Conclusion A Challenge for the Global Society?

From the U.S. military intervention in the Middle East in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Huntington’s theses about the “clash of civilizations” have, unfortunately, proved to be much more accurate than many of his critics are willing to admit. In some ways, for an overall picture of the major global issues of the twenty- first century, it is even more surprising today to read The Third Wave (1991).It is within this framework, as lucid as it is dramatic, that the relevance of the civilizations paradigm today also fits. In the three decades since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the communist world, the horizon of 198 Giovanni Borgognone and Patricia Chiantera- Stutte globalization has faded and the notion of “great transformation”, taken from the title of Karl Polanyi’s 1944 masterpiece, has come back into fashion.This book has shown the flexible and multiple use of civilizational narratives in some political developments and geographical areas. From the contemporary interpretation by Arnold J. Toynbee to nowadays, civilizational models and ideas have been evoked in different realms and contexts and for different purposes, which have been only partially investigated in this book. Nevertheless, the hybrid construction of the civilizational paradigm as a scientific model and altogether as a political tool, as “swords to be used against . . . opponents” not “plowshares to loosen the solid soil of contemplative thought”11, have been stressed. The concept of “civilization” has been investigated in this book, on the one hand as a tool to legitimate either a liberal internationalist approach to the issues of peace and security or a realist perspective on global relations with Toynbee and Huntington, and on the other hand, as a concrete program or slogan to mobilize citizens in defense of the Western hegemony (Toynbee and Huntington) or for the anti- imperialistic struggle (in the essays on Panarabism, China and Russia).