The Clash of Civilizations

No article, according to the editors of that distinguished journal, has gen­erated more discussion since George Kennan's 'X' article on containment in the 1940s.

Given the interest in, misrepresentation of, and controversy over the article, it seemed desirable for me to explore further the issues it raised.

This book is intended to provide a fuller, deeper, and more thoroughly documented answer to the article's question.

Spurred by modernization, global politics is being reconfigured along cultural lines.

The central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world.

In the post-Cold War world, for the first time in history, global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational.

The most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural.

The rivalry of the superpowers is replaced by the clash of civilizations.

Spurred by modernization, global politics is being reconfigured along cultural lines. Peoples and countries with similar cultures are coming together. Peoples and countries with different cultures are coming apart.

For the first time in history global politics is both multipolar and multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization and is producing neither a universal civilization in any meaningful sense nor the Westernization of non-Western societies.