The two most influential voices on the matter of the world's future are
Fukuyama ("The End of History") and Huntington ("The Clash of
Civilizations"). They emphasise quite different aspects. Fukuyama says that
ideology have run their course and that the world is steadily taking the
shape of a western-type liberal social and economic order. Huntington says
that cultures are as strong as ever and that there is much conflict to come.Both books have now been written long enough for their rough edges to have worn off and for their central themes to have permeated most intellectual and policy decision-making areas in the western world -- including the US State Department. Despite their differences, Fukuyama and Huntington are agreed on one point and this common theme is now emerging strongly: cultures take a long time to change -- certainly at least two, three, four generations. However, the decline of cheap oil and gas supplies, peaking at about 2020/30, will certainly take place during the next generation. It will be a relatively slow decline from its peak but even small reductions in supply will produce huge problems to the western world unless the process is orderly and smooth enough for investments and research in alternative energy technologies to take up the slack. In short, there is now insufficient time for the cultures of the undeveloped oil-exporting countries of the world to change in order to produce an orderly process of free trading, smooth adjustment of prices/investment and technological re-equipment. Not all of these countries are Muslim, but most of those with immediate and cheap supplies certainly are. And the biggest swing-producer of them all, Saudi Arabia, is among the most fundamentalist. To my mind, all this explains why Bush-Cheney have given up on trying to impose a peace in Israel, even though this is now obviously stoking up the anger of all the Muslim countries. The policy of the US State Department seems to me to be that they have realised that there is insufficient time in which peaceful change can take place. Whether one name-tags America as neo-imperialist, or whether one considers it to be adopting a policy for the larger benefit of the western world (and Russia and China, too), it amounts to the same thing. America is now in war mode. The writing seems to be on the wall for the Muslim culture. There is no possibility of changing it (or encouraging voluntarily reform) in time. America has given up on it. Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
