For anyone interested in foreign affairs, this book will catalyze debate, and not only for Mr. Huntington's concluding scenario for World War III. He sees how this could happen if the U.S. mishandles an increasingly xenophobic and truculent China. Chinese assertiveness, Huntington argues, rises out of its felt grievances against a relatively weakening West. After China, the gravest challenge to the West is resurgent Islamic identity. So what to do? The West should ensure the survival of its values within a stronger European-North American alliance that can offset the emerging Sino-Islamic grouping.
Samuel P. Huntington is a political scientist at Harvard and was a foreign policy aide to President Clinton.
