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 little over fifteen 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 and i disagree with the very early on of a some hunting 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're emphasizing culture these days 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 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 it 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 for. 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 but you know both state behavior non est behavior was motivated by you know every rioting in

a mix of motives and ideology was just one of them or give an 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 pieces 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 have 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 who have a 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 culture is this was something that even was valid to demand in twenty's and thirty's all the way through the nineteenth sixty's and seventy's in what we are calling the muslim world even though 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 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 it's just being it's research 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 funny was doing with what has actually transpired you know john it's an interesting comment and it is it really after two thousand after nine eleven 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 these suits which was anti

ideological because he said that precisely 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 could go ahead how much how do we get our injury to erick's go ahead ahead go. well i think that you know one thing we have to understand that these are

very difficult to actually if particular if you are looking at the actions of international actors whether the state actors or none save 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 deposits for example let's say in the 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 that was going to jump in line they're also. going to break after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the clash of civilizations stay with are. you. going to.

vote for bush bush for. always adds by one vote for kerry. so the people that are going to be validating this machine can stand there all day long and vote for somebody and it will be right every time but the guy can walk up here and if he hits the right buttons. they can flip the boat that. says. discovery. meet. communicate with. and become free and. give you the.

first. second. to a deeper than the. remain. legal . wealthy british stock. market. was really happening to the global economy

with. global financial headlines. for. first. 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 europe no asia but to specific eurasia 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 right 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 and culture are used to

misuse. the is the issue of international conflict and the motivation for it which arena john have 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 are 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 and 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 superceded 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 does that look like the rest of the arab world certainly it does not so i think one has to factor in another element there 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 thesis is that his definitions lack of rigor i mean he uses culture civilization and religion and so on interchangeably and i think that he also. kind of. gives religion if far too dominant position in defining you know people's cultures or even brought 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 many aspects of it has very little to do with islam except that it happens in countries where there is this that you know happened no can i just one other were really not pleased that they didn't 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 take you 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

are going. 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 to be in 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 having to 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 i've ever read of 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 it would except it says something along the lines of what you're in 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 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's easier to understand complex 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 the oppressive 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 the 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 most times you

said that when you last see this call who are paradigm people find it very difficult to explain and make sense of this calf and the off things that was happening internationally and huntington you know caught this cultural thing and lashed on that and actually i have to say that it was one hundred don't 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 and i will really what are you ok many thanks or a guest today john 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.

one of the key elements of democracy which is so uncomfortable for me or forty. who pays for the new jobs. how dependent is this independent media. and who is behind the t.v. story a. charge of media fiction and reality on our t.v. . if. soon which will brighten. the balance from funniest impressions. these from stunts on t.v. dot com. this. is

.

they faced it this is not a drug addiction but a warning that. they force it and we should see just everybody assured us a pretty trieste recently they have no idea about the hardships the you face to. face one it is this is it all of them to this and for any army the life of using them is the most precious thing in the world. years of self-sacrifice

and heroism but those who understand it fully but you have to live a. real life stories from world war two to the success of victory nine hundred forty five dots on t.v. dot com. fifty. fifty. five. thanks for being with us here on r t five thirty am in the russian capital easier headlines the death toll from wildfires sweeping across central russia rises to fifty two more than thirty five hundred people have been left homeless smoke from forest and peat bog fires are the worst this city has ever experienced his show

could moscow in disrupting air travel forecasters predict the record breaking heat wave scorching the region is said to continue for at least next week. poland's new president bronislaw komorowski is sworn in for a five year term he succeeds lech kaczynski who was killed in a plane crash in the russia in april he's poland's fourth democratically elected president since the fall of communism twenty years ago while the protests are broken out over a plan to move a memorial was dedicated to the former president. russian president dmitry medvedev calls for a further reforms to the country's law enforcement bodies is also suggested a name change known as the lead c.s. and one hundred seventeen he's proposed a return to the use of the term police force according to the president new legislation is needed to reflect public demand for a limit on police power trust in the force has been marred by recent high level

corruption cases and a rogue officer is involved in shooting sprees. in march of this year georgian state media aired a story appearing to show fresh hostilities between georgia and russia the program led to panic across georgia and outrage in russia find out who and what was behind the broadcast up next here on r t. insisted on telling the truth and that's what he spent his life doing before he had to flee his home country georgia on february tenth two thousand and ten the independent journalist asked swiss authorities to grant him political asylum his greatest worries are now for his family back home in georgia. a good hero. many problems so. simply tries to help anyone who asks people often bring their problems to him as the editor of a.