Lucye Rafferty/The Hoya Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington explained his views regarding the future of American hegemony and the balance of power yesterday in Gaston Hall

In light of the current tensions and conflict in international affairs, Harvard professor and prominent political scientist Samuel P. Huntington presented his theories on global politics as the keynote speaker in the second annual Goldman Sachs Distinguished Lecture series in memory of Michael P. Mortara (SFS ’71) to a crowd of 500 in Gaston Hall Monday. Huntington serves as the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University.

The author of several esteemed books, including The Third Wave: Democratization in the Twentieth Century, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington suggested yesterday that the current global situation, while related to new dimensions of terrorism and the war in Iraq, is actually a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Huntington focused the remainder of his lecture on the global power structure and the new influence of the Islamic community.

Instead of describing the power structure as unipolar or multipolar, he explained it as a “hybrid” that he called a uni-multipolar system, a structure that has one superpower with several major regional powers.

Using several colored overhead charts, Huntington explained how this setup still causes international conflicts. “The U.S. has global interests and actively promotes these interests in all regions of the world,” he said. This, in turn, causes conflict with individual regional power states, he said.

Government professor John Ikenberry, the director of the Mortara Center for International Studies, argued that the United States had become a global hegemon when he introduced Huntington. Huntington said that the United States may be on a path to global hegemony, but is not quite yet there.

“In the past month, the Bush administration’s been doing everything it can to prove that [Ikenberry] is right,” Huntington said.

As he explained in his book The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington said that since the end of the Cold War, culture has come to replace politics in the world power system, providing a segue to his views on the rise of cultural influences like the demographic power of Islam and the economic power in China. Huntington explained that culture carries power because it is easier for states to trust homogenous cultures.

Religion, he clarified, is critical in “shaping the identities of people and aligning the states.”

Huntington referenced the “resurgence of Islamic consciousness of Muslim people and their identities.”

The rediscovery of an Islamic identity is paired with a “great grievance and hostility toward the West, particularly the U.S.,” Huntington said, driven by the attitude that the West is “dominating and imperialistic.”

Another reason that the Islamic community feels this hostility toward the United States is a “reaction to their repressive governments and the United States government that support them,” Huntington suggested.

The anti-American attitude is not only related to the Islamic community, but also to other parts of the world, including European allies, he said.

Huntington remembered one anecdote, however, that showed some hope for a pro-American attitude, when he recently received a call from a friend in Hamburg, Germany.

“After two years of anti-American demonstrations,” his friend said, “now there are pro-American demonstrations.” This pouring out of support for the Untied States after Sept. 11 showed all across the European continent, including the memorable “We are All Americans Now” headline in Le Monde.

While this may seem uplifting, Huntington would not let any hope of pro-American sentiment last long. He named one British Ambassador who seemed to capture Huntington’s interpretation of the world standpoint.

“One reads about desire for American leadership in the United States. Everywhere else,” the diplomat said, “you read about American arrogance and imperialism.”

Huntington blamed this split in interpretations as something he called the universalist’s illusion – the idea that everyone in the world holds the same ideals as United States citizens. “If they do not have them,” Huntington joked with an eerie seriousness, “they desperately want them. If they do not want them, they don’t understand.”

Returning to the beginning of his speech, Huntington remained wary of the United States as a hegemon.

“On some issues, the U.S. will often find itself alone,” he said just before the speech opened up to a question and answer period.

“Only one superpower is often a lonely super power,” Huntington said.

Huntington has served as Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council and President of the American Political Science Association.