The Future Impact of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations Theory on My Military Service
Introduction
Increased Deployments
Increased Conflict Mitigation
Increased Troop Levels Post Conflict
Focus on Humanitarian Operations
Trending Towards Humanitarian Operations
Development of Civil Affairs as a Military Branch
Focus on Post Conflict Impact
Rules of Land Warfare
Post Conflict Reconstruction
Conclusion
Restated Thesis
Conclusion
Samuel P. Huntington wrote in The Clash of Civilizations, “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural” (Huntington, 1993).
At the core of Huntington's article is the thesis that Increasing exposure to cultural differences will lead to increasing conflict. The continued need for stability will challenge our government and impact my future military service. I foresee three ways increased cultural interaction will affect my military experience. First there will likely be more frequent deployments. Secondly, there will be a greater focus on humanitarian preventive actions. Finally there will be increased focus on the post conflict impact our actions have on customs and institutions.
More frequent deployments are likely as the need to mitigate conflict becomes more prevalent and post invasion force strength requirements increase. The trend of more frequent deployments can be observed already as the operational tempo of the army has increased since Huntington first published his article in 1993. For Example for the eighteen years between the end of the Vietnam War and the start of first Gulf War there were three military deployments to armed conflict:1982 - Lebanon, 1983 - Grenada, 1989 - Panama, 1991 - First War, 1992- Somalia, 1993-Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1993 – Macedonia, 1994 – Haiti, 2001- Afghanistan, 2003 - Second Gulf War (Grimmett, 2004). John Nelson writes, “Paradoxically it now takes more ground force to secure the peace in post conflict than...