and today i'm joined by richard bullet in tel aviv an author and history professor at columbia university in washington we have shereen hunter she's a visiting professor at the center for muslim christian understanding at georgetown university in paris we go to john laughlin of the institute of democracy in cooperation and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunger all right folks cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want to comment on what i've said or other panel members of said all right i'd like to go to you first shereen it's about fifteen a little over fifteen know a little less than fifteen years since huntington's thesis came out how valid is that today because since the cold war we see a lot of conflicts and many people would say it's more or less culture not ideology not philosophy that is driving not all but many of these conflicts. well i frankly disagree with that then i disagree very early on with some huntington when he first raised this issue in his foreign affairs journal in one thousand nine hundred three

i think that first of all one of the reasons why we are emphasizing culture distaste is that for almost couple of hundred years the role of culture was not really paid enough attention to although it was influential even at that time the second thing is that you know most of the conflict that we have seen the emerging in the course. post of your top post cold war era you know yes true that some groups have justifies their actions or whatever in cultural or religious terms but when you really look at this they have other other really causes i mean a lot of it has to do you know where maybe like let's say that in the post soviet space or. independence or autonomy or you know even in some other areas there are other factors even in the cold war era ideology yes it was important you know both

state behavior and non est behavior was motivated by you know every rioting in a mix of motives and ideology was just one of them or given ideology now is not really the epicenter of things if i go to you john locke when i find it very interesting if you agree or disagree with huntington's thesis a lot of people in the non-western world with say yeah it's right because it's breaking what's perceived to be western hegemony or western in western influence in non-western countries whatever west is we could talk about later but i mean in a way he's given a lot of people a tool to say yeah this is how the world works this is how conflict works but i think that shereen was right to say that the sources of these conflicts such as they've been have generally been ideological i mean let's look at the comp. the conflict such as it is between the west and islam will leave for a moment the definition of those terms seems to me that the conflicts that western

countries have with islamic countries precisely are ideological and not civilizational conflicts we only have to look at which islamic countries are affected we're talking of course about iraq iran and afghanistan but there are many other islamic countries which are not affected by any conflict with the west the whole of north africa turkey saudi arabia indonesia the list goes on these conflicts such as they are are fairly straight forward diplomatic political and to some extent ideological conflicts largely associated with the middle east and problem so i really don't think that the conflicts that of broken out bear out the civilizational paradigm it should be added by the way that the biggest conflict in world history since the second world war is one that nobody hardly ever mentions and that is the war in the congo which has claimed millions of lives it's a far higher death toll than any of the other conflicts that we usually talk about

in these discussions and i'm pretty sure that nobody would want to argue that that was a civilizational conflict either. shereen you want to jump in there real quick. yeah i just wanted to say also another thing that we must also understand that when you look at things and pieces think term even. distinguishes cultural fault lines let's say that the within societies that have historically been christian i mean for example the he says that there will be incompatibilities between western civilization and those countries that are orthodox christians with direct reference for instance to russia and he talks about you know the incompatibilities of buddhist confusions societies with the west in which he defines as kind of protestant anglo-saxon type of you know aspects of the west so it seems to me that you know we shouldn't really single out the muslim world and the other thing you mentioned that you know the desire to retain of one's cultural identity and not to

become absorbed by other kata as this was something that even was valid to deny nine hundred twenty s. and thirty's all the way through the nineteenth sixty's and seventy's in the what we are calling the muslim world even do the dominant discourse those years was a secular discourse and that islam is just kind of lately has. kind of taken over the discursive. field ok richard if i'm going to you in tel aviv. something kind of very interesting to me i guess it was the cold war when culture took a break or civilization take a break because ideology was so predominant it least for decision makers in the major countries so culture is always been there which is being researched we're just taking notice of it again. well i'm going to take issue with the term culture because even though that is what huntington was talking about the way in which his

his catchphrase of clash of civilizations is being used deals with religion which is a very different from culture and it's different from civilization but because he chose a religious term to characterize a civilization at a time when. this country i rather the united states. and different countries with muslim populations were becoming energized by religious issues people have taken this phrase clash of civilizations ignored huntington's presentation of it and instead interpreted it as islam versus the west so inadvertently and i think perhaps naively huntington open the door to the islam a phobia that we have today which i think is incredibly destructive and it is

rendered clash of civilizations a. highly not only misleading but a very destructive. reprehensible phrase and yet it has gained more and more usage among the man on the street and i think that one of the problems we have is comparing what huntington thought he was doing with what is actually transpired you know john it's an interesting comment and it is it really after two thousand after nine eleven scuse me we saw the really the neo cons hijack this this concept they like the idea they like the idea of conflict of civilizations it's and them against us against the west is that or is that a that's a perversion of one hundred ten was trying to say. yes it is it is a perversion and it's a perversion both from the point of view of the neo cons but also from the point of view of islamic fundamentalists obviously the neo cons were themselves intensely ideology call and therefore they hijacked underpins leases which was anti

ideological because he said the results of the conflicts wouldn't be ideological but the islamic fundamentalists themselves surely must be understood not as huntington does in a nonpolitical civilizational way but instead as people pursuing political goals political goals that we may disagree with but they are clearly recognisable political goals and i include in that remark even the terrorists who conducted the nine eleven attacks those people were acting according to very easily understandable political and strategic goals concepts which incidentally probably largely have western origin anyway even though they're of course also driven by the islamic religion so the notion that these conflicts are not political i think is the greatest weakness of huntington's analysis because on the contrary they are ok sure. if we go ahead how much how do we get ready to embarrass go ahead ahead go.

well i think that you know one thing we have time to stand that these are very difficult to actually leave if you particularly if you are looking at the actions of international actors whether the state actors or non sait actors we have to realize two things one is that actions are motivated by different you know intentions and so on the other thing is that it is very difficult to find anybody who would say that what we are doing is for power or for gaining access to resources or basically you know self aggrandizement so everybody is going to have to justify their actions in light of some grander objective a selfless objective in depass for example let's say into cold war the west would say that this is to make world safe for democracy socialists would say that they want to create this socialist utopia but in the meanwhile the books are also pursuing other actions nothing has changed muslim fundamentalists or even

terrorists they may have some really selfish reasons for what they are doing but they never going to think that so therefore they're saying that we are fighting for islam or whatever and. then jump in line they're also ok i'm sure brad will continue right i'm going to break after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the clash of civilizations stay with are. you. wealthy british not to. go back. to the. market why not. why don't you. global economy.

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welcome back across not computable about remind you we're discussing whether it's ideology or culture that divides people. but before let's see what russians think about this is the world experiencing a clash of civilizations most russians don't think so all the russian public opinion research and ask citizens about the place of russia in the more than world forty five percent said russia is neither a europe no asia but a specific eurasian civilization they also believe its interests will lean towards the east in the future so take the side of the respondents think russia is obviously part of europe and in the twenty first century the fortunes of the two interdependent however they cannot be any doubt that russians believe their

countries treadmills both east and west giving the country a unique identity and place in the more than a world peter are right now now we're joined in boston with by richard rosecrans he's he's an adjunct professor at harvard university's john f. kennedy school of government or before we went to break here before we go to richard in boston i'd like to go to richard in tel aviv you were responding to a point that shereen was making about how the how ideology in culture or used or misused. the is the issue of international conflict and the motivation for it which john had been talking about is well taken but i think one of the things that that people have to realize is that most muslim militancy is directed against other muslims it is not a matter of often in the united states at least people seem to think that islam is some sort of unified community that that they have a common outlook on the world but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to

two million actions muslims activists are more inclined to be concerned about their home their homeland changing the government there than they are about the international arena ok richard if i go to you in boston and thanks for coming in a little bit late in the program but we've been talking about the veracity of huntington's thesis in two thousand and ten and whether is it really true that culture his superseded ideology when we look at conflicts around the world. no i think culture certainly has not superseded ideology but even more important in a certain ideology is globalization because you have globalization bringing people together even when ideology does not fully do so i mean look at the impact of globalization on the muslim society in indonesia malaysia even to some degree in parts of pakistan and so on look at dubai is that look like the rest of the arab

world certainly it does not so i think one has to factor in another element they are not simply ideology as an alternative to culture but globalization as an alternative ok i mean it's interesting listening to all of the comments that everyone's made in this program so far i mean just to turn. this to civilization make any sense at all using that term and talking about world politics because everybody seems to think that well i think that you know this is the whole thing the whole the problem with this is is that his definitions lack of rigor i mean he uses culture civilization and religion and so interchangeably and i think that he also. kind of. gives religion if they're far too dominant position in defining you know people's cultures or even broad civilization let's say that something called islamic civilization this is the term even itself is debatable you know because what we know of as islamic civilization actually in many

aspects of it has very little to do with islam except that it happened in countries where there's that you know happened you know can i just one other word really know please that they did not finish what i'm saying the other thing that i wanted to make here is that what has been have actually seen happen is not you know particular since the cold war but even before that it's not that ideology has disappeared but religion has become ideology and this is something that people don't. today by the way that muslims among themselves in fact fight over what is meant by islam so this is why that you know i know what to do to other people not to early on that what to be had see having clashes in fact more we did a civilization but it is because religion has become ideology and serving purposes that ideology used to serve and use for legitimizing the legitimizing and so forth

all right richard in tel aviv going to jump in there. sure the i think that in talking about what huntington meant or how we understand his definitions or his rubrics that is kind of misguided i mean the two day clash of civilizations is a phrase that's being used by the man on the street who has never read huntington has never even heard of huntington the there's been a kind of a viral spread of this of this term in a way that has really ignored both ideology and culture and the specifics of international conflict and has played into very very deep currents of bigotry i think on both sides of the religious divide and whether one likes it or not huntington's definitions no longer govern the discourse in which is phrases used ok

john if i can go to you in paris i mean what's the corrective here what should we be focusing most of our attention on if it's not civilization because i guess none of us really agree that maybe a global civil either there's a global civilization or the civilization itself is it's immaterial but i mean what is the corrective here as we just heard you know every but the man on the street thinks about it in terms of clash of civilizations and we seem to all do agree that isn't the case. yeah well i think the problem is that basically huntington is writing from the point of view of nostalgia he like many analysts actually had a heart harbored a secret nostalgia for the certainties of what he thought of the certainties of the cold war and you know we see this in his history historical introduction which is excuse my language the biggest load of bunk over reading my life you know he says that prior to the cold war the world was not multi civilizational well you know this is absolute nonsense and so i think the answer really comes in the form of

a rather more complex one than he would would it would except it says something along the lines of what you said earlier conflicts come from all kinds of sources i suppose they can come from cultural or civilisational ones i personally think ideology does play a very big role in fueling conflict but of course as i said in the first part of the biggest war the biggest war since the second world war is the war in the congo which is not ideological and not. civilization in any way it's just an old fashioned war over resources. and finally of course can also be driven by simple advances in technology you know the manufacture of kalashnikovs i expect has probably driven up the amount of people killed so these are all factors which come together. but ultimately the number of conflicts i'm not sure if it has increased anyway so i think the general paradigm the idea that suddenly the world has become more dangerous because there are these two blocks i suspect that that's wrong too ok shereen john was talking a lot about ideology here why is there so much interest in culture i mean maybe

huntington started it we've heard from richard that it's gone into the mainstream here is it just more sexy it is easier to understand conflicts in the world if we talk about culture because that's just you know the something that people can easily identify with the cold war is over there's no way to really ideology people get their hands on is that it is that a reasonable answer. i don't really think quite that way although you know there is elements of truth in that but basically let's face it that i would say that at least roughly since the nine hundred thirty s. in general. the whole idea that states could behave only or even numb state actors unselfish motives became discredited in the past for example we had wars because of dynastic reasons we had wars of conquest and so on after that you know we had this very almost i would say totalitarian not only in terms of repressive but totally tarion ideology in

a sense is that they really extended to all aspects of life whether it was fascism socialism i mean the way liberal democracy is also. off except so when you have for forty years fifty years we had this cold war that we thought that the whole world of the is caught in a existential battle between you know socialism and market you know liberalism you know i think that i think john mentioned paris john mentioned that. huntington was talking of nostalgia is some just nostalgia you said that when you last see this call who are paradigm people find it very difficult to explain and make sense of this cafe me off things that was happening internationally and huntington you know caught this culture thing and lashed on that and actually i have to say that it wasn't hunted down came up with the clash of civilization it was bernard lewis in the roots of the muslim right he came around sharing and then we run out of time gentlemen but i was really what are you ok many thanks or

a guest today john along with ok richard bullock and shireen hunter and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on our t.v. see you next time and remember crosstalk. every month we give you the future we help you understand how to get there and we

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. one eight this is. all of them too nice to. read in the army the life of the use the other is the most precious thing in the world. uses of self sacrifice and terrorism with those who understand fully that you have to live a. real life stories from will. be nineteen forty five gold dot com. half past three in the russian capital thanks for joining us here on our t.v.'s in your headlines the death toll from wildfires sweeping across central russia rises to fifty two more than thirty five hundred people left homeless smoke from forest and he thought fires the worst the city has ever experienced is choking moscow and

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