ABSTRACT
In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington put forward an ambitious new theory of how political and economic power would shift among nations in the post-Cold War era. By focusing on the importance of emotional ties, Clash was very different from the behavioralist theories that had been popular in the 1980s. Huntington believed that cultural divisions made Francis Fukuyama’s idea of a universal civilization impossible, and John Mearsheimer’s states-as-billiard-balls impractical. Huntington saw his original contribution as recycling an older style of classical realist thinking. He claimed in an interview to be a “child of” American theologian and classical realist Reinhold Niebuhr, owing a specific debt to his “compelling combination of morality and practical realism.” In his 1952 book The Irony of American History, Niebuhr predicted that if it were victorious against the Soviets, a triumphant America would attempt to carry its victory around the world and to use its power recklessly.
