Huntington, Samuel P.

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Huntington, Samuel P. 1928-

Samuel Phillips Huntington, born April 18, 1928, has contributed controversial insights to contemporary political debates. Huntington graduated from Yale University at the age of eighteen. After serving in the military, he graduated from Harvard University with a doctoral degree at twenty-three years of age. Huntington’s most notable contribution to the field of political science is the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, an instantly controversial success. Originally conceived as an article contribution to Foreign Affairs magazine in 1993, the author expanded the piece due to popular demand. In this article, Huntington’s primary focus is the decline of nation-centered unity. He argues that instead of focusing on nationalistic principles as had been the precedent before the end of the cold war, states have begun cooperating based on cultural orientation. The author predicts that distinct and violently competitive civilizations will emerge. According to Huntington, the countries of Europe and North America should learn to unite. Their cultural foundation is based on moral principles and a commitment to what he calls “Western” values: peace, freedom, and democracy. Should economic warfare divide European and North American countries, the author believes a shift in the geopolitical balance of power will take place. It is Huntington’s belief that insofar as these democracies prevailed in the twentieth century, the “Chinese/Sinic/Confucian” and the militant Islamic world will dominate the twenty-first century. The polemical nature of Huntington’s theses has opened his arguments to vituperative criticism. His critics label this “civilizations thesis” as single-minded and parochial.

In Huntington’s judgment, the Hispanic community in the United States stands accused of a refusal to assimilate and of a wholesale rejection of America’s English language, creeds, and values. In Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, published in 2004, the author asserts that Mexican Americans refuse to adopt American identities. To Huntington, this is of particular concern because of their high reproduction rate, which may result in a population that will divide America when it desperately needs cultural unity in the face of mounting international challenges. Huntington’s premise is America’s distinctiveness: the perception that the United States has triumphed in the past as a result of the maintenance of the Protestant work ethic and the religious unity originally instilled by the founders of the nation. An erosion of this commonality, he argues, bodes ill for the future.

Huntington also wrote American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, published in 1981. In this monograph he argues that a divide exists between the political ideal and the political reality in American politics. Binding Americans together throughout U.S. history has been their love of freedom and their contempt for totalitarian dictatorships. Huntington believes that Americans revolt socially every third generation in protest of the bitter compromise of promoting freedom while supporting hierarchies of power to maintain national security. Asserting that protests will continue to grow in strength, he once again raises his central theme: In order to perpetuate democratic ideals and the spread of freedom, the United States must assert itself forcefully abroad to reassure the public at home of its morality and greatness.

In 2005 a new edition was published of Huntington’s 1957 work, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. For Huntington, central to the politics of military affairs is the liberal double standard. Political liberals vociferously announce their intent to diminish violence, genocide, and the expansion of destructive armaments, according to his observations, but they contradict these objectives by seeking to restructure the U.S. military and weaken it from within. They seek to apply a civilian control over military matters, thereby reducing the ability to conduct wars effectively and to diminish threats to America. Huntington suggests that national security can only be ensured when conservative frameworks are applied to military affairs. This entails continuously maintaining a state of preparedness.

Huntington is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University.

SEE ALSO Civilization; Civilizations, Clash of; Communism; Coup d’Etat; Culture; Democratization; Essentialism; Fundamentalism; Fundamentalism, Christian; Fundamentalism, Islamic; Islam, Shia and Sunni; Political Culture; Radicalism; Totalitarianism