Here is another must read for the 21st Century. Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” puts an end to the Cold War and the clash of ideologies and brings the conversation back to a more normal and historic setting. This may not be the most important book that will be written on the subject of civilizational clashes, but it certainly gives an early preview of the main topic for the early decades of the 21st century.

This books strengths are in the statistical evidences that the author cites for his discussion about the fault lines of civilizational conflict, and other areas that are generally used to support his contentions. Not to mention of course the volumes of research required to generate a serious book on a subject that most Western liberals would not want addressed. Not addressed because of the doubt cast upon the viability of Globalism and the “can’t we all just get along” feel goodism that is modern Western liberalism. Such liberal thinking as evidenced by the Clinton administrations ongoing meddling in “fault line” conflicts in Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, and the muddled handling of the United State’s Russian and China policies.

The weakness of this book is the lack of conclusions drawn as to the current state of the West. A good companion reading would be Michael Kelley’s “The Impulse of Power: Formative Ideals of Western Civilization”. Huntington correctly identifies the power of religion in the rise and fall of civilizations, but fails to analyze the West’s decline in relation to Western liberalism’s intense hatred of the West’s main religion – Christianity. In that same regard Huntington failed to make as strong an argument as he could for the singular most important contribution of the West, that being the concept of individual liberty.

Huntington does however make a good argument against the multiculturalism of the Western liberal. Pointing out quite rightly the danger of creating a weak cleft culture that would be unable to face the onslaught of some of the world’s resurgent civilizations. This argument is however all the more critical when coupled with the central contribution of the West, i.e. Liberty, and the lacking thereof in the characteristics of the other resurgent civilizations. In any event this book is a good primer for what stands to be an important topic in the years ahead.