Civilization clash? A nightmare prophesy might be fulfilled
After leading the West to a victory over Iraq in the gulf war, President George Bush boldly promised a new world order for the 21st century. That hope received a major blow on September 11. In response, his son George W. Bush launched a military assault on Afghanistan. This action resonates with Samuel Huntington’s much-debated 1993 essay, which rejects the new world order and announces an impending “clash of civilizations.” Huntington predicted that future wars would be fought not between nations but between competing cultures, and most notably between the West and Islam.