Said views Imperialism as an expression of racism; the West’s disregard
for the rights of non-Westerners is made acceptable by a double standard
based on ethnicity in which non-White peoples are assumed to be inferior and
servile. Thus, the Westerners are absolved of guilt because they believe
they are doing the natives a favor by granting them the enlightenment of
Western rule. This paradigm, while not totally incompatible, differs from
Huntington’s in several respects. By Huntington’s interpretation of
culture, race is but one of many factors dividing civilizations. Said’s
racism model is useful for understanding the dynamics and psychology of one
instance of Imperialistic expansion in human history—that of the West in
modern times. By Huntington’s model, however, it is hardly the determining
factor in this most recent bout of Imperialism or any other. When
civilizations differ in power the strong take advantage of the weak. This
is a natural consequence of cultural identity in the Huntington sense; by
considering themselves part of a group, people are forced to differentiate
between themselves and those who do not belong to their group. When the
opportunity to better one’s own group at the expense of another group
arises, the tendency historically has been to exploit it. The specific
motivations and relationships take on various guises, such as racism in the
case of the West, but these are secondary causes. The Roman Empire expanded
voraciously in the first century BC, motivated by a sense of paranoia and a
constantly expanding definition of what was needed to maintain the defense
of Italy. The growth of the Japanese Empire before WWII was similarly
motivated.
Huntington’s article supports the idea that Imperialism is a natural
part of the interaction of civilizations, and not an entirely bad one. It
tends to strengthen the cultural identity of both groups, provides obvious
benefits to the dominating group, and distributes the technology responsible
for the dominating group’s power to the less advanced group over time.
Throughout human history the spread of knowledge has been accomplished by
the shifting tides of Imperialism. Said’s objections to the current Western
Imperialism are humanistic concerns. They fit perfectly within Huntington’s
ideological framework—Said has a cultural bond with the Middle Eastern
nations whose interests he defends. In objecting to the Imperialist
subjugation of the Middle East and the racism which accompanies it, he is in
effect supporting Huntington’s paradigm of cultural identity.
Huntington and Said agree that mutual hostility toward the Western
hegemony tends to bring the nations of opposing civilizations closer
together, as in the Persian Gulf War. Said interpreted the Western
intervention in the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait at an Imperialistic
move, as did many Middle Easterners. Iraq challenged the West and had to be
put down harshly to maintain the current informal Imperialism. This
conclusion is debatable, but the very presence of the debate suggests the
kind of banding together of opponents of the civilization of the West
predicted by Huntington; after all, by another interpretation America was
simply doing her duty as an ally of Kuwait by intervening on her behalf.
The debate over the Imperialistic nature of the intervention is a result not
of the questionable motives for the alliance, but of the growing cultural
identity of the Arabs which is increasingly confident in its opposition to
the West. That there was no such debate when America came to the aid of her
Western allies in WWII supports this suggestion. While Said’s allegations
of racism may shed light on the surface of the issue, Huntington’s mode of
thought would suggest motives more Machiavellian than racist—is it
reasonable in power terms to expect a strong nation to allow a much weaker
state to attack one of her allies unchecked?
There is evidence in Huntington’s article of the Orientalist prejudice
of which Said accuses Western literature, but this lay in some of the
supporting examples and does not affect the main argument. Furthermore,
some of his proposed policy in anticipation of growing non-Western power,
such as nurturing pro-Western dissident groups within non-Western societies,
are exactly the kind of Imperialist actions Said opposes. Much of the
article’s indefensibility comes from the fact that is oversimplifies the
complicated matter of cultural identity and the role of culture in politics,
so that those who wish to find holes in the argument can, and where the
ideas are good they boarder of statements of the obvious. Still, they are
statements of the obvious which had not been set to paper before and
Huntington did well to do so. Said’s crusade against Orientalism would find
another culprit in Huntington, but cultural bias is the whole premise of
Huntington’s article. His bias only supports his thesis.