I. A World of Civilizations
2. Civilizations in History and Today
(P45) Several scholars distinguish a separate Orthodox civilization, centered in Russia and separate from Western Christendom as a result of its Byzantine parentage, distinct religion, 200 years of Tatar rule, bureaucratic despotism, and limited exposure to the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightment, and other central Western experiences.
(P53) The great political ideologies of the twentieth century include liberalism, socialism, anarchism, corporatism, Marxism, communism, social democracy, conservatism, nationalism, fascism, and Christian democracy. They all share one thing in common: they are products of Western civilization. No other civilization has generated a significant political ideology. The West, however, has never generated a major religion. The great religions of the world are all products of non-Western civilizations and, in most cases, antedate Western civilization.
3. A Universal Civilization? Modernization and Westernization
(P67) Does trade increase or decrease the likelihood of conflict? The assumption that it reduces the probability of war between nations is, at a minimum, not proven, and much evidence exists to the contrary.
(P67) Another study argues that high levels of economic interdependence “can be either peace-inducing or war-inducing, depending on the expectations of future trade.” Economic interdependence fosters peace only “when states expect that high trade levels will continue into the foreseeable future.” If states do not expect high levels of interdependence to continue, war is likely to result.
(P67) People define their identity by what they are not.
II. The Shifting Balance of Civilizations
4. The Fading of the West: Power, Culture, and Indigenization
(P92) a broad diffusion of hard powers is occuring in the world and the major nations “are less able to use their traditional power resources to achieve their purposes than in the past.” Nye goes on to say that if a state’s “culture and ideology are attractive, others will be more willing to follow” its leadership, and hence soft power is “just as important as hard command power.” What, however, makes culture and ideology attractive? They become attractive when they are seen as rooted in material success and influence. Soft power is power only when it rests on a foundation of hard power.
5. Economics, Demography, and the Challenger Civilizations
(P105) The leadership instead chose a new version of Ti-Yong: capitalism and involvement in the world economy, on the one hand, combined with political authoritarianism and recommitment to traditional Chinese culture, on the other.
(P106) In China itself in the early 1990s there developed a “popular desire to return to what is authentically Chinese, which often is patriarchal, nativisitc, and authoritarian. Democracy, in this historical reemergence, is discredited, as is Leninism, as just another foreign imposition.”
(P111) In its political manifestations, the Islamic Resurgence bears some resemblance to Maxism, with scriptural texts, a vision of the perfect society, commitment to fundamental change, rejection of the powers that be and the nation state, and doctrinal diversity ranging from moderate reformist to violent resolutionary.
III. The Emerging Order of Civilizations
7. Core States, Concentric Circles, and Civilizational Order
(P175) As a revolutionary movement, Islamist fundamentalism rejects the nation state in favor of the unity of Islam just as Marxism rejected it in favor of the unity of the international proletariat.
IV. Clashes of Civilizations
8. The West and the Rest: Intercivilizational Issues
(P188) Weapons proliferation is where the Confucian-Islamic connection has been most extensive and most concrete, with China playing the central role in the transfer of both conventional and nonconventional weapons to many Muslim states. These transfers include: construction of a secret, heavily defended nuclear reactor in the Algerian desert, … the sale of chemical weapons materials to Libya, … the supply of nuclear technology or materials to Iraq, Libya, Syria, and North Korea
(P190) In 1990, for instance, 59 percent of the American public thought that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons was an important foreign policy goal. In 1994, 82 percent of the public and 90 percent of foreign policy leaders identified it as such.
(这个观点很耐人寻味，为什么防止枪支在民众中扩散达成不了共识，防止核武器在主权国家扩散就可以？)
(P191) Many South Koreans saw a North Korean bomb as a Korean bomb, one which would never be used against other Koreans but could be used to defend Korean independence and interests against Japan and other potential threats. … South Korean interests were well served: North Korea would suffer the expense and international obloquy of developing the bomb; South Korea would eventually inherit it; the combination of northern nuclear weapons and southern industrial prowess would enable a unified Korea to assume its appropriate role as a major actor on the East Asian scene.
9. The Global Politics of Civilizations
(P209) Some Westerners, including President Bill Clinton, have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Forteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise. The relations between Islam and Christianity, both Orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other’s Other. The twentieth-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity.
(这是我觉得本书最精彩的一句话了。和基督教-伊斯兰教1400多年的冲突相比，我们生活过的冷战时期算是一个例外了。现在例外结束了，我们又掉进了历史的常态。说到周期律和例外，黄炎培也提过一个中国的周期率。我们真的跳出去了吗，或是又回到了常态的循环之中？)
(P210) Islam is the only civilization which has put the survival of the West in doubt, and it has done that at least twice.
(P210) The conflict also stemmed, however, from their (Islam and Christianity) similarities. Both are monotheistic religions, which, unlike polytheistic ones, cannot easily assimilate additional deities, and which see the world in dualistic, us-and-them terms. Both are universalistic, claiming to be the one true faith to which all humans can adhere. Both are missionary religions believing that their adherents have an obligation to convert nonbelievers to that one true faith.
(P218) This optimism was based on the highly dubious assumption that commercial interchange is invariably a force for peace. Such, however, is not the case. Economic growth creates political instability within countries and between contries, altering the balance of power among countries and regions. Economic exchange brings people into contact; it does not bring them into agreement. Historically it has often produced a deeper awareness of the differences between peoples and stimulated mutual fears. Trade between countries produces conflict as well as profit. If past experiences holds, the Asia of economic sunshine will generate an Asia of political shadows, an Asia of instability and conflict.
(P238) China’s Confucian heritage, with its emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy, and the supremacy of the collectivity over the individual, creates obstacles to democratization.
Democratization could encourage politicians to make nationalist appeals and increase the possibility of war, although in the long run a stable pluralistic system in China is likely to ease its relations with other powers.
(P243) More threatening for Russia is Chinese immigration into Siberia, with illegal Chinese migrants there purported numbering in 1995 3 million to 5 million, compared to a Russian population in Eastern Siberia of about 7 million.
10. From Transition Wars to Fault Line Wars
Possible Cause of Muslim Conflict Propensity
| Extra-Muslim conflict | Intra- and Extra-conflict | |
|---|---|---|
| Historical and contemporary conflict | Proximity(to nonMuslim) | Militarism |
| Indigestibility | ||
| Contemporary conflict | Victim Status | Demographic bulge |
| Core state absence |
11. The Dynamics of Fault Line Wars
(P268) Historically, communal identities in Bosnia had not been strong; Serbs, Croats, and Muslims lived peacefully together as neighbors; intergroup marriages were common; religious identifications were weak. Muslims, it was said, were Bosnians who did not go to the mosque, Croats were Bosnians who did not go to the cathedral, and Serbs were Bosnians who did not go to the Orthodox church. Once the broader Yugoslav identity collapsed, however, these casual religious identities assumed new relevance, and once fighting began they intensified. Multicommunalism evaporated and each group increasingly identified itself with its broader cultural community and defined itself in religious terms.
(P272) In wars between cultures, culture loses.
V. The Future of Civilizations
12. The West, Civilizations, and Civilization
(P301) Societies that assume that their history has ended, however, are usually societies whose history is about to decline.
(P305) In the late twentieth century both components of American identity have come under concentrated and sustained onslaught from a small but influential number of intellectuals and publicists. In the name of multiculturalism they have attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings.
(P306) In the 1990s, however, the leaders of the United States have not only permitted that but assiduously promoted the diversity rather than the unity of the people they govern.
(90年代作者就意识到了这个问题。我的感受是国内太注重稳定和团结，造成了很多对个人权益和多元文化的损害。而美国正好相反)
(P311) Western universalism is dangerous to the world because it could lead to a major intercivilizational war between core states and it is dangerous to the West because it could lead to defeat of the West.
Western civilization is valuable not because it is universal but because it is unique. The principal responsibility of Western leaders, consequently, is not to attempt reshape other civilizations in the image of the West, which is beyond their declining power, but to perserve, protect, and renew the unique qualities of Western civilization.
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最开始被推荐这本书的时候，我的内心是抗拒的，因为对政治并没有太大兴趣，但书里谈到了很多历史和文明的故事还是给了我很多惊喜。本书一个重要观点就是文明的冲突取代了冷战时期的意识形态的冲突。作为我这代人印象最深的就是美国的反恐了吧。现在世界上的很多冲突从这个角度去看也能说得通，比如去年的亚美利亚和阿塞拜疆（今年的俄乌战争怎么算？）。另外不由得感慨国际争端持续的时间真是长啊，而且总是那几个区域：巴尔干，高加索，中东。九十年代成书的时候这几个区域，现在还是不太平。
另一个观点是宗教的力量和影响越来越强。这和我的直觉是相反的。毕竟在科技日益发展的现代，理论上宗教的影响应该式微才对。从世俗社会回到宗教社会的国家，除了伊朗，还有土耳其。书中多次类比伊斯兰文明和马克思主义也很有意思，一个很新奇的角度。
第一次听到把改革开放和洋务运动划等号还是在高中历史课上，当时相当地震惊。这本书里也提到另一种版本的“中学为体西学为用”(ti-yong，没想到英语里还专门有这个词)。又联想到那句“没有政治体质改革的成功，经济体质改革就不可能进行到底，已经取得的成果还可能得而复失…文化大革命这样的历史悲剧还有可能重新发生”，以及上文提到的周期律，真是让人很好奇未来是个什么结局。
最后的猜想太掉价了，确实是wildly implausible fantasy。严肃的学术讨论变成了脑洞大开的科幻小说，况且预测错误的离谱，不过倒是勾起了我重新玩《文明》的冲动。