The Clash of Civilizations at 30: What Huntington Got Wrong

A Harvard professor's 1996 prediction seemed prophetic when hijacked planes struck the Twin Towers. Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations" had forecast that after the Cold War, the world's great civilizations—not ideologies—would collide "along the cultural fault lines" separating Western, Islamic, Confucian, and other cultures.

The book became a global phenomenon, translated into 30 languages and practically turning "clash of civilizations" into a household phrase after 9/11. Al-Qaeda's murder of nearly 3,000 Americans seemed to validate Huntington's thesis that the 21st century altar would prove mightier than the throne.

When Prophecy Seemed Reality

The evidence appeared overwhelming. Russia abandoned Marxism for Orthodox nationalism. China challenged the West across all fronts. Serbs attacked Muslims in Yugoslavia. Ukraine's Orthodox east clashed with its Catholic west along precisely the fault line Huntington had sketched.

Islam, with its supposedly "bloody borders," delivered a trail of terror from Madrid to Munich, Strasbourg to Stockholm, culminating in Hamas's October 7, 2023 massacre. The United States found itself at war with Muslim nations Iraq and Afghanistan. Huntington seemed vindicated.

The Cracks in the Theory

Yet 30 years later, the world looks different than Huntington predicted. Great power rivalries—not faith-based civilizational conflicts—continue dominating global affairs. The Cold War's two-player game simply added China as a third heavyweight.

Buddhist-Taoist Japan, anointed as a rising giant, has virtually withdrawn from the global stage. India, despite its 1.4 billion people and nuclear weapons, hasn't demanded a seat at the Big Three table. Instead, it maneuvers between the U.S., China, and Russia to extract benefits from each.

Europe presents the starkest contradiction to Huntington's thesis. This civilizational giant boasts a $20 trillion GDP yet remains a political lightweight. Why? Because 27 EU members don't amount to a unitary actor. They can't match Russia's 4,300 nuclear weapons with Britain and France's diminutive deterrent.

The Real Fault Lines

Huntington's most glaring miscalculation involved Islam. The bloodiest borders run inside this civilization, not along its edges. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) claimed 1 million casualties—both Muslim nations. Syria's civil war killed 350,000 from 2014-2024. Yemen's ongoing conflict has cost nearly 400,000 lives since 2014.

History reveals similar patterns. The 17th-century Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants killed 8 million—about a fifth of Central Europe's population. China's civil war left 10 million dead, while Mao's policies killed another 40 million. None of these bloodbaths fit Huntington's civilizational clash framework.

Power Politics Over Prayer

The real drivers remain what they've always been: states seeking power, territory, and dominance, regardless of whom they worship. If Huntington were right, Catholic France wouldn't have allied with Protestant German princes against Catholic Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War. Yet King Francis I partnered with Muslim Ottomans against the Spanish-Austrian Empire because he wanted to break encirclement.

Today's conflicts follow the same logic. Russia wants to swallow Ukraine despite both sharing Orthodox traditions. The driver is dominion, not religion. Meanwhile, Israel has forged peace with Egypt and Jordan, plus Abraham Accords with Morocco and Sudan, with Saudi Arabia as silent partner. Their common foe? Expansionist Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.

South and North Korea share identical cultures yet remain deadly enemies. So do China and Taiwan. Cold-blooded interest beats ethos and faith.

The West's Internal War

Ironically, Huntington himself recognized his theory's limitations. His 2004 follow-up, "Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity," focused on conflicts within civilizations. He warned that uncontrolled Latino and Muslim immigration would divide America into competing "peoples, cultures and languages."

This later work conceded that the deepest fault lines run not among clashing civilizations but within them. Today's dominant U.S. conflict isn't with external civilizations but between the "woke" and those waging "war on woke."