Western civilization for the world?

By Sayidiman Suryohadiprojo

JAKARTA (JP): Samuel Huntington, author of the controversial Clash of Civilizations article, has written another interesting article in the November/December 1996 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

In it, he asserts that the process of economic modernization can only be successful for those nations basing changes on the indigenous culture. Huntington argues that it is an illusion to promote Western culture as something to be accepted as universal values.

Some technical expertise can be borrowed to improve the process of modernization. However, what must take place is not westernization, but modernization.

Peter the Great and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk were convinced that to modernize their countries they should adopt Western culture, even replacing traditional headgear with its Western equivalent. But what they created were, in Huntington's words, "torn countries", unsure of their cultural identity.

The economic success of Japan seems to prove Huntington's case. Based on their slogan of "Japanese spirit, Western technique", modernization became a process that took the whole nation to a different platform of life and progress.

Huntington does not believe that societies with modern cultures should be any more alike than are societies with traditional cultures. There is no homogeneous and universal modernity like there was no universal traditionalism. On the contrary, Huntington thinks that modernity in a nation produces a strengthening of indigenous cultures.

Modernization enhances the economic wealth and military power of a country as a whole. That encourages people to have confidence in their heritage and to become culturally assertive.

The return to indigenous culture very often takes a religious form and the global revival of religion is a direct consequence of modernization, says Huntington. This also assumes an anti- Western cast, in some cases rejecting Western culture, because it is Christian and subversive, or considered degenerate and secular. All of this has a deep impact on politics.

The process of indigenization can also be observed through the use of language. English has been accepted as the number one world language. But according to the findings of Sidney S. Culbert of the University of Washington, the use of English is declining. In 1958 about 9.8 percent of all human beings spoke English as a first or second language. But in 1992 only 7.6 percent did.

The use of the five major Western languages has also declined from 24 percent in 1958 to 21 percent in 1992.

Huntington's conclusion is therefore that the Western civilization is unique but not universal.

All efforts to make other nations accept Western values as universal and their own is an illusion. What the West should do with its relatively limited resources is to enhance the unity among the West, so that the non-Western forces can not play one Western nation against the other.

In Huntington's view, what includes the West are North and Latin America and Europe (except those nations in Eastern Europe historically close to the Orthodox Church and Islam). He does not consider Greece or Turkey Western. Russia is definitely not Western. He proposes that the West should take all actions to improve its power, politically, economically as well as militarily. NATO must play an important role.

Huntington does not mention the clash of civilizations in this article, but the suggestions he has made to strengthen the West -- which spans from the Western Hemisphere to the Baltic nations, Poland and Rumania -- is a clear indication of his distrust of the non-West.

The writer, a former governor of the National Resilience Institute, is now an ambassador at large for the Non-Aligned Movement.