GS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Materialism, Muammar Gaddafi, United States Code
Part IV: Armed Conflict in the 21st Century - 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
Costs and Causes of War
● War is expensive, but good for business
● Different kinds of wars: war between armies, guerrilla war, civil war
What are the causes of war?
● Realism and the quest for power
○ Need for conquest
● Idealism and the clash of cultural values
○ Eg. Huntington’s thesis
● Nationalism and Elite manipulation
○ Using patriotism for the interests of the elites (eg poorer men usually ones in
army → can’t rebel against class structures or fight for their rights, as they are at
war fighting on behalf of country… elites find a way not to fight)
● Money and Materialism
○ War is good for business: “military industrial complex” (dwight eisenhower -
military interest and industrial interests were coming closer together, those
manufacturing weapons and those in military have shared interest in going to
war)
● War - a social construction or biological need?
○ Is aggression a part of human nature? (nature vs nurture, is aggression ingrained
in us)
A Quranic Account of Human Nature and War
● Something redemptive about human beings
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● Human beings have knowledge of things that no other creation has
● Part of nature that will bring corruption, and part of them that is above angels (can be
worst or best creation, we have both tendencies, war and peace, which tendency we
give expression to depends on us)
“Us Versus Them”: A Clash of Civilizations
● Self-declaring prophecy of the clash of civilizations (if you make claim that there is clash
of civilizations, you might ensure that it happens - self-declaring prophecy)
● Samuel P. Huntington → said we will see increasing conflict based on culture rather than
economics (1990s), wrote paper then book
The West Vs “the Rest”
● Civilization means a pervasive culture (or way of life) shared by many countries,
impacting a large region of the world over time
● A civilization tends to have similar systems of law and governance, economic
organization, patterns of living and settlement, types of food and subsistence, and kinds
of culture (especially in terms of worldview, religion, and shared values)
Huntington’s Argument (The Clash of Civilizations)
● Samuel Huntington
○ Whereas the Cold War there was a war of ideology, we now witness the clash of
civilizations
● Culture plays a renewed role in international relations and politics:
○ Civilizational consciousness is on the increase, displacing nationalism and
economic ideology (i.e. capitalism vs socialism) of the Cold War as the basis for
conflict
● Huntington’s list of civilizational blocs:
○ Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American,
and possibly African…
● Huntington’s View:
○ There are different global civilizations, each has its own civilizational values and
practice (some overlap, but many are unique)
○ The farther apart two civilizations are in values, the more likely there will be wars
between them (lack of respect and mutual understanding)
○ The closer two different civilizations are geographically, the greater the odds of
armed conflict between them
● The timing of Huntington’s work is important (early 1990s): end of the cold war and the
collapse of communism
● Huntington asked:
○ After the USSR, who would be the next great enemy of the West? Where would
the next huge wars be fought, and over what?
● His answer:
○ Likely to be the Arab world and Islamic civilization
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