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Central Axis Of World Politics

The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be ... the conflict between the West and, the Rest'
Samuel Huntington

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, powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations. Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only returned equilibrium. In Huntington’s thesis, the primary axis of conflict in the future would be along cultural and religious issues ranging from human rights to immigration to trade and commerce to the environment. As an extension, concept of different civilisation, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict. The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future. Samuel Huntington asserts in his 1996 book “The Clash of the Civilisation and the Making of a New World Order”.

Huntington’s theory elevates the position of social and cultural interests in international relations to the leading cause of friction between nation states. Socio-cultural issues such as “the relations of god and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, as well as the differing views of the relative importance or rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy” Huntington (1996). The issue’s which bind and define civilisations. It is within these issues where the differences lie, and Huntington assumes that where differences lie, conflicts will illuminate. There are those that support democracy which will fall on the side of the West and those who are...