A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE GLOBAL CIVILIZATION INITIATIVE

Civilizational debate is not a new phenomenon in international politics. Civilizational states try to promote civilizations in a bid to foster civilizational values, cultural values and soft power resulting in the acceleration of their political and diplomatic clout. The Clash of Civilizations theory opined by Samuel P. Huntington triggered an intriguing debate in international politics. He reckons that in the post-Cold War world, the primary source of conflict among the states would be on culture and civilization, arguing ideological war between the Western world underpinned by the US and the Eastern world supported by the Soviet Union. To counter the Clash of Civilizations theory and the US ideational war, China has initiated the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). It underscores the promotion of civilizational values and eschewing imposing ideologies or values on others. This paper, thus, shed slight on Western and Eastern discourses regarding the civilizations. The study also attempts to give a new insight by drawing a comparison between Clash of Civilizations and GCI.