The rise of culture. Culture is destined to be the primary
force in twenty-first century global politics because, as
Huntington put it, ‘If not civilization, what?’ Since the
end of the Cold War, ideology has faded in significance
and globalization has weakened the state’s ability to
generate a sense of civic belonging, while there is little
evidence of global or cosmopolitan identities becoming a
reality. In such a context, peoples and nations are
confronted by the most basic of human questions: who
are we? This forces them to define themselves increasingly
in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history,
values and customs; in short, in terms of culture. States
and groups from the same civilization will therefore rally
to the support of their ‘kin countries’, and political creeds
such as socialism and nationalism will give way to
‘Islamization’, ‘Hinduization’, ‘Russianization’ and so on