If you are afraid that you may not be taking paranoia seriously enough, Samuel Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order should be just what you need. Apparently the world is divided irreconcilably into a number of incompatible “civilizations” – the author names Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese – and conflicts and power struggles between these are inevitable.
The book, which was written in the mid-1990s, has a reputation as a key authority on global politics and power, because it is said to have predicted the 9/11 event. In fact the book talks in depth about a large number of different threats to Western Civilization, and it makes the claim that Muslim nations are especially prone to belligerence, but it is difficult to imagine many scenarios involving attacks on America by non-Westerners that the book could be said not to have predicted. It may be, however, that the spirit of paranoia which pervades this book has informed America’s unfortunate response to the 9/11 event.
I have to say that I found the book very heavy reading. It has taken me months to plough my way through it, and while I now feel more educated about the history of a number of European and Asian military conflicts from the 1980s and 1990s, I am not convinced that the future is as bleak as the author imagines it. I am also unconvinced by his idea that multiculturalism is an evil that needs to be driven out of America.