Huntington remains my favorite political scientist. I have read three of his books, and each one has sparked intellectual controversy because of the audacity of his arguments, and his purposely sweeping style. For him, to theorize is necessarily to generalize. A model does not lose its validity because details are eliminated and exceptions are accepted because, by definition, it is an abstraction of reality.
Indeed, by emphasizing the primacy of culture, Huntington appears to diminish the importance of economic and technological change that drive globalization. Imperfect as it is, the model remains relevant in explaining the continuing struggle between the West and militant Islam. Russia's oil-fueled resurgence and reassertion of its hegemony over Ukraine and Georgia also underscores the continuing impulse of civilization. And China, even as it understands the importance of regional stability to its economic growth, always seems only a step away from sliding back to the ethnocentric mindset of the ancient Middle Kingdom.
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