Clash or Cooperation of Civilizations? Current Assessments by Western Experts of the Concept of S. Huntington

Abstract

The article dwells on an issue-based thematic review of recent publications devoted to the civilizational approach of S. Huntington and his “clash of civilizations” theory in American, Canadian, British, Spanish and French academic journals, covered in the Scopus database. As a result of the content analy¬sis, the author divides the studies into several groups according to the type of fundamen¬tal factors considered as principal sources of modern international clashes and conflicts, such as: political and economic interests of states, strengthening of the national identity of the American population, affiliation with Orthodox civilization. Two special groups include studies, in which authors positively assess S. Huntington’s theory, but do not share his civilizational grouping of countries and offer their own classification; as well as the original empirical research on the perception of modern countries and its coalition formation by modern youth. With the aim to analyze inter-civilizational cooperation, the author examines the collective work “Clash or cooperation of civilizations?” in which scientists from different countries justify their points of view on the current state on international scene in the context of Huntington’s theory. The results of the ana¬lytical review, obtained during the semi-formalized assessment using six author’s vari¬ables, indicate that experts from different countries put forward arguments for and against the “clash of civilizations” concept. The academic community agrees that civi-lizational differences play an important role in the emergence of military conflicts, but do not assign priority to civilizational issues, considering political and economic inter¬ests of states as the root cause of modern international conflicts.