It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
—Samuel P. Huntington
Foreign Affairs - Summer, 1993
THE "war on terror" may be a misnomer, but it would be foolish to pretend that there is not a historic war between the "crusaders," as Muslim fundamentalists characterise the countries which descend from the kingdoms of western Christendom, and the Islamic world. It has taken many forms over more than a thousand years, and fortunes in the conflict have ebbed and flowed. A century ago it appeared to have been settled for good in favour of the West, when the region's technological superiority seemed to have reduced Islam to an irreformably backward and feeble condition. Allah, Muslims might say, is not mocked. Their certitude in the truth of their beliefs has driven those Muslims who see themselves as religious warriors to seek ways of waging holy war that outflank mere technology and promise to bring victory by the power of anti-materialist forces alone.
—Intelligence In War
© 2002 by John Keegan
Originally published in Great Britain by Hutchison, the Random House Group Limited London 2002 and subsequently in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York 2003
Excerpt from the Vintage Books Edition, p. 319