Is Culture a Cause of Conflict in International Relations?

The calls for ethnic holy war coming from Muslim leaders in the Middle East since the Islamic resurgence of the 1960s and 1970s, the religious and moral rhetoric of certain Western leaders since the beginning of an international “War on Terrorism,” and the conflict of cultural identities within some modern states might lead one to conclude that culture plays a large role in international conflicts. This argument has been epitomized by Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” which argues that membership in one of several ‘civilizations’ will play an ever increasing, and indeed dominant role in the affairs between states.

This essay will survey Huntington’s argument. It will then propose that the arguments chief flaw lies in the presupposition of a monolithic Islamic culture. Next, it will suggest that while culture is intricately entwined with politics, the later is usually the source of conflicts, while the former (especially in cases of culture seeming to call for violence) is generally a reaction to the larger political and economic situation. Finally, it will argue that employing overarching stereotypes like those found in the “Clash of Civilizations” is a dangerous business, and occasionally helps to increase the role culture plays in conflict.

In Samuel Huntington’s vision of the future “the fundamental sources of conflict … will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” (22) He clarifies that states will remain the most powerful actors in world interactions, but that they will increasingly group themselves together in terms of their “civilization.” Civilization, in this interpretation, is “the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity.” (24) There are somewhere between six and nine civilizations present in the world today, but the three most important players seem to be the West (including North America and Western Europe), Orthodox Christians, including Russia and other traditionally Byzantine nations, and the Arab world, which includes the Middle East and all Islamic countries.

Huntington argues that these distinct civilizations are headed for collision. With the end of the cold war and the fall of the Soviet Union, the great ideological conflict that had been dividing the world was concluded. However the close of this conflict does not mark the beginning of a period of inevitable understanding between countries all headed for the same destination, as Francis Fukuyama proposed. Instead the emphasis in international affairs on ideological differences will be replaced by the more important set of civilization differences. “These differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic. Civilizations are different from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and most importantly, religion.”

As the world speeds into modernity and becomes a smaller place, interactions between states increase. National identity, Huntington argues is decreasing and religious identity fills the gap. While the western civilization enjoys its peak of power, “a return to the roots phenomenon is occurring among the non-western civilizations.” (26) Importantly, these cultural traits that determine one’s civilization membership are not mutable. One cannot choose their civilization, but is born into it. Conversion, as such, is not an option. Huntington also argues that increasing economic regionalization will serve to “reinforce civilization-consciousness” and that that regionalization will only be successful within civilizations.
Additionally Huntington sees fault lines between civilizations that have been the points of conflict for hundreds of years. These fault lines are especially pronounced at the borders of Islamic Civilization. It is here that civilizations are most likely to clash violently, while at the borders of North American and Latin American civilization, or even Orthodox Christian and Western civilizations conflicts are more likely to be borne out in non-violent ways. “The crescent shaped Islamic block of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia has bloody borders.” (34)

When clashes between civilizations do occur the states involved tend to muster support from other states in their civilization. This “nation rallying” becomes the chief mode of reaching alliances. “As the post cold war world evolves civilization commonality is replacing political ideology and traditional balance of power considerations as the principle basis for cooperation and coalitions.” (35) A telling example for Huntington is the collapsed Yugoslavia. The struggling states that formed in the wake of the collapse were adopted by their cultural big brothers. The United States and Europe supported the fledgling catholic states of Slovenia and Croatia, the Arab world backed mostly Islamic Bosnia, and Russia supported (in a limited way) Orthodox Serbia. Huntington sees this kind of alliance system evolving into global civilization conflicts, especially between “the West and the rest.” The implications for the West, then, in light of this inevitable global division is to solidify power, maintain global military and economic advantage and help to secure those states with similar cultures.

Most criticisms of Huntington’s argument stem from a single blaring characteristic: this is a vast oversimplification of complicated global interactions. Cutting the globe up into several large blocks and labeling them groups of homogenous civilizations fails to incorporate the intricate political and economic forces tugging at the foreign policies of any government within the international system of states. This simplification also blinds us to the system of conflicts working inside each of these blocks that may actually be the sources that give rise to the inter-civilization conflicts between them. I will first contend with the fiction that the Arab, or Islamic world, Huntington’s “most violent” cultural block, can be conceived as a unified whole. I will then argue that to portray the violent dealings of Arab states as a result of their Muslim culture is to place a false cultural reason in place of real political and economic ones.

“At the very core of this supposed challenge or conflict lie confusions: the mere fact of peoples being ‘islamic’ in some general religious and cultural sense has been conflated with their adhering to beliefs and policies that are strictly described as ‘Islamist or fundamentalist.” (Halliday 107) Fred Halliday argues that this false perception has several sources. First, we see a history and proliferation of conflicts in the Middle East. A convenient way to explain this phenomenon is that most of the people there are culturally Muslim. Additionally, there are collective cultural memories of great ancient struggles like the crusades that help to conjure distorted images of the Arab world in western populations. Finally, in an amazing way, the modern identity of the Islamic world seems to match the west’s perception. “The intermitten invocation of Jihad, the very real support for some terrorist groups, the bloody rhetoric about wanting to cut off the hands of America – all seemed to lend credence to the idea of the ‘Islamist Threat.’” (Halliday 111)
These in many ways superficial features of the image the Muslim world projects to the West do not capture a coherent reality. First, the Arab world does not share a unified political identity with which to wage some sort of organized military threat to the west. “In reality these Islamic countries have pursued individual, nation – state interests, and as often as not, fought each other.” (Halliday 113) This is apparent in the number of inter Arab conflicts seen in the last several decades: conflicts between Iran and Iraq, Egypt and Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Algeria and Morocco.

Another important consideration is that there is no static Islamic Religion. “The idea that ‘Islam’ as such provides an identity, explanation and moral code for all actions undertaken by Muslims is a clear simplification. Islam, like any other great religion, is a set of texts that are invoked to justify actions of Muslims.” These texts however, are quite vague and completely silent on a huge array of issues including nearly all those of international relations and domestic politics. The vague content of religious texts makes them readily available to manipulation by political leaders.

In these various possibilities of interpretation we can see the ability for Arab states to act according to traditional state interest and justify its actions in terms of religion and culture. The truth is that “Islam has been rationalized, producing as many Islams as there are countries with Muslin majorities.” (Piscatori 314) We should be skeptical then of interpreting conflicts of states involving populations that happen to be Muslim as religious wars as somehow religious conflicts.

“The creation of an imagined, monolithic Islam lends to a religious reductionism that views political conflicts … in primarily religious terms as ‘Islamic – Christian conflicts.’ Although the communities in these areas may be broadly identified in religious terms … it is nonetheless true … that local disputes and civil wars have more to do with political issues and socioeconomic issues than with religion.” (Esposito 217)

By examining the recent resurgence of Islam in politics since the 1960s John Piscatori exposes some political sources for the growing call to “religious conflict.” First, the end of the1967 conflict between Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and Israel left the Arab world feeling inferior in the face of a century of militarily unsuccessful encounters with outsiders, especially in the west. “The loss of Jerusalem particularly inflamed Islamist sentiment and in common outrage Muslims everywhere found strong identification with one another.” (309)

Additionally, the increased fundamentalism in some states can be seen as a response to modernization moving too fast for cultures to accept or adjust to. This was the case in the Iranian revolution of 1979. “The process of rapid modernization created disturbances in the social equilibrium” created a confusion in which “the only safe mooring seemed to be in attachment to Islamic values.” (310) This is related to the “crisis of modernity” felt in some ways by all states in the modernizing world that increasingly dissolves and redefines traditional relationships. To the Arab world Islam served as “a simplifying membership in a community with links to the past as well as the future.” (311)

Another important reason for the resurgence of political Islam lies in its value as a legitimizing tool. Presenting a community as taking collective action in an “Islamic” way is never valid. “This is either a stereotypical projection employed by those who have sought to dominate or exclude people of Islamic origins, or it is an equally spurious claim made by people within the Islamic community who seek to exercise power over a social group by advancing their particular interpretation.” (Halliday 115) It is important to remember that the states that comprise the “Islamic Civilization” are not stable liberal democratic regimes but unstable, often impoverished or grossly unequal, autocracies ravaged by histories of conflict and colonization.

“Because most of these societies are poor in institutions and dominated by unelected rulers, it is natural for them to look for a way for them to legitimize themselves easily.” (Piscatori 312) Islam is a way for them to do so. They need simply declare a religious mandate for their actions. The religion can also work as the inverse. In authoritarian regimes without freedom of speech or other liberal outlets of political expression “Islam is being discovered as a convenient tool for taking a political position.” (312) The need to appear orthodox to retain legitimacy restrains some governments from suppressing radically political speech when hidden in the terms of Islamic fundamentalism.

As we have seen, the concept of an illusory “unified Islamic world” is help as valid in the minds of the west, and reflected in the political rhetoric of leaders in the Middle East in order to serve their own security purposes. These are not unrelated occurrences. The stereotyping of diverse groups and ideas into things like “Islamic Militarism” is a dangerous business, especially when employed by political leaders not only in the Middle East, but also in the West.

“Differing cultural traditions are surely among the sources of international conflict today; by themselves however, they rarely lead to major conflicts between states.” (Gray 151) Certainly things like memories of great enmity and strong cultural mistrust can exacerbate strenuous situations and play as one factor among many in a road to conflict. However, this role of culture in conflict is greatly enlarged when stereotypes employed by leaders portray the culture of another state as a static, insurmountable, and necessarily hostile barrier. “Talk of clashing civilizations is supremely unsuited to a time when cultures are in flux. In so far as such talk shapes the thinking of policy makers it risks making cultural differences what they have been only rarely in the past – causes of war.” (Gray 159)

In 2002 the President of the United States used a childish and dangerous oversimplification in an annual State of the Union Address. The President referred to the states of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of evil” alluding to the sinister alliance of the Second World War. The President ignored the fact that no alliance between these countries existed, or that in fact two of these countries had been engaged in war with one another several times in the past. The overall impression received by the less informed viewers was that these three countries have something in common, and that it was their active role in working against the United States. Needless to say these comments did not promote mutual understanding between policy makers or populations, or help to diminish the myths mentioned above that establish an adversarial stance between “civilizations.”

John Esposito argues that the stereotypes that developed during the Crusades (which began, he argues, for the political purposes of “gaining recognition for papal authority” and to “reunite the Greek and Latin Churches.”) still exist today. “How non-Muslims think of Islam conditions the manner in which they deal with Muslims, which in turn conditions how Muslims think of and deal with non-Muslims.” (Esposito 215) The answer then, for the west, is not to continue entrenching a misleading “us” and “them” dichotomy, but to dispel in the minds of the public and policy makers that notion which has already been discredited in the minds of academics: that unified cultures primarily direct the actions of states, that unified cultures even exist in themselves, and that there is a unified Islamic threat controlling governments with violent aspirations and seek our destruction.

Works Cited

Esposito, John. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality (1996)

Gray, John, 'Global Utopias and Clashing Civilizations: Misunderstanding the
Present', International Affairs, 74 (1998), pp. 149-64.

Halliday, Fred, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the
Middle East (1996).

Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993)

Piscatori, James. Islam and the International Order in Bull, Hedley and Watson, Adam (eds.), the Expansion of International Society (1984).

Nietzsche on Art

Nietzsche on Art

“The basic transformative impulse known to the human experience.” (Twilight of the Idols, p. 24) This, the approach Nietzsche takes to art, denies the interpretations of Kant and Schopenhauer in which “our interest and response to the beautiful is altogether separate from our practical interests.” (Nussbaum 55) For Nietzsche art is something inextricably entangled with our practical lives. It is not a temporary escape from our experience of a dismal and meaningless existence. Art is instead a way for human beings to bring meaning into a world that would otherwise be intolerable. It is, in a way, the reason for living.

In the broadest sense art represents “the human being’s power to create an order in the midst of disorder, to make up a meaning where nature herself does not supply one.” (Nussbaum 54) Nietzsche establishes this idea in his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, through an analysis of Greek Tragedy and the two conflicting artistic impulses (and often these ideas take other roles), the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the synthesis of which makes art possible. This essay will first examine the state of the world without art, as recognized by the Greeks. It will then examine both the Apollonian and Dionysian natures that allow us to create art. Finally, it will examine the way in which art can be our redemption.

The Greeks were able to create art in the form of tragedy because they “knew and felt the horror of existence.” (The Birth of Tragedy, p. 9) This is illustrated by Nietzsche through reference to the Greek myth of King Midas and the god Selenius. Selenius is captured by the human king and forced to answer the question ‘what is best and most desirable for man?’ The god responds “What is best of all is beyond your reach forever: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you – is to quickly die.” (BT 8) This myth represents the Greek realization of the two paramount, albeit depressing, realities of human life: meaninglessness and suffering.
For Nietzsche there is no meaning inherent in nature for us to pursue. We live in a world filled with constant change. In Plato’s words it is a world not of “being,” but of “becoming.” We don’t see things in the world as finished products, but as travelers moving towards various conclusions. Children are on their way to adulthood, buildings are on their way to collapse, and our scientific pursuits are on their way to disproof. Everything in this world is transient, and in that transience resists adherence to permanent principles. As such, the world is only “incompletely comprehensible.” Man often sees what he cannot explain. His rules are fraught with exceptions. These engender what Schopenhauer calls a “terrible awe that seizes upon man, when he is suddenly unable to account for the cognitive forms of a phenomenon.” (BT3) Humans come into the world without a rule book or an instruction manual. Nature has left unanswered many of our most burning questions. “What should I do?” “How should I live?” “Why am I here?”

To add insult to injury, we navigate this chaotic world in a state of suffering. We are constantly struggling to survive, or to better our position in a world were nothing will stay in place for long. In a sense, we can get no peace. The Greeks were right, it seems, to view life in this world with horror. How is one to live knowing these things to be true? It is difficult for one to imagine climbing out of bed in light of these weighty damnations.
But there is hope for us, and Nietzsche sees this hope in art. Art can be our answer in this chaotic world. Human beings can use art to bring meaning into our world, and though we may still suffer, that suffering is much more bearable when it is given purpose.

The Apollonian and Dionysian natures are in opposition. The former represents an appreciation of order, light and clarity. It is experienced by the individual aware of his individuality. It is manifested in the world as the “serene sense of proportion” found in the static art of sculpture and in the mind by images and symbols. The Dionysian represents the beauty of chaos and drunkenness or madness. It is experienced by the individual lost in the excitement of the Primal Unity of the world, temporarily unaware of himself as an individual unit. It is “that flood which breaks through all restraints in the Dionysian festivals and which finds it’s artistic expression in music.” It is manifested in the world as music and in the mind as will. In short, the best way to capture the essence of the two ideas is to consider the difference between enjoying a stature and enjoying a song. For Nietzsche these natures come together in the highest expression of art in tragic drama. As we will see, life affirming art needs a script (the Apollonian) and a soundtrack (the Dionysian).

Nietzsche’s explanation of the Apollonian nature begins with an insightful example. The Apollonian aspect of art is a lot like dreaming. This example is instructive in two points. First, the dream world is much different than the real world. In the dream world there are no loose ends, and no questions. All is exposed to the Apollonian light. “In our dreams we delight in the immediate apprehension of form; all forms speak to us; none are unimportant; none are superfluous.” (BT 2) We don’t feel the need to ask questions in our dreams, at least, not while we are having them. In this way the dream is analogous to a piece of artwork. In art the artist creates the representation of the world himself and exposes it in a meaningful way. All that the artist presents in the artwork is important, and is there for a reason. This is because the world presented in the art work was put together by a human being in an ordered way. Each line on the canvas, unlike each tree in the forest, is there for a reason. There are no loose ends at the close of a Greek Tragedy, each character has his role, and fits into his place.

Secondly, the dreamer chooses to continue dreaming. “It is a dream. I will dream on.” (BT 10) The visions in the dream are analogous to apollonian art, which places its emphasis on the love of appearances. Although the dreamer is aware the dream is fictitious, he still cares about what is going on in the dream world. Analogously, the artist cares about the art. The artist experiences in art, as in dreams, the “whole divine comedy of life… not like mere shadows on a wall – for in these scenes he lives and suffers.” (BT 2) When we watch a film (if it’s good) we care about the ending and the characters. Knowing that the movie is not real does not preclude us from crying at the ending.

However, art is not complete if it only incorporates the Apollonian. Nietzsche cannot argue that art is a driving and transformative force behind all life if we merely watch and enjoy the play. Only when art correctly balances the Dionysian with the Apollonian does it act as a force in the world (and as such really is art). The Dionysian plays two important roles in Nietzsche’s understanding. First, it is the nature that gives birth to the creative activity that yields art. Secondly, it is the nature that allows art to effect the audience in a meaningful way. It allows us to give our lives their highest dignity: “our significance as works of art.” We will see that in both cases the Dionysian manifests itself in terms of a “fundamental mood” obtained by the artist at creation and shared with the audience at appreciation. (BT 17)

In the first role, it is the mood of chaotic creativity that gives birth to art. Before there was Starry Night, there was Van Gogh’s inspiration. This inspiration comes in the form of an irrational “intuition and ecstasy that are the only authentic modes of artistic creation.” (Stern 44) It would be hard to argue that Van Gogh was prompted toward painting by a rational calculation of the profits it would secure him. In fact, given the dismal rejection (during his life) of nearly every piece of artwork he ever created, such a calculation would indeed prove he was privy to the irrational and insane. Instead, it seems rational on our part, to apply here what the German dramatist Schiller describes as a musical mood. “A certain musical mood of mind precedes, and only after this ensues the poetical idea.” (BT14) Van Gogh was overcome by a feeling, not a thought.

It is important to note that the Dionysian mood is not characterized by a stroke of genius in the creation of the artwork’s form. The mood is not the sudden realization of what the finished product should be. It is not imagery or form that comes to the artist for these have a rational component, but a feeling that cannot be expressed fully in language. Purely Dionysian expression is limited to music. However, any valuable Apollonian art is born in the Dionysian mood, as we will see later with Greek Tragedies.

Let us then, in understanding the second role of the Dionysian (its ability to move the audience) consider, as Nietzsche does quite beautifully, the effect of music on human beings. The prime example is that of revelers who lose themselves in the excitement of a Dionysian festival. To do Nietzsche justice here requires he be quoted at length:

“Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice, or “shameless fashion” have erected between man and man, are broken down. Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbor, but as one with him … In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air. His very gestures bespeak enchantment … He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy, like to the gods whom he saw walking about in his dreams. He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art … The noblest clay, the most costly marble, man, is here kneaded and cut.” (BT4)

We are elevated by music to passion, to frenzy. We are caught by “the emotional power of the tone, the uniform flow of the melos, and the utterly incomparable flow of the melos” and thrown towards something fleeting that escapes our so limited linguistic and rational abilities. (BT7) The enchantment brought about by music entices a lust for life and an empowerment of the will that can be contained even after the music stops. In this way the Dionysian gives art its ability to elicit response in our empirical world; it supplies art with the transformative impulse that causes it to be so connected to our practical existence.

Dionysian art, while primary, is not sufficient to achieve art’s meaning in the world. Nietzsche argues for a balance. It is easy to see why this is necessary. Yes, music is empowering, indeed it elicits a response. Without Apollonian forms, however, to help one interpret its meaning in an empirical way, the meaning, like the music itself, will be fleeting. This is because of music’s distance from our empirical reality. The two natures must be synthesized to be truly meaningful, and this is most effectively done through drama.

Consider listening to, and appreciating, a symphony. While Beethoven has succeeded in making me feel strongly, I am left grasping at straws how to conceive of this feeling in words or actions. “In what form does music appear in the mirror of symbolism? It appears as will…” But while I may be moved in an abstract way by its beauty, I can divulge no rational meaning from the experience. I am unable to extract any advice on how I should live my life from the symphony. Without Apollonian symbols (visual or literary) it does not change my world. Inversely, to appreciate a statue I enjoy its aesthetic beauty. I may stand in awe of its order and craftsmanship, and perhaps even learn something about the character it represents or human anatomy, but it would be highly unusual for its presence in a room to drive me to dance, or conduce any other sort of physical reaction.

In Greek Tragedy, however, we see at once the apollonian in the poetry and the plot, and the Dionysian in the music and the acting. They are combined in the way that music gives birth to the plot (ie the ‘symbols’ or words and images). Music reveals itself to the writer “as a symbolic dream picture.” (BT 14) We can understand good Drama, then, as a dream written down by an artist as a reaction to a piece of music (or musical mood) that is itself a reflection of the Primal Unity of human beings. Thus, Nietzsche calls drama a reflection of a reflection.

By watching a piece of drama, built on “the articulation of a fundamental mood, or what we would call style of life” we are both inspired to live and given something to aspire towards. (Stern 45) The hero of a fiction embodies a symbol that I can emulate, and the Dionysian force behind the work supplies the will to do so. Because the play is built on a fundamental mood that everyone who watches it is left with, it is able to create, in a social way, collective understandings including values and aspirations. Greek Tragedy took the collective mood of a people, added to it symbols and manifested it as a work of drama that supplied them a meaning. Certain deeds, as portrayed as valiant and daring in the drama, for instance, were inspiring for all in the audience, and became valued by the society. The society was given common heroes, who people aspired to become.

The fact that these dramas portrayed fictitious events was not important. The supplied values that became real and common. These common understandings that art created filled the void that nature supplied. Just as the dream that we know is unreal can still have meaning for us, so to can the striving towards an ideal have meaning for us. The most important function of art is its use as a transfigurative mirror. In striving for the “style of life” put forth in the work of art, one can fulfill that greatest - though fleeting and fragile - possibility of humanity, to create oneself as a work of art.