Comparative Case Studies - Week 7

Discuss “Realist Constructivism” by Samuel P. Huntington (1993). Do you agree or

disagree? With what and why?
I agree. Under the circumstances of the end of the Cold War era in 1993, came the famous article
of Samuel P. Huntington “ The Clash of Civilisations?” (1993) in the renowned periodical
Foreign Affairs. Although the title was ending with a question mark, the main presupposition of
Huntington was on a clash that would occur this time not among ideological blocs but among
‘civilisations’. The main thrust of that argument, which was later more elaborated by him in the
book on the same subject published in 1996, was that clashes would continue to be witnessed in
world affairs, but this time among the “civilisations”. The inter-civilizational clash would be
more likely between the ‘Western’ and the ‘ Islamic’ ones. Since then, this has created an
arduous and never-ending debate both in political and in academic circles.
Take religion for instance, Beside these prevailing mindsets of the peoples in both camps, the
local wars that erupted immediately after the demise of the Cold War in the Balkans and the
Caucasus gave strong indications to the argument that they were products of not only ethnic and
national conflicts but also of religious ones. In other words, these wars had also a religious
dimension beside their ethno-nationalistic dimensions. In fact, religion has always been an
indispensable part in the formation of these ethnicities that are indeed collective identities
composed of common ties, i.e. primordial ties, in terms of religion, language, race etc. among
certain groups of people called “ethnie”. In this respect, the war in Bosnia between three ethnic
groups of three different religious faiths, i.e. Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim
Bosniacs, and the war over Nagorno Karabagh between the Muslim Azeris and the Christian
Armenians can be seen as clear manifestations of this phenomenon.

Despite these indications, in a clear political stance against the notion of clashes of civilisations,
governments have joined each other in rejecting such clashes, at least in their official rhetoric.
Even, the year 2001 was declared by the United Nations (UN) “the Year of Dialogue and
Tolerance among Civilisations” .

In view of the foregoing, the following can be said: the 1990’s of the post-Cold War era could
not create a collective identity in the sense of self among the majority of states in the
international community. In the Cold War era, the East and the West managed to create their
own self constructing each other “the other” in the field of security. Yet, with the end of this
confrontation at the end of the Cold War, a new self to bring the states in a larger fora like the
UN was not possible. Thus, the UN could not fulfill its role for collective security. This role was
mostly carried out by regional security and deference organizations like NATO and the OSCE .
In this process, constructing the collective identity on the basis of the notion of civilisationary
clashes or against “the rough states” seems to have not led to a success. To the contrary, these
have aggravated fault lines between countries and regions as well as religions, let alone
reinforcing a collective identity at the global level.

References
Ripsman, N. M., Taliaferro, J. W., & Lobell, S. E. (2016). Neoclassical realist theory of
international politics. Oxford University Press.
Salem, A. A. (2015). A CRITIQUE OF FAILING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
THEORIES IN AFRICAN TESTS, WITH EMPHASIS ON NORTH AFRICAN
RESPONSES. Africa in Global International Relations: Emerging Approaches to Theory
and Practice, 9, 22.