An Analysis "the Clash Of Civilizations"

The years between the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s were an important historical period when great changes took place in the international community. After the drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the unification of western and eastern Germany and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, the bipolar structure collapsed immediately and the world history came into the Post-Cold War period. The disputes between different regions, religious strife and ethnic conflicts happen occasionally, which are the main elements causing the instability of the world.In the summer of 1993, Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard professor, delivered an article entitled "Clash of Civilization?" in an American journal named "Foreign Affairs", bringing forward civilization clash from the theoretical level, which caused hot discussion on the theories of civilization clash.The first part of this paper analyzes the historic background of the theory of civilization clash.The second part of this paper mainly introduces the core of the theory of civilization clash by Huntington: the unit of analysis of civilization clash is civilization, world politics is being restructured to a multi-civilization world along civilization, the potential conflicts will come up between countries and groups with different civilization, and the most reliable guarantee to prevent civilization clash is international orders based on multi-civilization. Civilization clash endows civilization with a role of "cultural entity" by introducing the concept of civilization and by taking civilization a unit of the analysis of international politics makes civilization take action so as to offer a logic outline of global politics. Therefore, the theory of civilization clash is one of the scarce original research fruits after the Cold-War, which not only has opened a window that has always been neglected by the academic circle of international politics, but also offered a relatively important way of analysis to observe the international politics in the Post Cold- War time in a penetrating way.The third part mainly analyzes the problems of the theory of the civilization clash: whether civilization can become the unit of analysis of the international relationship, whether different civilization inevitably causing clash, the understanding of camp of the world civilization structure after the cold war, and the possibilities of the clash of world civilization. The clash between civilizations, to a great extent, is the conflicts between spirits and thoughts, an experience of internal heart. However, whether this kind of experience would develop into the real international conflict is still uncertain.The forth part of this paper discusses the academic value of the theory of civilization clash based on the former discussion. Huntington' contribution in theory cannot be denied although the theory of civilization clash still has many problems. As significant original thoughts, the theory puts forward an important subject that has been neglected for a long term but actually needs to be studied urgently. The theory of civilization clash has made new speculations on the international phenomena of the Post Cold-War from the view of civilization and begun to study the deep roots of the conflicts between many regions, which possess great significance to the understanding of the international conflicts of Post Cold-War. The theory of civilization clash takes a new consideration of the international politics from the pattern of global politics, performs meaningful research on the possibilities of the civilization clash, advances people's attention to the problem, and endows the theory itself with extremely important realistic significance in politics.