the real threat an essay on samuel huntington

ESSAY

Examining the most recent book by SamuelHuntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges toAmerica’s National Identity, raises a questionthat applies to similar publications, like TheBell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure inAmerican Life by Charles Murray: Howshould such books be reviewed? Who AreWe? is one of a small number of volumes thatlook like works of social science and havethe appearance of scholarship but actuallyappeal to, reinforce, and help to legitimateone form of prejudice or another. Some ofthese works, we shall see, “merely” agitateagainst democratic forms of government; oth-ers reflect various anti-feelings—anti-Black,Mexican (and more generally immigrants), orMuslim (and more generally foreigners)—justas certain films seem at first glance to beworks of art but actually appeal to prurientinterests. Should one treat such works theway one treats any other serious book?Ignore them altogether, as one ought to treatthe ruminations of Holocaust deniers? Orexamine them mainly as ideological tracts?

David Brooks points out in his humorousbut insightful book Bobos in Paradise: TheNew Upper Class and How They Got There thatone way to make it in our public intellectuallife is to be dead wrong. Then, he says, scoresof people will write essays and present lec-tures explaining why you are in grievouserror. Your books will sell like hot cakes. Andyour next one will be promoted with extradiligence by a keen publisher. Above all, yourmisbegotten message will receive extensivepublic airing. This (Brooks does not note) isespecially true if the work plays to one ormore widely held prejudices, especially thosethat people usually refrain from speakingabout. Such books are extra-popular becausethey give license to the expression of silentlyembraced prejudices by claiming that theyhave a base in scholarship and even science.However, if such works were roundly ignored

instead of dissected, would these prejudicesbe held at bay? To respond to these questions,an examination of Huntington’s work is usefulindeed.

The theme that runs throughout variousworks of Huntington is best characterized asa theory of fear. His books typically identifya mounting threat, such as Mexican immi-grants, Islamic civilization, or democratic pro-clivities, and then point to the need forstrong national-unity building measures andmobilization of the people (including milita-rization) in response to the barbarians at thegates, if not already in the gates. Sometimes,the argument is formulated in basically ana-lytical terms: If the required vigorousresponses to the particular challenge at handare not forthcoming, various calamities willensue (e.g., the U.S. will lose a large part ofits territory to Mexico and its Anglo-Protestant identity will be undermined) thatimplicitly call for stronger countermeasures.In other cases, an advocacy for powerfulantidotes is quite explicit. As Huntington putsit in the Foreword to Who Are We?, he is writ-ing as a patriot and a scholar, in that order.

Taken on its own, the threat-response the-sis is unproblematic—a correlation the valid-ity of which even people without socialtraining can readily discern, and one that hasoften been repeated in the annals of socialanalysis. When the Nazis were about to over-run Britain, that country suspended habeascorpus. And few, even among the strongestsupporters of Israel, would deny that whilecontinuous threats from armed neighborsand terrorists and the various responses tothem have helped to keep the segments ofIsraeli society together, they have alsoinvolved a measure of militarization of thenation and imposed limits on various civilrights.

The key issue then is to determinewhether a nation truly faces particular threats

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The Real Threat: An Essay on Samuel Huntington

AMITAI ETZIONIThe George Washington University

[email protected]

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or whether such concerns are largelydrummed up if not totally manufactured—say, in order to keep a nation under the con-trol of one power elite or another and tomake its citizens accept various governmen-tal measures that they otherwise would nottolerate. These measures might include thecurtailment of rights, economic belt-tighten-ing, and discrimination against foreigners,among others. It is a familiar issue, seen forexample in the debates over whether or notSaddam actually possessed nuclear weaponsthat could pose an imminent threat to theUnited States. Even more recently, it hasbeen witnessed in the argument of whetheror not Social Security is indeed in “crisis.” Wemust ask: If the various threats are real whatis their magnitude? And if the dangers arevastly exaggerated, what purposes are servedby such a politics of fear?

In Who Are We?, Huntington argues thatimmigrants, especially those from Mexico,are undermining the “Anglo-Protestantcreed,” destroying the shared identity thatmakes us Americans. These immigrants do soby refusing to assimilate, to learn English,and to become American citizens and bymaintaining a segregated society centered onun-American values. According toHuntington, it is not entirely the Mexicans’fault; it is also the doing of liberal policies.He writes:

In the late twentieth century, develop-ments occurred that, if continued, couldchange America into a culturally bifurcat-ed Anglo-Hispanic society with twonational languages. This trend was in partthe result of the popularity of the doc-trines of multiculturalism and diversityamong intellectual and political elites,and the government policies on bilingualeducation and affirmative action thatthose doctrines promoted and sanc-tioned. The driving force behind thetrend toward cultural bifurcation, howev-er, has been immigration from LatinAmerica and especially from Mexico.(Huntington 2004: 221)1

Huntington argues that if this develop-ment is allowed to continue, it may lead to aprofound breakup of the nation, or as heposits, “The possibility of a de facto splitbetween a predominately Spanish-speakingAmerica and English-speaking America .|.|.with .|.|. a major potential threat to the cul-tural and possibly political integrity of theUnited States” (ibid. p. 243). However,Huntington’s concerns go beyond the merethreat of a linguistically, culturally, and polit-ically fractured American society. He ulti-mately fears that Mexicans might grab a largepart of the United States: “No other immi-grant group in American history has assertedor has been able to assert a historical claim toAmerican territory. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans can and do make that claim” (ibid.p. 229). He later writes, “Mexican-Americans,in turn, argue that the Southwest was takenfrom them by military aggression in the1840s, and that the time for la reconquistahas arrived. Demographically, socially, andculturally that is well under way” (ibid.p. 246).

Huntington often resorts to the device notof advocating a particular course of actionbut of claiming to predict that it may takeplace (or, is one of the major options that thenation faces). This technique enables nativistsentiments to be voiced and anti-immigrantpolicies to be put forth, while the author canmaintain that he is merely reporting the pos-sible or likely outcomes of ignoring the dan-gerous threat posed by immigration. Thus,Huntington writes:

[T]he various forces challenging the coreAmerican culture and Creed could gener-ate a move by native white Americans torevive the discarded and discreditedracial and ethnic concepts of Americanidentity and to create an America thatwould exclude, expel, or suppress peo-ple of other racial, ethnic, and culturalgroups. Historical and contemporaryexperience suggest that this is a highlyprobable reaction from a once dominantethnic-racial group that feels threatenedby the rise of other groups. It could pro-

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1 Books by Samuel Huntington cited:Samuel P. Huntington. 2004. Who Are We?: TheChallenges to America’s National Identity. NewYork: Simon and Schuster.

———. 1957. The Soldier and the State: TheTheory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations.Cambridge: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press.

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duce a racially intolerant country withhigh levels of intergroup conflict. (ibid. p.20)

Indeed, Huntington sees this as alreadybeginning to happen. Pointing to some localmeetings, op-eds, and other such sociologicaltrivia, Huntington concludes (without dis-cernable regret), “The makings of seriouswhite nativist movements and of intensifiedracial conflict exist in America” (ibid. p. 315).The reader should pause here and reexaminethe last sentence because it is vintageHuntington. He points to a threat that has notdeveloped in order to generate support forwhat he holds ought to be done.

What course then does Huntingtonbelieve ought to be followed in order toavoid the nativist backlash that he envi-sioned? Although he does not say so explic-itly, Huntington insinuates that immigrationfrom Mexico should end—a solution that heseems to think could lead to the resolution ofmany of America’s problems. Indeed, he con-siders this possibility at some length, writingthat “The possibility of a de facto splitbetween predominately Spanish-speakingAmerica and English-speaking Americawould disappear, and with it a major poten-tial threat to the cultural and possibly politi-cal integrity of the United States” (ibid. p.243). Above all, Huntington posits, one andall

should recommit themselves to theAnglo-Protestant culture, traditions, andvalues that for three and a half centurieshave been embraced by Americans of allraces, ethnicities, and religions and thathave been the source of their liberty, uni-ty, power, prosperity, and moral leader-ship as a force for good in the world.(ibid. p. xvii)

Fostering unity and suppressing differenceswould also be greatly helped by putting thenation on war-footing. According toHuntington, the collapse of the Soviet Unionremoved an external threat through opposi-tion to which America derived a major sourceof identity: “The end of the Cold Wardeprived America of the evil empire againstwhich it could define itself” (ibid. p. 11). AlQaeda, he writes, provides a new threat, fill-ing a void and offering hope for a reinvigo-rated American nation and Anglo-Protestant

creed. Huntington emphasizes that a returnto this creed is especially called for becauseAl Qaeda targeted the United States as aChristian nation.

The full importance of these observationsabout the favorable effects of the militariza-tion of society will become clear once theyare viewed through the prism ofHuntington’s earlier works, to which I turnbelow. They also, as we shall see shortly,greatly help to answer the question of howone is to treat such tomes.

ASSESSING THE THREATIs there a threat that Mexicans will dismem-ber the United States—that immigrants, espe-cially Latinos, will destroy its unity? And isthe American essence found in Anglo-Protestantism? Huntington uses anecdotaland statistical data to bolster his points, as doother such authors. The Bell Curve, for exam-ple, includes a very large body of statisticaltables and numerous correlations. There issome merit in showing that the data selectedfor use in these works and the ways in whichthey are interpreted are grossly misleading(the ability to demonstrate the true measureof the threat is essential to the arguments ofboth Huntington and his critics). However, awarning is called for. If one goes too fardown this road, in effect one gets sucked intothe world as fashioned by authors likeMurray and Huntington. As anybody who hasparticipated in a debate or political campaignknows, the battle is half won or lost accord-ing to who chooses the issues on which tofocus and the terms through which theseissues will be sorted out. Thus, if one followsHuntington, implicitly accepting that goodAmericans are Anglo-Protestants and thatMexican immigrants are or are not becominggood Americans based on how Protestantand Anglo they become, his thesis hasalready won half of the debate. If instead oneasks what Mexican immigrants have con-tributed to make American society better andhow many Mexican immigrants (citizens andnoncitizens) have died fighting for Americain Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, onereaches rather different conclusions. It couldbe argued that one should use all social mea-surements possible in responding toHuntington’s assertions. But in pursuing thiscourse, one is left open to the suggestion thatstill other angles exist that were overlooked,



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and questions arise as to whether all mea-surements should be given equal weight.Thus, to avoid such unfruitful discussion, Iwill only briefly show that even if oneaccepts Huntington’s particular selection ofmeasurements and their interpretations, onestill does not find the threats that he evokes.I then turn to show that Huntington’s alarmsare based on a profound misunderstandingof what keeps the American society unitedand commands our mutual respect.

The Threat of Secession?The threat of secession is fear mongering atits extremist form. Few developments consti-tute a more effective call to arms than thenotion that someone is in the process of tak-ing their homes and homeland and annexingthem to a foreign nation. As Huntingtonwrites, “History shows that serious potentialfor conflict exists when people in one coun-try start to refer to territory in a neighboringcountry in proprietary terms and to assertspecial rights and claims to that territory”(ibid. p. 230). But in a work that is elsewhereheavily footnoted, here Huntington offers nocredible evidence that Mexicans seek to orare about to break away from America andeither “return” territories to Mexico or form anew state. As Enrique Krauze, editor of LetrasLibres, points out, “The obvious question is:who made this claim, and when? No serious(or unserious) figure of the twentieth centu-ry, political or intellectual—at least none thatI know of—ever proposed something soabsurd.”2 Indeed, one of the only sources thatHuntington gives in support of the likelihoodof a Mexican “reconquista” is a radical pro-fessor from the University of New Mexico,merely proving that if you Google enoughyou can find someone to say anything—notthat the country is about to be divided, withlarge chunks of it gobbled up by aliens.

There is evidence, which Huntingtonflags, that the border between the UnitedStates and Mexico is being blurred (althoughit has become less so since 9/11), but it hard-ly supports his alarmist conclusion. If any-thing, this development indicates that thenorthern states of Mexico are becoming more

gringo-ized, given the spread of Americanhabits and norms and American-owned andmanaged factories and supermarkets. Thus,no one is biting off large chunks of America,but America is sinking its teeth into otherpeople’s turf.

No Acculturation?Huntington’s other and related source ofalarm, the subversion of the American creed,identity, and unity by non-acculturatingMexicans, likewise finds little support in theevidence. To reiterate, I have no intention ofplaying Huntington’s game and getting miredin “he said; she said” or “this or that pollshows.” It suffices to cite but a few pieces ofdata that demonstrate that the threats hedepicts are simply not in evidence.

No English?One major measurement of acculturation isthe acquisition of the governing language.Huntington does not claim that Mexicanimmigrants fail on this count but merely voic-es concern that they may here differ fromother ethnic groups or even from earlierMexican immigrants. However, this is simplynot the case. As Tamar Jacoby puts it, “Studyafter study shows that virtually everyone inthe second generation grows up proficient inEnglish, and by the third generation, two-thirds speak only English.”3 And in responseto Huntington’s charge that Mexican-Americans can share the American dream“only if they dream in English” (ibid. p. 256),Fuchs writes, “Actually, most of the grand-children of Latino immigrants could notdream in Spanish even if they wanted to.”4

Indeed, at one point even Huntington him-self notes that the evidence simply does notbear out this worry: “English language useand fluency for first- and second-generationMexicans thus seem to follow the usual pat-tern” (Huntington 2004: 231).



2 Enrique Krauze. 2004. “Identity Fanaticism.”Review of Who Are We?: The Challenges toAmerica’s National Identity. New Republic, 21June. p. 29.

3 Tamar Jacoby. 2004. “Rainbow’s End.” Reviewof Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’sNational Identity. Washington Post, 16 May.

4 Lawrence H. Fuchs. 2004. “Mr. Huntington’sNightmare.” Review of Who Are We?: TheChallenges to America’s National Identity.American Prospect, August. p. 71.

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No Protestant ethics?Huntington writes that Mexican immigrantsexhibit low levels of socioeconomic and edu-cational achievement and that that they are“more likely .|.|. to be on welfare than mostother groups” (ibid. p. 235). The reason,Huntington thinks (drawing on a few lines bya few Hispanic writers), is that the characterand values of Hispanics, and particularlyMexicans, are intrinsically “different fromAnglo-Protestant ones” (ibid. p. 254). Hewrites that Mexicans show “lack of initiative,self-reliance, and ambition” and a “low prior-ity for education” (ibid. p. 254). However,similar claims have been made about manyimmigrant groups, including Catholic immi-grants. (Indeed, at one time it was thoughtthat Catholic immigrants’ religious beliefswere incompatible with modern capitalistvalues, as Max Weber noted in his renownedstudy.) All of these groups, though, acceptedthe work ethic (to the extent that they did notalready have it in the first place) and pros-pered, enriching America in the process.

Regarding welfare, a 1994 study byPachon and DeSipio shows that the majorityof immigrants of Hispanic descent hold full-time jobs, and most eschew any form of gov-ernment aid.5 As to education, 58 percent ofLatinos said that a politician’s approach tothis issue would be one of the most impor-tant factors in deciding whether or not he orshe would receive their vote.6

But above all, one should not get suckedinto accepting Huntington’s main thesis.Even if it were true that many Mexican immi-grants are slower to embrace Protestantethics than other immigrants, there is no evi-dence that such a development will break upthe nation or undermine its creed. Indeed,the opposite may well be true. Given thatmore and more of our values and social rela-tions are undermined by longer workinghours, our 24/7 society would benefit fromimmigrants who value family, community,and social life more than do Anglo-

Protestants.7 Thus, Mexican immigrants maysave America from becoming too Protestant.

No outmarriage?Nowhere is Huntington’s biasing of the dataand the utterly unfounded conclusions thathe draws from them more evident than in histreatment of outmarriage. Outmarriage is par-ticularly important because there is no moreintimate and consequential way by whichimmigrants can be integrated into a societythan for them and their children to marrymembers of the society into which they aresupposed to acculturate. Huntington claimsthat a major sign that Mexicans are refusingto become part of the American society isthat they do not marry individuals outside oftheir ethnic group. Although he initiallyadmits that, “Mexican intermarriage rates maynot differ greatly from the Hispanic rates, butthey are probably lower,” a few lines later hestates flatly, “Mexicans marry Mexicans”(Huntington 2004: 240). For Huntington, thisis simply another indication of Mexicanimmigrants’ inability to acculturate.

I have some very reliable information tothe contrary: Minerva Morales, born inMexico City to Mexican parents, did me thehonor of accepting my hand in marriage.More broadly speaking, Huntington himselfcites data that show that the proportion ofHispanics who outmarry is high, as great as33.2 percent for all third-generation Hispanicwomen. And it is important to note that thesestatistics date to 1994. Later data show, asJacoby reports, that “Among U.S.-born Asiansand Hispanics, between a third and a halfmarry someone of a different ethnicity. Bythe third generation, according to somedemographers, the rates reach over 50 per-cent for both groups.”8

In short, Huntington does not even comeclose to showing that either the integrity ofthe American society or its creed is under



5 Harry Pachon and Louis DeSipio. 1994. NewAmericans by Choice: Political Perspectives ofLatino Immigrants. Boulder: Westview Press.pp. 33–34.

6 Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser FamilyFoundation. 2002. National Survey of LatinosLatino Electorate.

7 Please see Amitai Etzioni, “The ‘Dangerous’Hispanics (and Asians) Will Save America.” Thisarticle is not yet available, but a version of itwill appear in an upcoming volume to be edit-ed by Carol Swain.

8 Tamar Jacoby. 2004. “The New Immigrants: AProgress Report.” P. 25 in Reinventing theMelting Pot: The New Immigrants and What ItMeans to be American, edited by Tamar Jacoby.New York: Basic Books.

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attack. There is no threat—no justification forall the countermeasures Huntington sees asforthcoming and indirectly advocates.

A PROFOUND MISCONCEPTIONAt the very core of Who Are We? liesHuntington’s basic misleading conception asto what makes America great. ThroughoutAmerican history, and again recently, alarmshave been sounded when immigrants did notseem to assimilate (or did not do so quicklyenough) and appeared to maintain subcul-tural distinctions. As a result, various coercivemeasures have been advocated, both to stopimmigration and to deal with those immi-grants already in the country.

However, I join with those who see nocompelling reasons, sociological or other, toassimilate immigrants into one indistinguish-able American blend—to apply, as JamesBryce put it, the great American solvent toremove all traces of previous color, strippingAmericans of their various ethnic or racialhyphens.9 There is no need for Greek-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, or any other group to seethemselves as plain Americans without anyparticular distinction, history, or subculture.Similarly, Americans can maintain their sepa-rate religions from Greek-Orthodox toBuddhism and their distinct tastes in music,dance, and cuisine without constituting athreat to the American whole. Indeed, theAmerican culture is richer for having had anintroduction to jazz and classical music, thejig and polka, Cajun and soul food, and soon.10

A melting pot is what Huntington has inmind. In contrast, the image of a mosaic, ifproperly understood, depicts the way inwhich American society actually functions inthese matters, and very well indeed.11 A

mosaic is enriched by a variety of elements ofdifferent shapes and colors, but it is heldtogether by a single framework. The mosaicsymbolizes a society in which various com-munities maintain their cultural particulari-ties, proud and knowledgeable about theirspecific traditions, but they also recognizethat they are integral parts of a more encom-passing whole. As Americans, we are awareof our different origins but also united by ajoint future and fate.

Huntington’s profound misunderstandingof, if not contempt for, the genius ofAmerican society is revealed in his treatmentof language, often used throughout historyand in many societies both as a major factorin assessing the integration of immigrantsinto a society and as a metaphor for theirrelationship to it. Huntington writes,

If the second generation does not rejectSpanish out of hand, the third genera-tion is also likely to be bilingual, andthe maintenance and fluency in bothlanguages is likely to become institu-tionalized in the Mexican-Americancommunity. .|.|. (Huntington 2004:232)

That is, Huntington holds that if Mexican-Americans learn English but maintain Spanishas their second language, it is an indicationthat they are refusing to become goodAmericans. But there is nothing un-Americanin maintaining a subculture and with it acommand of the homeland language. (I noteas an aside that regrettably many third-gener-ation immigrants, Mexicans included, do notmaintain such a command of their nativetongue.)

Most important, the framework of themosaic can be, and has been throughoutAmerican history, both reinforced and recastby immigrants. This cannot be stressed



09 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth,Vol. II. London, 1888: 328, 709: quoted byArthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting ofAmerica: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.New York: Norton. 1992: 7.

10 Tamar Jacoby. 2004. “What It Means to BeAmerican in the 21st Century.” P. 306 inReinventing the Melting Pot.

11 or further discussion of the diversity within uni-ty model, refer to: Amitai Etzioni. 1996. TheNew Golden Rule: Community and Morality ina Democratic Society. New York: Basic Books;

Amitai Etzioni. 2003. “Diversity within Unity.”In 21st Century Opportunities and Challenges:An Age of Destruction or an Age ofTransformation, edited by Howard F. Didsbury,Jr. Bethesda, MD: World Future Society; AmitaiEtzioni, 2003. “In Defense of Diversity WithinUnity,” The Responsive Community 13, no. 2(Spring 2003); www.communitariannetwork.org for the Diversity Within Unity platform andfor a list of those who have endorsed it.

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enough as often reference is made only tothe enrichment that the addition of pieces (orimmigrants) brings to the American mosaic(or society) by providing greater diversitythrough the incorporation of a growing rangeof cuisine, music, and holidays. Certainly, themosaic has been made more varied. But ofequal importance are the changes made tothe framework of the mosaic—to what unitesus and makes us Americans. These days youcan be a good American without being aProtestant or even a Christian. I am.

According to Huntington, American iden-tity was defined for 200 years byProtestants—in opposition to Catholics.Slowly, over the generations that followed,Catholic immigrants acculturated and eitherjoined Protestant churches or changed theirfaith to make it Protestant-like by developingcommunity services, adopting lay trustees,and recasting the Church in an American,national way—a truly odd list. I fail to seewhat is Protestant about community services;lay trusteeism is a minor adaptation of thekind that the Catholic Church (like other reli-gious establishments, Protestant included)made many over the centuries. But mostnotably, American Catholics chose not tobreak away from the global, hierarchicalChurch—a course that has definedProtestants. Instead, they merely increasedthe local autonomy of the American chapter.This is akin to increasing states’ rights, not toseceding from a federation.

Most important, American society’s core ofshared values (call them a creed if you must)and the social institutions that embody themhave changed over the generations and nowaccommodate different religions as well assecular bodies of belief. Indeed, differenceson the key moral and spiritual issues of theday are often between fundamentalist andmoderate Americans (found in all belief sys-tems, Protestant included) rather than simplybetween the practitioners of different beliefsystems. It then follows that Huntington’sconcern that Mexicans are notProtestantizing, is a problem not for Americabut only for his assimilationist approach.

IN PERSPECTIVE: A GLOBAL ISOMETRICPATTERN?Huntington’s particular slant stands out moreclearly when his take on the threats that heclaims Anglo-Protestant America is facing is

viewed in the context of his previous works.Among these, the best known is his 1996 TheClash of Civilizations and the Remaking ofWorld Order. It has become one of thosebooks that educated people feel they oughtto have read, and if they have not, pretend toknow its content. Many people outside of theUnited States view the book as just one moresignificant piece of evidence as to how hos-tile the United States is to other belief sys-tems and nations. (In 2002, I was a guest ofthe reformers in Iran at a meeting that theyheld at the new Center for the Dialogue ofCivilization. And practically all of those whoattended, from many different nations, railedagainst this work of Huntington’s).

There is, hence, no need here to rehashthe book’s main thesis, but it is useful torevisit its main take on the world, which issurprisingly isometric to Huntington’s take onthe domestic fate of American society—as ifhe applied the same pattern to both, only ontwo different scales. In The Clash ofCivilizations, the role of the beleaguered andthreatened party is played not by the UnitedStates but by the West, which is still power-ful but, like other previously great civiliza-tions, at its peak and unaware that it is aboutto be overtaken—unless it heedsHuntington’s warnings. The role of thethreatening Mexican from Who Are We? isplayed by Islam in The Clash of Civilizations,and the roles played by other immigrants tothe United States are reserved for other civi-lizations, especially that of the Chinese(“Sinic”). The same fifth column that boresfrom within the United States, helping theenemies of the state and the creed in WhoAre We?, also exists in the West, this time asliberals in general and multiculturalists inparticular.

Many scholars fell into the trap of treatingThe Clash of Civilizations as if it were a stan-dard, scholarly text, questioning Huntington’sdefinition of civilization and arguing thatthere might be greater or fewer civilizationsthan the seven that he lists, and so on. Othersheld that 9/11 validated Huntington (andBernard Lewis’) position. But, as I see it, theparticular slant of the book is most evident inits dealing with Islam as if it were one bodyof belief. Actually, Islam is subject to funda-mentalist and moderate interpretations. Thus,some Muslims see jihad as a call to holy waragainst all nonbelievers (including other



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Muslims who follow a more moderate line),while others interpret it as a spiritual journey.Seyyed Hossein Nasr describes this secondinterpretation, that of a softer Islam, as fol-lows: “jihâd is therefore the inner battle topurify the soul of its imperfections, to emptythe vessel of the soul of the pungent water offorgetfulness, negligence, and the tendencyto evil and to prepare it for the reception ofthe Divine Elixir of Remembrance, Light, andKnowledge.”12 Generally, Wahhabi Islam callsfor a strict interpretation of the texts, but SufiIslam is much more moderate and accommo-dating to democratic and modern economicsystems. Indeed, there are hundreds of mil-lions of Muslims in Indonesia, Bangladesh,Malaysia, and Kyrgyzstan who are moderateand live peacefully together with people ofother creeds. (Although the media has mademuch of some increase in militant Islam inthese countries, most Muslims there continueto remain moderate).

It is not only empirically wrong but alsopsychologically troubling and strategicallycounterproductive to approach the worldfrom an “us versus them” perspective and tohold that we bring light to the world throughenlightenment, rationality, and democracy,while “they” are the force of darkness, theevil empire. A much more valid and healthi-er approach is to recognize that there aremajor moderate and fundamentalist camps inall civilizations and that the West shouldwork with moderates everywhere and be onits guard against fundamentalists—every-where. The West should also recognize thatjust as it brings to the world concerns ofhuman rights and liberty, other civilizationsalso bring to the world valuable concernsthat the West has increasingly neglected, forinstance those of the common good andcommunity.

The true dangers faced by those who buyinto Huntington’s world are revealed whenone examines both Who Are We? and TheClash of Civilizations in light of his first book,The Soldier and the State: The Theory andPolitics of Civil-Military Relations, in whichhe openly favors militaristic, authoritarian,and homogeneous regimes over democraticand pluralistic ones. Published in 1957, the

book set off a furor in Harvard’s Departmentof Government where Huntington was then ayoung and untenured professor.

At the time, only a few years had passedsince the world had faced the threat of aFascist regime, and many military-authoritari-an regimes still dotted the map. Indeed, TheSoldier and the State so infuriated CarlFriedrich, a leading political scientist atHarvard and a refugee of Nazi Europe, thathe led a successful campaign to denyHuntington tenure, prompting him to leaveHarvard (although he was invited back, a fewyears later).

The citation of but a few quotes from thelast pages of this work in which Huntingtoncompares the military academy of West Pointto the nearby town of Highland Falls pro-vides an ample idea of his vision of America.He finds that in the military academy:

There join together the four great pillarsof society: Army, Government, College,and Church. Religion subordinates manto God for divine purposes; the militarylife subordinates man to duty for society’spurposes. In its severity, regularity, disci-pline, the military society shares the char-acteristics of the religious order. Modernman may well find his monastery in theArmy. (Huntington 1957: 465)

Huntington goes on to conclude:

West Point embodies the military ideal atits best; Highland Falls the American spir-it at its most commonplace. West Point isa gray island in a many-colored sea, a bitof Sparta in the midst of Babylon. Yet isit possible to deny that the military val-ues—loyalty, duty, restraint, dedication—are the ones America most needs today?That the disciplined order of West Pointhas more to offer than the garish individ-ualism of Main Street? Historically, thevirtues of West Point have beenAmerica’s vices, and the vices of the mil-itary, America’s virtues. Yet todayAmerica can learn more from West Pointthan West Point from America.” (ibid.pp. 465–66)

IN CONCLUSIONHow is one to treat such works? Name-call-ing will not do. I see nothing to be gained bycalling Huntington “racist,” “xenophobic,”



12 Seyyed Hossein Nasr. 2002. The Heart of Islam:Enduring Values for Humanity San Francisco:Harper Collins. p. 260.

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“nativist,” or “chauvinist,” as he has beenlabeled.13 Nor can one ignore works that havesuch wide appeal. The prejudices they airand feed need to be addressed, and one wayto do so is to deal with such books.However, it is best not to view them asworks of social science once it becomes clearthat their use of data is highly tendentiousand misleading. Instead, one had best laybare their ideological slant. In Huntington’scase, he is a systematic and articulate advo-cate of nationalism, militaristic regimes, andan earlier America in which there was onehomogenous creed and little tolerance forpluralism. I would fight for the right of suchright wing positions to be aired, just as Iwould for left wing ones. However, one mustlay bare their subtext. This is best achievedwhen later works are viewed in the contextof previous ones, especially when they allreflect the same slant, as the works ofHuntington do.

Huntington’s fears are not wholly withoutfoundation. He defines himself as a settler,not as an immigrant. Settlers, white andProtestant, are those who fashioned the“true” America and controlled it. This controlindeed has and is being undermined byimmigrants, yet it is not America that is losingpower and creed but (as elsewhere in theworld)—the settlers. Thus, Huntington’s posi-tion does make sense if one sees the threats

that he evokes as endangering not the nationbut his privileged group—and his alarmistpossibilities of recourse as attempts to protectit—not the United States of America. But inreality, it is Huntington and those who sharehis position who pose a real threat to thenation. Huntington says that he is concernedabout divisions, yet he divides the nation inways that very few others do, between set-tlers and the rest of us. And to the extent thatHuntington and others are able to drum upfears—of Mexicans, Muslims, or theunwashed masses of voters—they may beable to sow conflict in American society.

Moreover, they might be able to slowthose processes through which Americansociety has demonstrated to the world that anation can grow and benefit by people of dif-ferent backgrounds and traditions becominga part of it—without having these peoplehave to surrender their subcultural and ethnicidentities. To the extent that Huntington andcompany succeed in making us approachwhole civilizations as evil empires, they willundermine national security by causing us tooverlook major potential allies across theworld. And to the extent that they succeed inputting the nation into a permanent, milita-rized mobilization, they weaken the founda-tions of democracy. It follows that reviewingsuch tomes helps us to understand both thetrue sources and nature of the threats that thenation, indeed the world, face, with whichwe are sure to cope as we have done in thepast and continue to do today.



13 Letters. 2004. Foreign Policy. November/December, p. 4.

the real threat an essay on samuel huntington

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