrainian division, the European immigration crisis and conservatism, and the relationship and evolution between China and the United States, Japan, Russia, India and Islamic countries. After reading this book, readers can look at the problems between different religions, languages and nationalities from a higher angle.

In a more practical place, this book is also very instructive for children's educational direction. Do children go to local schools or international schools? To what extent should Chinese and China traditional culture be mastered? To what extent should English be mastered? Do you want to choose a second foreign language? Which one? I have come to the conclusion that learning Chinese and English well is enough. How should I plan my future study abroad? Wait a minute.

After reading this book, we can also have more analysis and understanding of the development of the international economic structure in the coming period, which is helpful for investment. The data in the book is detailed, the logic is clear, the language is concise, fair and objective, convincing and readable.

A shortcoming that is not a shortcoming is that the author, as a westerner, mainly takes a stand from the perspective of protecting western civilization, and most of the cases and historical materials are about the conflict between western civilization and Islamic civilization and orthodox civilization, but not much about China.

Reflections on the Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order 2 Samuel samuel huntington, a famous international political scholar, was the director of the Institute of International and Regional Studies of Harvard University, the director of the American Institute of Political Studies, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine. Henry Rosovski, an emeritus professor at Harvard University, once commented that he was "obviously one of the most influential political scientists in the world in the past 50 years".

1993, Huntington published the article "Clash of Civilizations" in the American Diplomatic Quarterly, which immediately caused an uproar and stirred up a thousand waves with one stone. The "clash of civilizations" has caused a heated debate in the academic circles of the United States and even the whole world. Whether it is correct or not, such a fierce, rare and protracted debate itself proves its great influence. 1996, his masterpiece The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order came out, in which Huntington expounded and demonstrated this theory completely and systematically. This book embodies the author's wisdom, analyzes and predicts the history, present situation and future of the international situation from a unique perspective, covering politics, international relations, religion, history, demography, international law and other disciplines, and has become an indispensable classic document in the study and research of the above disciplines.

The core view of "clash of civilizations" is that after the end of the Cold War, the world situation has undergone major changes, and conflicts between countries based on ideology will be replaced by conflicts between different civilizations. "The clash of civilizations is the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on multiple civilizations is the most reliable guarantee to prevent world war."

This book is divided into five parts. In the first part, combined with the international situation in the post-cold war era, it describes the basic characteristics of the diversity of world civilizations, and puts forward that "in the future, there will be no single universal culture in the world, but many different cultures and civilizations will coexist" and that "the conflict of civilizations has replaced the competition of superpowers" in the present era. The author divides the contemporary world civilization into Chinese civilization, Japanese civilization, Indian civilization, Islamic civilization, Western civilization, Latin American civilization and African civilization, and points out that the main features that define civilization are religion and language. In addition, the author focuses on its native civilization-Western civilization.

The second part describes the development, changes and power contrast of the world's major civilizations. By demonstrating the relationship between culture and power, it is pointed out that "culture always follows power", but the rapid development of non-western society has relatively weakened western power, so the influence of the values preached by western society in non-western society is also decreasing, and with the decrease of political influence, western civilization is declining, while non-western civilization is constantly affirming itself and reviving with the development of economy and population.

The third part reveals the influence of civilization on the formation and development of the new world order. "The answer of cultural identity determines a country's position in world politics, its friends and its enemies", that is, the type of civilization is the basic basis for a country's positioning in the world order, which will have a great impact on the political and economic relations between countries. Cultural differences promote cooperation and intensify conflicts. The author used a lot of examples to prove his point. For example, NATO's success is based on the cultural identity of major countries in Western Europe and North America. As a "multicultural organization", ASEAN's cooperation is inevitably restricted, and the EU refuses to accept Turkey's membership. The root cause is that Christian EU countries cannot tolerate "an Islamic alien" joining their club. This part also analyzes the countries that have failed in the transformation of civilization, and their own "disorientation" is caused by the unstable status of civilization, which has profound warning significance for us.

After reading Huntington's book The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order, it is obvious that this is a wonderful speech by a western scholar to analyze the threat posed by the so-called "non-Western culture" countries to their systems from the political standpoint of western countries. It's just a speech. Some of his views are formed under the psychological prejudice caused by ideological differences, rather than analyzing the reasons for cooperation or conflict between different countries and different economic systems from the perspective of various cultures.

At the beginning of the book, the author said, "In this new world, the most common, important and dangerous conflict is not between social classes, between the rich and the poor, or between other groups divided by the economy, but between people belonging to different cultural entities." The purpose of listing tribal conflicts in Africa, ethnic disputes in Serbia and its vicinity, German, North Korea and Taiwan Province Strait respectively is to show that "in the post-Cold War world, culture is both a divisive force and a unifying force." I think this is an immature view.

First of all, the author regards Russia's diplomatic support to the Serbs in the Yugoslav War and the provision of funds and weapons by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Libya to the Bosnians as "due to cultural kinship", but he fails to see the relationship between interest groups. If it is true as the author said, then why did European countries, which had always rejected Jews before World War II, join the United States to support the restoration of Israel in the Middle East war? Is the opposition between western countries and Arab countries only caused by different religious cultures? Hundreds of years ago, this reason may still be valid, but in today's world structure, there is only one direct reason for the conflict between their two cultural systems-energy.

Hundreds of years ago, the brutal "Crusaders" marched to Jerusalem under the banner of "jihad" to expel pagans. In fact, a large part of their purpose was to plunder the wealth of the East. Today, hundreds of years later, the indirect purpose of NATO's help to restore Israel is to establish a stronghold in the Arab world, and the direct purpose is for oil in the desert.

When enumerating the problems of Germany, Korea and Treasure Island, the author said that "society is unified by ideology or historical environment, but divided by civilization". In my opinion, the causes of the above conflicts can not be limited to the conflict of civilizations, but the conflicts of interest groups in different regions and different ideologies. After the end of the Cold War, Germany was reunified, and the two dynasties were also seeking more dialogues. Treasure Island is a problem left over from China's history, and it will certainly be well solved without the intervention of other countries. In addition, the author describes the Treasure Island issue as "several China", which is not only a mistake in wording, but a kind of thinking limited by the Cold War mentality. Imagine how a scholar who still has the Cold War mentality can correctly and comprehensively analyze the international issues of the present era.

The author thinks that "countries with cultural affinity cooperate with each other economically and politically" exemplifies that "international organizations based on countries with the same culture are far more successful than those that try to transcend culture". However, he ignored the real reason for the continuous eastward expansion of the EU and NATO. Isn't Russia a European country? Some eastern European countries they recently absorbed belong to the same country as Russia before the Cold War. Another example is Sino-Russian relations. If before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the two countries had a little "cultural" blood relationship because of the same social system, and the two countries had a little cooperation in language, then why did Russia still maintain a stable strategic partnership with China after the disintegration of the Soviet Union? The reason is that the geopolitical situation and economic status of the two countries make the two giants have to fight side by side.

Then, to sum up, there are several reasons for political conflicts and cooperation in the world today: energy, ideology, economic interests, geostrategic relations and living space, followed by culture.

To sum up, national interests determine state relations. Obviously, Huntington's idea of using civilization to trigger conflicts and using cultural identity to solve disputes is too idealistic. However, from this book, the so-called "non-Western culture" countries can better understand what the western world thinks of them today, so as to explore better development space.