Review of The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

---

Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, political science, national & international security, international relations, international diplomacy
Page Count: 352
Year of Publication: 2011 (Paperback Edition)
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: Civilizations have replaced ideologies as the driving force of geopolitics.

---

About The Clash of Civilizations

Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the greatest books I have read in my life. Sometimes I would just shake my head and pause my reading because I had to think about whether Huntington was some sort of fortune teller given how eerily accurate his prediction of the 21st century geopolitical landscape was when he published his book back in 1996.

Huntington was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University and chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was also director of security planning for the National Security Council in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, as well as the founder and coeditor of Foreign Policy.

The Clash of Civilizations is divided into five parts: Part I covers the first three chapters where Huntington argues that the most important distinction between peoples in the post-Cold War world is civilization and not ideology. For example, World War II was an ideological war featuring German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Soviet Communism, while the Cold War was an ideological battle between the Communist East led by the Soviet Union and the capitalist West led by the United States. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the age of ideologically driven geopolitics had come to an end and was replaced with what Huntington proposes is the new paradigm of geopolitics going into the 21st century: civilizations. And the most important element of civilizations, that which divides nations and populations more than any other element, is religion.

Hence, in Part II, Huntington details that the upcoming geopolitical conflicts will be between civilizations due to the religious, and therefore political and cultural, differences. For example, the late 20th century featured the Islamic Resurgence, where Arab governments turned to Islam to enhance their political and spiritual authority and to gather popular support. The Iranian Revolution from 1978-1979 is the most famous example of this. Islamic law replaced Western law, Islamic codes of behavior, such as the banning of alcohol and proper female covering, replaced Western codes of behavior. But the interesting thing Huntington points out is that here in the West we call this Islamic “fundamentalism.” The irony is that these Islamic laws come from the prophet Muhammad himself, either from the Qur’an or from the hadith: the sayings and practices from the prophet Muhammad. If the Qur’an is supposed to be the literal word of God as Muslims believe it to be, then not following Islamic law is not following the will of Allah. All this to say that there is no middle ground: Western values inherently clash with the will of Allah.

Yet, the main idea in Part II is not necessarily the clash with Islam. Rather, the main idea is that the West is in decline—both in influence and military power. Henry Kissinger eerily says the same thing in Diplomacy, another famous book published two years earlier in 1994, where Kissinger also predicts how the geopolitics of the 21st century will be shaped.

Not only is the West in decline, but rapid economic development in Asia beginning with Japan in the 1950s and continuing into the mid-1990s with the rapid economic growth in China meant another threat to the West in the form of a Chinese-led world order in East Asia. Given Asian belief that Asia will surpass the West economically, growing Asian belief in the cultural superiority over the West, and the need for Asian nations to find common ground in Asia, it was clear to Huntington that Asia and its values will threaten the weakening Western-led world order.

This leads into Part III, where Huntington explains that the international relations of the 21st century will revolve around countries grouping themselves around the lead states of their civilizations. For example, the West, though in decline, will continue to be led by the United States, while East Asia will rally around the leadership of China, and the Baltic and Orthodox states will unite around Russia.

And in Part IV, Huntington explains that the West’s desire to maintain its military superiority through policies of nonproliferation and counterproliferation and the West’s desire to spread political values such as democracy and human rights will inevitably lead to conflicts with Islamic governments and East Asian governments. This is why Bill Clinton failed to halt the North Koreans from acquiring nuclear weapons and why the Japanese government distanced themselves from the United States’ human rights policies in the 1990s.

Part V ends the book on a somber note: The United States must affirm and preserve its Western identity and create stronger relations with other Western nations based on similar cultural and religious heritage. But the West must “Recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world”(Page 312). Hence, it’s best to leave China to East Asia and leave the Baltic states to Russia.

Should You Read The Clash of Civilizations?

I cannot do this book justice in a 1,000-word review. I have tried to summarize the book through the narrative of international relations, but this book is so much more than that. For example, Huntington discusses in great depth the civilizational conflicts that happen within the borders of one nation, such as the ones that happened in Yugoslavia—a conflict among the Catholic Croats, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Orthodox Serbs. And he discusses the problems that lead to decay within a civilization, such as the growth in crime, the growth in divorce, and the weakening of the work ethic.

If someone who knew nothing about geopolitics or international relations could only read one book to understand everything happening in the 21st century, I would say that this is the book to read. Huntington’s writing is great, he backs his assertions with great detail, but most importantly, his analysis is proving to be correct.

---

Review of The Third Revolution by Elizabeth C. Economy

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

---

Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, foreign policy, history, international diplomacy, international relations
Page Count: 251 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2019
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: A guide to Xi’s political and economic transformation of China.

---

About The Third Revolution

In 1990, Deng Xiaoping gave his 24-character strategy for China: “observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership,” and the rest of the Chinese leadership succeeding Deng have maintained this position—that is, until we meet Xi Jinping.

Elizabeth C. Economy, C. V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and her book The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State is a great summary and guide to Xi’s political and economic transformation of China. The book was recommended by H. R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor to former President Donald Trump, in his course Assessing America’s National Security Threats (for which a review is soon to come), so I knew the book would most likely live up to expectation. And I was right.

Xi’s ultimate goal is his Chinese Dream: doubling incomes by 2020 and recapturing China’s historic centrality and greatness in the international system; in short, the rejuvenation of the China. Yet what Economy makes clear from the start that Xi’s method of attaining his goals is different from that of his predecessors. Here is Economy in her own words:

“What makes Xi’s revolution distinctive is the strategy he has pursued: the dramatic centralization of authority under his personal leadership; the intensified penetration of society by the state; the creation of a virtual wall of regulations and restrictions that more tightly controls the flow of ideas, culture, and capital into and out of the country; and the significant projection of Chinese power. It represents a reassertion of the state in Chinese political and economic life at home, and a more expansive and ambitious role for China abroad.” (Page 10)

The rest of the book goes on to detail Xi’s strategy. The second chapter focuses on Xi’s concentration of political power. Economy makes it clear that if one had to compare Xi with any of his predecessors, the only comparison should be with Mao Zedong. Whereas Mao’s strategy for China was based on continual revolution, Xi’s leadership strategy is based on continual corruption and the need to rid the Communist Party of it. Hence Xi’s amendment of the Constitution in 2018 to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency—if he leaves, then the corruption will only continue, or so goes Xi’s rationale.

But my favorite chapter was the third. In the words of Economy: “China doesn’t have the Internet, it has a ‘Chinanet.’” (Page 55) According to the Beijing News in 2013, there are an estimated 2 million employed to monitor opinion on the Internet and censor content. The freedom of information is in opposition to the values of the Communist Party, and hence it should not surprise us that China is aligned with other nations, such as Russia, that share that same belief. Yet Xi’s excuse to the rest of the world for the censorship is a libertarian one: Every nation should be free to determine its internet policy without interference from other states.

Chapter four details Xi’s economic reforms and their results: higher levels of debt, the consummation of valuable credit, and fewer new jobs, and chapter five highlights the fact that China is a nation of innovation—not invention—and the Chinese government is all too willing to accept suboptimal innovation so that Chinese firms—and not foreign firms—can have the lions share of the market; in the case of batteries, this means a lot of waste and inefficiency.

Chapter six is a great summary of Xi’s war against pollution, one that silences activists who go against or challenge the government’s environmental policy and one that fails to develop the political and economic incentives necessary to control pollution. And chapter seven details China’s growing international presence: their failure at soft power, their aggressive military action in the region, especially in the South China Sea, and their lack of global responsibility. The final chapter ends with Economy’s recommendations for U.S. policy toward Asia, and how it can advance its interests in light of Xi’s assertiveness.

What I Liked

Elizabeth C. Economy is a great writer. It’s rare that I read through an entire book without puzzling at a sentence or two trying to decipher what the author was trying to say, but Economy’s book is clear and unambiguous throughout.

And Economy writes the facts, details, and statistics regarding Xi’s policies, mostly without following up with a statement of value such as: This policy is good or this policy is bad. The reader is left to determine for themselves what they make of Xi’s policies, no doubt having to do with the fact that the Council of Foreign Relations takes no stance on policy issues; and it’s refreshing to read from someone who will tell you the facts without their own political biases surfacing on the page.

Finally, though there were a lot of details and statistics that, though necessary to include, could easily bog down the reader and cause the mind to drift, most of the chapters include a final section that summarize the main points so that the reader could review the most important information.

Should You Read The Third Revolution?

If you haven’t been keeping up with China for the last ten years and are looking for an authoritative source on Xi Jinping and what he has been up to, then look no further. This book is your one-stop source for all things China from 2012 to 2019. If you decide to read the book, I highly recommend getting your hands on the paperback edition, as this edition was updated with figures and statistics up to 2019 as opposed to the hardcover’s figures and statistics dating to 2018.

---

Review of The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

---

Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, history, international diplomacy, national & international security
Page Count: 244 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2015
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: China’s secret strategy to replace America as the global superpower.

---

About The Hundred-Year Marathon

Everything you think you know about China is probably a lie; they are a foe—not a friend. That previous sentence captures the tone as laid throughout Michael Pillsbury’s book.

For background, Pillsbury is the director of the Center for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute and has served in eight presidential administrations. He has also held senior positions in the Defense Department and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. So it’s no surprise that in the opening pages, Pillsbury notes that the CIA, the FBI, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and an agency of the Defense Department reviewed the book prior to publication to ensure that no classified information would be leaked to the public. In sum, Pillsbury knows what he’s talking about when he writes about China.

The book opens up with a chapter on the false assumptions people have about China, such as that China is on the road to democracy, that China wants to be like the USA, and that China hawks are weak. He reinforces this point in the following chapter by describing the Chinese strategy during the Warring States period, lessons that include inducing complacency to avoid alerting your opponent, manipulating your opponents’ advisors, being patient and waiting decades or longer to achieve victory, avoiding being encircled by others, and never losing sight of shi: a Chinese concept that roughly means “the alignment of forces” so as to take advantage of the timing of events for the opportunity to strike or to take advantage of the enemy.

Every chapter that follows these first two chapters highlights China’s strategic use of the above strategies from its opening up with the USA beginning with Mao Zedong until the present day. Pillsbury argues that the USA is merely a tool for China, China’s ba, roughly equivalent to the word “tyrant,” that China will use to wipe out its rivals until eventually it, too, will be wiped out like the tyrants of the Warring States period. The most reliable intelligence gained from Chinese spies confirm this suspicion. As a matter of fact, Chinese history is being rewritten to cast the USA as China’s archvillain. Abraham Lincoln was nothing but an imperialist, and Saddam Hussein was, in reality, the voice of reason—or so goes the narrative portrayed by China’s government.

The Chinese government is also hard at work to prevent foreign journalists from covering any news that would be unfavorable to China in the international community, and Chinese journalists are hard at work doing their best to establish pro-China views overseas. China is also building their military strategy, what Pillsbury calls the “Assassin’s Mace,” to defeat the superior American military. This strategy includes the strengthening of cyber warfare, supporting the use of biological warfare, and building up the equipment used to destroy American satellites. Given that the USA still holds the military superiority in terms of technology and strength, China needs every asymmetrical advantage to win a hypothetical war between the two superpowers.

Pillsbury concludes the book discussing what a China led world order would look like in the year 2049, assuming China is successful at supplanting the USA as the world’s leading superpower—a future where internet censorship is normal, a future with significant air pollution and contamination, not to mention cancer villages, and a future where China proliferates weapons to America’s enemies for profit. It’s a grim thought experiment that, quite frankly, is upsetting to people such as myself who take advantage of free speech daily by simply logging on to the internet and browsing its contents without worrying that the government is keeping me from reading or watching things that go against their narrative.

What I Liked

What was striking to me was how much I couldn’t help but believe the author. Michael Pillsbury himself claims, on more than one page, that he too wanted to believe in China. Here is Pillsbury in his own words:

“Like many working in the U. S. government, I had heard the democracy story for decades. I read about it in countless books and articles. I believed in it. I wanted to believe in it. My faith was shaken in 1997, when I was among those encouraged to visit China to witness the emergence of “democratic” elections in a village near the industrial town of Dongguan. While visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections actually worked. The unwritten rules of the game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed no public assemblies, no television ads, and no campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy implemented by the Communist Party, nor were they free to criticize their opponents on any issue…. Violations of these rules were treated as crimes.” (Pages 8-9)

There were also more shocking revelations made by Pillsbury, claims such as top colonels in the PLA who were promoted shortly after publishing a manuscript titled Unrestricted Warfare advocating for the use of biological and chemical weapons to defeat stronger nations such as the USA. Keep in mind that The Hundred-Year Marathon was published five years before the outbreak of COVID-19, so there’s some food for thought.

Should You Read The Hundred-Year Marathon?

The ideal reader for this book is someone who is becoming skeptical about the future of Sino-American relations but is not quite over the hump. This book may just push you over edge and into the anti-China camp.

---

Review of On China by Henry Kissinger

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

---

Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, history, international diplomacy, memoir
Page Count: 548 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2012
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: An exploration of Chinese history and diplomacy with the West.

---

About On China

I think the people at Penguin Books had to title the book On China because there was no other suitable name for the book. It doesn’t fit neatly into any one category of literary genre because it’s many things. For the first four chapters, the book is a history of China that rushes through the early history of Chinese civilization to get to the all-important 19th century where China is humiliated by the Western powers of the world until the decline of the Qing Dynasty and the revolution of Mao Zedong.

Chapters five through seven begin the book’s focus on diplomacy between China, the Soviet Union, and the USA, and the decade of crisis during Mao’s time as Chairman that included events such as the Great Leap Forward, the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and the Cultural Revolution.

But it’s chapters eight through seventeen where the book also becomes memoir. Chapters eight through eleven are the time period where Dr. Kissinger is serving as then American President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, and Kissinger makes public the thought process that went into opening up relations with Communist China as well as the conversations had between himself and Mao Zedong. Chapters twelve to seventeen detail the eras of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, as well as Kissinger’s conversations with those leaders, respectively.

The final two chapters, and the afterword to the paperback edition (the edition I read) give Kissinger’s insight as to what the world will look like and how the USA should act given China’s newfound role as a superpower.

What I Liked

Anyone can write a book about Chinese history and its diplomatic history with the rest of the world, but it’s unique that one can do that as a former Secretary of State with insight into the character of different Chinese leaders and the conversations had with them. Hence, my favorite part about On China is that I felt like a fly on the wall amongst some of the world’s most powerful individuals and their conversations, as the outcome of these conversations would go on to shape geopolitics until our present day.

And this is where Kissinger’s book truly shines because it’s refreshing to come across a history lesson from one who lived during the relevant time period and helped to shape it. I felt that I understood the reasoning behind why the USA decided to open up to China (in a nutshell, both felt the Soviet Union was the greater threat) behind the scenes, unlike the way one gathers information from reading a dry history textbook.

But Kissinger’s book also gave me a newfound respect for President Nixon; he was a very calculative and strategic thinker, make no mistake, and Kissinger does not shy away from expounding on President Nixon’s principles of foreign policy. However, it’s refreshing to hear it from someone who worked so closely with Nixon as opposed to someone who is writing from a distance like a journalist or an academic, as Kissinger sprinkles the book with the meetings and conversations had with Nixon prior to opening up to China.

What I Didn’t Like

Kissinger’s dry personality runs through each page, and he writes and talks in his conversations as if he is observing some sort of phenomena in a cold and calculative manner. For example, take the following excerpt from his book where Chairman Deng Xiaoping explains to Kissinger the Chinese strategy behind withdrawing troops from Vietnam:

DENG: After I came back [from the United States], we immediately fought a war. But we asked you for your opinion beforehand. I talked it over with President Carter and then he replied in a very formal and solemn way. He read a written text to me. I said to him: China will handle this question independently and if there is any risk, China will take on the risk alone. In retrospect, we think if we had driven deeper into Vietnam in our punitive action, it would have been even better.

KISSINGER: It could be.

DENG: Because our forces were sufficient to drive all the way to Hanoi. But it wouldn’t be advisable to go that far.

KISSINGER: No, it would probably have gone beyond the limits of calculation.

DENG: Yes, you’re right. But we could have driven 30 kilometers deeper into Vietnam. We occupied all the defensive areas of fortification. There wasn’t a defense line left all the way to Hanoi.

Kissinger comes off as almost robotic in this conversation, carefully choosing each word of the sentence, and much of his writing comes off in the same dry tone.

When discussing events such as Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Kissinger mentions the failed production goals and how it led to the deaths of over twenty million people. Yet, he falls short of calling Mao a failed leader or leveling any direct criticism toward him for his failed policies. I understand that Kissinger knew Mao, but that doesn’t mean he should shy away from leveling criticism toward the man when his decision led to the deaths of millions.

Should You Read On China?

If you’re looking for a book that explains the last two hundred years of Chinese history with a focus on diplomacy and international relations, then this is your book. However, given that the paperback edition was published in 2012, the book makes no mention of Xi Jinping—given that he was relatively unknown until his ascension as President in 2012—and his important transformation of China over the last eleven years. This book would be best read in combination with another book, such as Elizabeth Economy’s The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State for which a review is soon to come.

---