Civilization discourse – maintaining the status quo global order is also just maintaining the domination of the West.

Samuel Huntington argues that ‘the idea of civilization was developed by French thinkers as the opposite of the concept of “barbarism”’.24 Huntington encourages us to think that the narrow understanding of civilization focused on ‘mechanics, technology, and material factors’ has to be supplemented with cultural practices focused on ‘values, norms, institutions’. Huntington further asserts that 19th-century Europeans devoted their energies towards ‘elaborating the criteria by which non- Western societies might be judged to be sufficiently “civilized” to be accepted as members of the European dominated international system’.25 Although Huntington acknowledges the elitism associated with these practices, he makes little attempt to cite these scholars or explicate their specific criteria and their application to particular practices such as weapons regulations and prohibition.26 The demand for these criteria and their application is significant because the ‘relevance of the civilizational paradigm’ articulated by Huntington is not an ahistorical suggestion and his rhetorical efforts to cite weapons proliferation as an ‘intercivilizational issue’ that positions the ‘West and the Rest’ in confrontation with each other deserves careful consideration.27 Huntington is content to simply describe the non- proliferation efforts of the West as efforts ‘to maintain its military superiority through policies of nonproliferation and counter-proliferation with respect to nuclear, biological, chemical weapons and the means to deliver them’.28 He astutely comments that ‘[t]he West promotes nonproliferation as reflecting the interests of all nations in international order and stability. Other nations, however, see non-proliferation as serving the interests of Western hegemony’.29 Huntington cites the growing nexus of cooperation between the Islamic-Sinic civilizations, ‘to develop their military capabilities, particularly weapons of mass destruction and the missiles for delivering them, so as to counter the conventional military superiority of the West’.30 Huntington describes these practices of arms regulation and prohibition as ‘arms buildup versus hold-down’, in the course of which, [t]he West’s antagonists are attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the West is attempting to prevent them from doing so. It is not a case of buildup versus buildup but rather of buildup versus hold-down. The size and capabilities of the West’s nuclear arsenal are not, apart from rhetoric, part of the competition . . . The outcome of a race between buildup and hold-down is more predictable. The hold-down efforts of the West may slow the weapons buildup of other societies, but they will not stop it . . . the political motives of core states and regional powers to protect their local hegemonies, all work to subvert Western hold-down efforts.31