Huntington’s Hypothesis: Simplistic and Racist, But Not Completely Wrong

In his controversial thesis on the “clash of civilizations,” Huntington argues that the dominant form of post-Cold War conflict will be cultural. Huntington concludes that these cultural divisions are age-old and based in deep-rooted tensions of identity; thus, diverse countries will experience more civil war (Huntington 1993, 25). Academic critics rightly note that Huntington grossly simplifies cultures into homogenous entities and reduces individuals into members of “one collective identity,” but Huntington’s hypothesis is not completely wrong: cultural divides are indeed a major source of tension in society (Sen 2006, 45). However, the degree to which these cultural tensions can manifest as a full-blown conflict is contingent on the marginalization of a significant cultural group and aided by structural factors.

To explain the extent to which Huntington’s theory still holds water, I open this paper by explaining other structural factors that may be contribute to civil war before discussing how, despite these other factors, culture clash still plays a pivotal role in insurgency. To properly convey the mechanisms for how tensions can lead to insurgency, I examine three case studies: first, I argue that historical Iraqi conflicts are fueled by the exclusion of the Shia and Kurdish minorities; second, I find that while selfish leaders escalated the Yugoslav Civil War, existing ethnic divisions still created a favorable environment for these leaders to leverage; and third, I discuss how both structural factors and the exclusion of the Tutsi population in Rwanda allowed civil war to ensue. Ultimately, I conclude that Huntington makes the crucial observation that cultural divisions mark competing interests and create innate tensions within a society, but that he falls short in concluding that these tensions inevitably lead to civil war. 

Cultural diversity alone does not explain why some places experience civil war: some places experience civil war regardless of ethnic divisions, while other places never experience civil war in spite of massive ethnic divisions (Lecture, March 2). In “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” Fearon and Laitin find no empirical relationship between ethnic or religious fractionalization and civil war. Instead, they posit that all states have factions of dissatisfied citizens that are willing to take up arms if violence is an effective strategy. Violence is most effective in “weak states,” which is why these weaker states are more amenable to insurgency (Lecture, March 2). Weak states have lower per capita income, less stable political systems, and mountainous terrain, all of which limit the incumbent government’s capacity to respond to insurgent attacks (Fearon and Laitin 2003, 85). When controlling for all of these factors, there is little evidence to support that civil war can be predicted by large cultural division or broadly held grievences (Fearon and Laitin 2003, 88). 

It is clear that Huntington’s theory on culture clash does not fully explain societal conflict. So is Huntington dead? Yes, but his theory is not. As Fearon and Laitin establish, neither cultural diversity nor broad political grievences alone are enough to explain insurgent action; however, when these initial characteristics are combined with ethnic exclusion, they increase the likelihood of insurgency. By compiling data on major cultural groups in all countries and levels of group inclusion, Cederman, Wimmer, and Min provide empirical evidence that excluded groups in society are three times more likely to engage in civil war than those that have some sort of representation in the central governing body (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010, 104). This discrimination mobilizes ethnic minorities with less power to challenge groups in power; consequently, we cannot discount ethnicity as an explanatory factor in the study of insurgency (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010, 114). These findings support Huntington’s notion that cultural divisions often serve as the underlying prerequisite to civil war and find ethnic marginalization to be a particularly important catalyst variable.

So far, I’ve established that while cultural division cannot singularly explain the onset of insurgencies, they are still an important explanatory factor. To this extent, Huntington makes a key observation: cultural divisions are the seed for tensions in society. Although Huntington does not fully illustrate how these underlying tensions lead to full-blown warfare, insurgencies in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda do illustrate this point. 

To begin with, the culturally-aligned political divisions in Iraq support Huntington’s claim that cultural divisions represent competing interests. The rise of pan-Arabism and consequent Kurdish and Shi’ite exclusion from power paved the way to the pervasive ethno-religious political divisions in the country today (Wimmer 2003, 119). Many of these culturally-aligned political groupings have littered Iraqi history with Kurdish conflicts and Shia uprisings, since the Sunni Arab majority have remained consistently at the helm of political power (Wimmer 2003). Iraq is thus a straightforward example of how cultural heterogeneity leaves countries more susceptible to insurgency when coupled with marginalization. While Iraqi conflicts are divided along political lines, the ethno-religious alignment of these political factions suggest some level of identity-based conflict at play.

Similarly, ethnicity served as a “unifying device” that mobilized Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian forces to act in the Yugoslav Civil Wars; of course, self-serving politicians and perpetrators helped instigate this violence by capitalizing on these underlying tensions to advance their own agendas (Mueller 2000, 62; Gagnon 1994, 118). Led by Slobodien Milosevic, conservative Serbian leadership encouraged populist mobilization by sponsoring portrayals of Serbia as “an innocent victim of the outside world” (Gagnon 1994, 120). These portrayals were an attempt to stave off democratic opposition forces and consolidate Milosevic’s federal power, but also resulted in Croatian and Bosnian secession from Yugoslavia. To maintain territorial integrity, Serbian leadership further proliferated an image of threatened Serbdom and launched the Yugoslav Wars (Gagnon 1994, 128). While it’s clear that there were not deep-rooted hatreds mobilizing conflict in Yugoslavia like Huntington might suggest, political actors recognized that ethnic differences could spawn divisions in society (Mueller 2000, 43). Proxying ethnic divisions to proliferate a political agenda does not diminish the role of ethnic conflict. To sucessfully spawn ethnic conflict on ethnic lines, there need to be some baseline cultural tensions in existence.

The Rwandan Civil War not only demonstrates how ethnic grievances can lead to violence, but also illustrates the role of structural factors Cederman, Wimmer, and Min point out. To begin with, Rwanda’s low income, weak political system, and mountainous terrain made the country particularly susceptible to insurgency. Additionally, the Tutsi population in Rwanda was systematically excluded: much of the Tutsi population fled to neighboring countries to avoid violence and discrimination after losing control of the government (Reed 1996, 481). To rally for Tutsi rights, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) pushed toward the capital, benefitting from the mountainous terrain, while Hutu hardliners propelled extremist factions to take arms in fear of losing their privileged rights (Reed 1996, 490; Lecture, March 4). While self-serving Hutu leaders are partly to blame for putting this violence into motion, Rwanda is a clear-cut example of how existing cultural divisions can encourage violence when a major ethnic group is excluded from political power (Mueller 1994, 68). Rwanda was thus a near-perfect nursery for insurgency: structural factors like mountains and weak government forces combined with an excluded ethnic group prompted civil war in the country.

In these three case studies, one theme is clear: these were all identity-based conflicts where the influx of violence was contingent upon other factors. In Iraq, ethnically-divided political parties spawned insurgency; in Yugoslavia, greedy leadership provoked ethnic differences; and in Rwanda, Tutsi discrimination fanned civil war. All in all, these examples convey that identity-based differences form a division in society that, contingent on cultural exclusion and aided by structural factors, can lead to civil war. Huntington correctly articulates that cultural differences contribute to distinct values and competing interests, but his claim that these differences will inevitably result in violent conflict is unfounded. In other words, Huntington is wrong to “place today’s players in preordained roles in an allegedly ancestral play,” but correct in noting that cultural heterogeneity might make some places more susceptible to civil war than others (Sen 2006, 43). Thus, cultural divisions form an incubator for civil war when aided by a host of other factors including historical marginalization, self-serving actors looking to advance their own interests, unstable political systems, and even mountains.