Fraternity: A Missing Element in Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations

Abstract

For the past three decades, Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations has maintained some critical relevance in analysing cultural or religious conflict in the international sphere. An avalanche of criticism and praise has placed Huntington’s thoughts on the central political arguments, policies and fundamental questions about the future of cultural influence onto the international scene. Although one of the pivotal arguments is that the future conflict would be based on cultural or religious, rather than ideological, difference, Huntington foregrounds it on the principles of equality and freedom, neglecting fraternity as the third face of the coin of Western political philosophy. By recognising fraternity as an overlooked and connecting rod between equality and freedom, the article argues that the apocalypses would have been better managed if fraternity was not neglected. Consequently, this article argues that Huntington’s thesis overlooks the critical role of fraternity in future conflict by focusing almost exclusively on conflict that is prompted by the struggle for equality and freedom at global and local levels. It concludes that fraternity theoretically suits the African relationship to the civilisational clash.

1. Introduction: The Core Questions

Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has received high praise for its policy direction, and caustic criticisms for its obvious weaknesses too, particularly as it selectively processes examples and data to justify its thesis that any future clash would be caused by a clash of civilisations rather than ideology. Huntington’s use of civilisation carries deep normative undertones that either inferiorise or superiorise some cultures and civilisations. As such, a clash of civilisations becomes inevitable, since different civilisations will struggle to be free from others considered superior or equal to them. It is imperative to state that the criteria for the evaluation of civilised or under-civilised groups are usually set by those who assume that theirs is the superior civilisation. Huntington’s rather prophetic tone made a lot of sense to Naugle (2002) in his theological interpretation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, five years after the publication of Huntington’s book. Naugle views the 9/11 attacks as a demonstration of clash of civilisations between the Christian and Muslim worlds and a fulfillment of a prophecy. For him, Francis Fukuyama’s triumphant jubilation over the end of history, the indisputable victory of liberal democracy as the apogee of human ideological evolution, was short-lived as neo-fascism, religious fundamentalism and neo-communism resurged with enthusiastic vengeance. And so, for Huntington, future conflict would not be ideological but civilisational or cultural, and religion, in its broadest conceptualisation is encapsulated as part of culture.

But why would Huntington prophesise a future that would be intensely characterised by religious conflict rather than dialogue and fraternity? Djaló (2009, p. 62) poignantly asked these questions over a decade ago:

Why does Professor Huntington consider as necessary and inevitable a conflict of cultural and religious differences? Why does it exclude the potential of dialogue and complementarity between civilizations for the good of humanity instead of considering diversity as a source of permanent tensions and conflicts?

Firstly, one way of answering these questions is to argue that nothing has really changed historically about how the West has perceived the rest of the world, apart from rephrasing its mandates. Looking back to the time and failure of the League of Nations, Maiolo and Robson (2025) argue that the West’s interest lies perpetually in undermining and exploiting the rest of the world. According to them,

Such accounts have broadly failed to admit the League’s own overriding purpose. This was not to work towards international cooperation among equally sovereign states, or to promote economic stability in a shattered post-war Europe, or to ensure new forms of global security and prosperity. Rather, it was to claim control over the world’s resources, war-making potential, and populations for the League’s main showrunners—and not through the gentle arts of persuasion, collaboration, and negotiation but through the direct and indirect use of physical force and the monopolization of global military and economic power. … But upon close examination all its practices pointed to the same goal: shoring up the dominance of the Western victors and preserving the structures of international power and the civilizational–racial hierarchies that had long sustained them, now in a form that could survive the fall of formal empire.

(Maiolo and Robson 2025, p. 1)

The philosophical and political underpinning of international relations, as generally viewed from Western perspective, is to maintain a policed order over the rest of the world. The geopolitical hierarchies, exploitation, monopolisation of technology, production and military supremacy, among others, that characterise international relations cannot give rise to productive fraternity; hence, for Huntington, conflict based on civilisation remains unavoidably apocalyptic. According to him “clashes of civilizations are the greatest threats to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war” (Huntington 1996, p. 321).

Secondly, Huntington is ignorant of historical trends, which makes his work “a historical myth” or “a possible historical libel” (Denemark et al. 2023, p. 47). In other words, Huntington is neither currently correct about his hypothesis nor historically correct about it. Examining the history and diversity of treatises in the West, since about 5000 BCE, Denemark et al. (2023) argue that they found no evidence to suggest that Huntington’s civilisational or religious conflict hypothesis is true. Treaties, which were sometimes respected or violated, have been signed in intra- and inter- religious traditions and communities. Accordingly,

We conclude that the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ hypothesis is not supported by the evidence. Quite the opposite proves to be the case. Global-level cooperation has long been designed to deal with the challenges of cross-faith agreements, and evidence from the period from 1750 to 1899 shows no tendency for such differences to play a role in keeping polities with different civilizational backgrounds from engaging in mutually agreed-upon cooperative interaction.

(Denemark et al. 2023, p. 60)

Thirdly, it is disingenuous to conceptualise religions solely as violence-prone phenomenon, as Huntington has done. Religion is ambivalent by nature. It has the propensity to be used for peace and war. Although it is often louder when religion acts as a tool for conflict (sharp power), the quiet voice of religion as a soft power for peace and fraternity has largely been under-analysed in international relations (Mandaville 2023). In fact, Fox (2001) notes that religion is an overlooked element of international religions. As such, prophesying that future conflict would be religion-based misses the point of the ever-present, but neglected, nature of religion in international relations and conflict.

Fourthly, Meredith (2005) has argued that the West relies on force and violence to subjugate the rest of the world, particularly Africa. Africa has experienced a great quantum of oppression from the West: from the inhumane transatlantic slave trade, the scramble for Africa and colonialism, neo-colonialism and undue interference in the internal affairs of the countries on the continent. If the claim that future conflict would be instigated by civilisational or cultural entanglement is true, it can be argued that the West had already sown that seed prior to the Cold War era. For instance, the scramble for Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 redrew the religious map of Africa (Akinwumi 2008). The “reshuffle of territory” (Meredith 2005, p. 4) of Africa among the West altered the missionary map that existed prior to the scramble, resulting in sharing different mission fields among different European countries that had different versions of Christianity or Islam. What this implies is the question of whose God’s interest was served in the violent scrambling of Africa, given that the Christian and Muslim God/s of European countries divided Africans among themselves. In plain words, Africa was set up for religious wars by the West, and Huntington’s prophecy was therefore self-fulfilling.

Fifthly, Huntington based his civilisational and conflictual thesis on a notion of freedom and equality that overlooks fraternity. For instance, Huntington argues, in respect to Africa, that civilisational identity was weak, but he would later recognise that “Africans are also developing a sense of African identity, and conceivably sub-Saharan Africa could cohere into a distinct civilization, with South Africa possibly being its core state” (Huntington 1996, p. 47). Clearly, Huntington, following the colonial historical trajectories of Africa, denies Africa any form of civilisation (Djaló 2009). Huntington recognises that African mosaic identities were complexified by the various European imperialistic incursions. The descriptive and predictive statements about Africa, Wouter Werner (2018) notes, were realised in Africa in its transition to constitutional democracy after the Cold War. Although there are still skirmishes and abuse of human rights and wobbling democratic experiments on the continent, the identity of democracy has been forged in some critical ways that brought Africa into world affairs. Analysing the successes of the International Criminal Court in Africa as a critical benchmark and entry point of democratisation and civilisation, Werner argues that the West exclusively concentrates on heinous crimes committed in Africa as the thrust of the operations of the court. Such exclusive focus, he notes, raises a poignant question on whether other parts of the world are insulated from crimes against humanity. This top-down, zero-sum enforcement of the ICC’s rule in Africa falls within the ambit of Huntington’s description of Africa as a weak civilisational identity. But it says more.

Even before the post-Cold War, the image of Africa remained tainted and divided. Maiolo and Robson (2025, p. 58) point out that the West, even when it attempts to be friendly, has always treated Africa with disrespect. They argue that African civilisation has never been recognised by the West, a trajectory that Huntington maintains. Had Africa been related with on the basis of its sovereignty and equality, it would have been treated differently. In their own words:

The tiny percentage of petitions that reached a stage of active consideration were, generally, dismissed as unfounded or requiring no response; as one British official put it with respect to a protest about deportation and forced labour in French-controlled Lomé, in language that could serve to describe the League’s general response to petitions from the mandates, ‘it seems clear that the charges made by our dusky friends are not really substantial’.

(Maiolo and Robson 2025, p. 58)

Sixthly, it further raises the crucial question whether the Western political creed—freedom and equality—means all are free and equal? Or, is Africa being merely ‘tolerated’ because the West conceives it as weak ‘civilisationally’? It is an established fact that the weak civilisational identity thesis is a DNA of colonialism and neo-colonialism that paradoxically transits dubious equality and freedom, but neglects fraternity. As Werner (2018, p. 131) recognises, the Preamble to the Rome Statute of the ICC assumes that the world is bound together by certain core values, “all peoples are united by common bonds, their cultures pieced together in a shared heritage.” However, on deeper thought, and as Huntington has argued, only those civilisations that bode well with the ethos of clash are considered as developed and recognised. Underlying this notion of development and recognition is power rather than fraternity. Where Western powers have shown themselves, identity is subsumed under the rubric of power, and when and where such powers are not threatened, tolerance in its mildest and positive form might be a key response (Long 2024). Buttressing political philosopher Michael Walzer’s idea that “to tolerate someone else is an act of power; to be tolerated is acceptance of weakness,” Long (2024, p. 56) argues that tolerance does not immediately confer freedom and equality on a people or community. More importantly, Long underwrites the argument that it is hardly possible to tolerate without being condescending. Once there is condescension, mutuality, equality and freedom are at bay. In other words, Africa becomes a tolerated ‘other’ insofar as it does not portend threats to the Western establishment. As such, Africa must be placed in a square where it perpetually struggles for freedom and equality for itself. It is no wonder, therefore, that Africa’s heads of states are consistently summoned to the West and now Asia to discuss the development of Africa from without. This reminisces the Berlin Conference of 1884–82, in which Africa, without recourse to her, was shared among Western powers.

Finally, Huntington believes that, as power (e.g., economic power) shifts from the West to non-Western civilisations, contentions and tensions will arise because the political and military powers of the West have not significantly declined (Huntington 1996, p. 29). Huntington does not appear to see the possibility of a resurgence of fraternity in this shift as he sees in religious resurgence in world affairs.

In this article, I will argue that the African situation is premised on the notion of equality and freedom, defined and conceptualised from the Western political philosophy that has, for a long time, and with predetermined goals in mind, deliberately overlooked fraternity. This is further premised on the assumption that freedom and equality, as thus far demonstrated by the West, is a farce. They only exist for the West and not for the rest. I will analyse fraternity against Huntington’s notion of freedom and equality; that is, reconsidering fraternity beyond Huntington’s clash of civilisations. I will do this by resorting to the theory of the “third face of the coin” (Laleye 2025), which dissolves the binary logic with which the West has continued to understand freedom and equality.

According to Laleye (2025, p. 5), the third face of the coin represents “the often-ignored perspective that exists beyond simplistic dichotomies.” The developed-developing categorisation of the world, he argues, already imbues the binary logic that politically resonates in freedom and equality, without complementarity that fraternity engenders. That is, “binary framework overlooks a vital unifying aspect: the edge of the coin, which harmonises seemingly contradictory elements” (Laleye 2025, p. 13). Igboin (2018), from whose theory Laleye (2025) derived his third face of the coin, has argued that the popular notion that the coin has two sides undermines the edge of the coin which glues the two inscripted sides—herein freedom and equality. Igboin (2018) argues that, although the two popular sides of the coin do not carry the same message, one tends to understand the other side better from the side of the coin that faces observer. “Although the ignored edge of the coin may not carry any inscription, it is indeed the rod or solder that welds both sides of the coin” (Igboin 2018, p. 16). He further argues that it is the edge—the ignored or overlooked third face of the coin—that bears the weight and worth of the two popular sides. In actual fact, the essence of a coin does not hinge on the two popular sides that ignore the edge.

In developing this theory further, Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, introduces the concept of medemer, that is, synergy, which he describes as intense interaction and cooperation between two or more beings, agents, actors or organisations in order to garner more productive goals that could not have been achieved if they had acted separately (Heliso 2021). Rather than set one country against the other or one civilisation against the other, synergy harmonises their values and strengths to enhance both of them, thus instantiating fraternity (Heliso 2021). As Heliso (2021, p. 82) analyses it, Ahmed’s concept of medemer entails that “the notions of liberty and equality must go together with the notion of fraternity, which currently is weak due to … competition and the lack of civic culture.” Heliso argues that, in both local and international spheres, there is the need to appropriate and synergise cooperation with competition and friendship rather than antipathy. Although fraternity does not imply absence of conflict, as we will see below, it pursues the absence of the foe versus friend paradigm, which runs contrary to “no permanent friend or enemy” principle that underlines international relations (Heliso 2021). However, quoting from Michael Dibdin’s novel, Dead Lagoon, Huntington (1996, p. 20) says: “There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.” Huntington views the resurgence of the old painful truths of enmity, not fraternity, as critical to the reimagining of the future of the world: “enemies are essential, and the potentially most dangerous enmities occur across fault lines between world’s major civilizations” (Huntington 1996, p. 20).

I also argue below that, around the so-called civilised world, cultural wars redraw the map: there are no neat Western boundaries of cultural conflict because, at the heart of culture, are religious beliefs. “Cultures,” it should be emphasised, “offer repertoires of behaviour that are constantly changing but have historical roots” (Ellis 2016, p. 223). Even though cultures are regarded with deep suspicion by social scientists, Ellis (2016) notes that it is extremely impossible to avoid them. While equality and freedom play critical role in spreading cultural seeds—such as democracy—across borders, fraternity determines how Africa responds to some of these cultural wars.

2. Engaging Fraternity as a Neglected Element

Fraternity has assumed polysemous nuances different from its literal meanings of a feeling and moral virtue. It is generally understood as a relationship between brothers or close friends for mutual support. It also conveys the notion of friendship, justice, reciprocity, equality and good will that people express to one another (Minkner 2025). It is also a concept that cannot be said to be fully ethical or exclusively political; but it converges both and reflects them at the same time. This idea of fraternity prominently underscores Levinas’s thought, arguing that uniqueness and equality are mediated in fraternity. For Levinas (1961), fraternity unleashes some form of sameness in others upon which justice and equality can be engendered. Levinas argues that, once fraternity is freed from the thresholds of the biological and patriarchal, totalisation can be broken by recourse to introducing the ethical in the political and the political in the ethical (Levinas 1961; Llewelyn 1995; Ramona 2013).

One would conceptualise this form of fraternity as irenic; that is, it is a fraternity that involves filiality and is mostly informal. Irenic fraternity encapsulates the friendship that close people maintain, which is mutually beneficial, communal and vitally rewarding. Irenic fraternity as conceived here hinges on communal values shared among inter-related persons. It is less antagonistic in its approach; it tends towards ensuring, in most cases, resolving differences in amiable ways that will ensure the restoration of friendship and communal flourishing. The other type of fraternity that is more engaged in political discourse is what I conceptualise as agonistic fraternity. Agonistic fraternity deals with complex structures of societies in attempting to find a common ground for peaceful and harmonious co-existence. It is akin to what Okeja (2022) calls palaver: not in terms of a public meeting as a conventional practice, but in the fact that agonistic differences are resolved through sustained political and cultural engagement that results in mutual respect for parties. Although Amalia Amaya appears not to support the idea that fraternity can permeate a complex, capitalist society (Minkner 2025, p. 11), I suggest that, if fraternity is conceptualised as an ideal means of balancing freedom and equality, it can engender friendship in complex societies through cooperation. The idea of agonistic fraternity is not merely anchored in communitarian philosophy or solidarity, but strongly on ideological vision that integrates extremes of freedom and equality. My projection of agonistic fraternity neither suggests an egalitarian teleology nor does it support despotism under the guise of democracy. It is a concatenation of the contents of global multiplicity and plurality of cultures and philosophies that make the world multiversal.

Fraternity encapsulates religious, political, social, secular and post-secular nuances. It is intensely a political concept that formed the triadic ethical and political ideals following the French Revolution. These ideals—liberty, equality and fraternity—have gone a great length in conceptualising Western political philosophy (Puyol 2019). However, while emphasis has been laid on freedom and equality, and in fact, elevated to a political creed, fraternity was abandoned to an indeterminable fate. The deliberate undermining of fraternity in politics has had serious adverse effects on mediating peace and cordiality between individuals and nations (Puyol 2019). However, one critical argument against fraternity is that it appears radically conciliatory, and thus does not promote the competitiveness demanded by freedom and equality. As construed in its classical sense, right to equality was not a given; in fact, as exemplified in Greek political philosophy at a time when slavery was not just legal but also moral, right was understood in a limited sense. Right was indeed granted to those who had equal right and denied others without considering such denial as unethical and illegal. For instance, slaves, though human in their own right, did not have equal rights with their owners; consequently, slaves were neither ‘citizens’, that is, equal, nor free (Puyol 2019).

The assumption is that equality encapsulates the idea that all humans should be treated equally and freely, not only from a legal perspective but also morally. Equality, as a political imagination, conceives citizens as people who are necessarily free, unbounded and also have access to social amenities and services regardless of their statuses. In reality however, like freedom, “equality does not address the reason why people should concern themselves about each other in order to promote, foster or reinstate personal freedom when this does not exist or is debilitated (due to disease, a lack of education, the threat of harm, oppression or any other circumstance beyond the will of the individuals)” (Puyol 2019, p. 3). Fraternity looks at the other side of the coin, stating that it is imperative not only to consider everyone as equal no matter their station in life, but also relate with them as people who are necessary for the formation of a viable and virile community. This ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ that fraternity projects, deepens the human knit and kin and offers a profound understanding of the nature of relationship that should exist at both individual and global levels. According to Puyol (2019, p. 3),

Fraternity, in contrast, in its modern political conception that emerged from the French Revolution, tells us that all of us, all people have the right to be assured all the means necessary for us to be as socially and politically free as any other member of the community. This right implies the duty of mutual aid with the end of ensuring that the most vulnerable members of the community achieve the same degree of freedom as everyone else.

However, fraternity was thought of as a formidable hindrance to the advancement of modern secular democratic processes. In other words, fraternity’s abandonment is based on the assumption that it is not needed in a democratic society, unlike freedom and equality. Rawls (1971) advances the argument that the neglect of fraternity in democracy is due largely to its evocation of sentiment or feeling that gravitates towards unrealistic expectation of the citizens. Feeling or emotion cannot guarantee a predictable outcome of a democratic process; as such, to integrate fraternity as a critical pillar in the triad of the modern democratic system, is to gamble with democratic survival and flourishing. Because Western political philosophy steadily leans towards secular ideology, fraternity is more or less associated with religious doctrine and reduced to private practice. However, in reality, the promotion of equality has not guaranteed equality for every citizen, neither has freedom been granted to all citizens and nations in realistic terms.

In their seminal work, Fraternity as an Overlooked Element in Global Politics, Kulska and Solarz (2025) further resurge the place of fraternity that forges towards universal ‘friendliness’ and argue that the axio-normative values of fraternity could have been pivotal ingredients for peaceful global aspirations and relations had they not been underrated in geopolitics. Critical to this volume is the fact that fraternity has been deliberately overlooked in Western political philosophy and praxis. The binary logic of freedom and equality resonates in they versus we, a logic that perpetuates tolerance and condescension. As we will see in the sub-section below, religion has also been deliberately overlooked in international relations until recently, even though it has continued to influence how international policies are made and implemented.

The absence of fraternity as the missing leg of the triad in Western political thought, which has been extended to other geopolitical spaces, has continued to task what equality and freedom are, in a hostile and war-some world. Kulska and Solarz (2025) argue that, if fraternity had been given its due place in the conceptualisation and praxis of democracy, a better and friendlier world would have ensued. Accordingly, “political fraternity is the kind of friendship that exists among citizens. Its institutions provide a connecting link between the spheres of private and public life, transmitting the feelings of intimacy and solidarity characteristic of one realm into the wider and more impersonal domain of the other” (Kulska and Solarz 2025, p. 1). Puyol (2019, p. 59) further elucidates this point when he notes that “the ideal of fraternity becomes political when it has political implications, that is, when it becomes something that directs and guides different political institutions, laws and practices.” Although freedom and equality are emphasised as cardinal elements of democracy, Kulska and Solarz (2025) argue that fraternity is their determinant and the hub, that is, the third face of the coin, that would have tampered with their extremities. In other words, the loss or neglect of fraternity from the triad is crucially responsible for much of the instability and violence in global interactions today.

It should be noted that fraternity does not operate in isolation; it demands interactions that balance “the duty side of the ‘rights–duties equation’ rather than the rights side” only (Kulska and Solarz 2025, p. 3). This under-emphasised duty side of the rights–duty equation partly accounts for the difficulty in applying fraternity to politics. This is because politics is defined from the prism of grabbing power and ruling over individuals and territories without giving consideration to relationship. Of course, there must be reciprocal willingness between individuals and nations promoting fraternity. It is the doctrine of reciprocity that ties freedom and equality to fraternity, and balances both sides of the extreme: “striving for balance is critically important as liberty and equality without fraternity lead to individualism, whereas fraternity without liberty and equality leads to communism” (Kulska and Solarz 2025, p. 3).

Igboin (2025) contends that fraternity goes beyond friendship, religion or politics; it extends and enfolds humanity and humaneness. Arguing from the standpoint of Ubuntu, he views fraternity as a virtue that makes humans recognise humanity or worth as the cardinal basis for their own recognition and worth. It is in humanising others that we are humanised ourselves. The constitution of Ubuntu entails that humans cannot be humans in themselves exclusively; they need others to be truly human. It is in others that one mirrors oneself as human and humanises oneself as well. Freedom and equality, though elevated to political creed, do not in themselves confer rights and equality on others without first recognising the humanity of others. The recognition and conferment of humanity on others do not in any way reduce anyone’s worth, but in reality, they work to create a world that works for all in a radically new way. Fraternity, understood from the prism of Ubuntu, does not mean that there will always be total and permanent cessation of conflict, erosion of equality and disrespect for rights.

What can be gleaned from the foregoing analysis is that fraternity tends to enchant the disenchantment caused by extreme political freedom and equality, by having recourse to selective conferment of rights and equality on the one hand, and duty and responsibility that ensure and enhance human flourishing on the other (Igboin 2025). It engenders mutuality, respectability, cooperation, interdependence and responsibility when it is allowed to function. Political scientist Long (2024) is apt when he argues that freedom, equality, inclusiveness and so forth fall under the rubric of tolerance. In other words, freedom, equality or inclusiveness are simply not a given; they are defined and conferred on others by some powerful individuals and nations. Tolerance underwrites the idea that there is someone who either authorises, allows or disallows a thing by allowing a person to enjoy a right or denying them the enjoyment of a right. In this sense, the level of tolerance that fraternity enjoys in Western political thought depends on the goals the West denies fraternity. Put differently, by allowing the thriving of freedom and equality and neglecting fraternity, the West has effectively exercised its powers over fraternity because it is conceived as a virtue that does not align with its global politics. So, as Huntington (1996) acknowledges, the thought of defining and exercising rights and equality solely from the Western lens underscores the point. In reality, there are several other ways that non-Western civilisations have understood and exercised rights and equality that contextually fit in their culture and religion. One area of conflict, therefore, is the assumption, and in fact, the Western insistence that all other civilisations must be compelled to adopt its civilisation. Even at that, it has been proved practically that there are divergent, and sometimes, irreconcilable culture wars in the West, as the following section aptly demonstrates.

3. Religion and Culture Wars in the West

I begin from the standpoint that religions greatly influence the interpretations of culture at both national and international levels, even though this may be refuted by most policy makers. However, it must not be lost on us that the definition and meaning of religion have raised more critical questions than its generic usage. Wilson (2022) has called our attention to this. He notes that one of the ways that International Relations have missed the potentials of religions was relating to religions as an abstract concept. Religion is not only an abstract phenomenon, it is, more and more, a lived phenomenon, which can be understood in context and pinned to specific issues. Wilson provides an insight into what he believes can help in locating the place of religion in international relations: focusing on specific issues of religion in specific contexts. Religion, he adds, must not be studied or understood in isolation from other social realities or the social worlds generally. Focus should not be entirely placed on undifferentiation, but more on religious actors, identities, narratives and traditions as lived reality. In this way, Wilson believes that international relations would have been up to date in engaging religion, and understanding its unvarnished place in contemporary world politics.

Although not much has been done about the place of religion in international relations until recently, Rees (2015) points our attention to the fact that religion more or less remains a constant variable in international politics. Rees argues that the shift towards religion in international policy may be complex and varied as “the emergence of ‘soft power’ diplomacy allowed cultural, and in specific cases religious, authorities a seat at the negotiating table” (Rees 2015, p. 45). The significant presence of religious organisations in the United Nations’ policies and actions has led the former Secretary-General to clarify the situation thus:

As a secular organization, the UN has no common religion. But, like all the major faiths, we too work on behalf of the disadvantaged and the vulnerable … I have long believed that when Governments and civil society work toward a common goal, transformational change is possible. Faiths and religions are a central part of the equation.

(see Haynes 2015, p. 186)

By accepting that faith-based organisations (FBOs) are partners in progress, the UN has clearly adopted a fraternal approach that recognises the worth of others as necessary in creating a global community as well as a basis for enjoying one’s worth. This recognition integrates FBOs into the practice of international politics, but not without tensions. One other way to view this recognition and integration is within the religious resurgence thesis that makes the search for global peace imperative. These religious/faith organisations have also warmed themselves into the heart of the UN by appropriating secular language and involving themselves in seemingly secular activism, such as climate change, disarmament, economy and health. To them, their concern and interest is not just religious but equally existential, which needs moral and religious resources to be achieved (Haynes 2015). It should be underscored that FBOs are also as ambivalent as religion.

In addition, international organisations’ recognition of religious bodies’ contributions to development in economic and other areas of human life promotes religions in international circles. Of course, international organisations’ emphasis on civilisation brings with it the notion of religion because the history of civilisation or culture is sometimes weaved around religious traditions. For instance, the fact of global insecurity, such as inveterate terrorism and the bold appearance of terrorists in international space, whose motivations are situated within religious ideology, has stationed religion as a constant variable in international relations (Rees 2015; Wilson 2022). Although many of these factors are domiciled within the religious resurgence theories, it is argued that religious resurgence is primarily a Western term that should be understood from the prism of secularism. It is nuanced within the prism of liberalism, and thought to undergird neutrality or secularism. Anthropologist Asad (2018) has examined the shift, noting that there are secularisms which correspond to different stages of liberalism. According to him, “When liberalism is motivated by the principle of neutrality, its secularism endorses pluralism even when that is difficult to reconcile with equality; when it is motivated by tolerance, it remains committed to converting the world to civilization and thus to a particular form of class and race entitlement” (Asad 2018, p. 20). Conversion to civilisation becomes a euphemism for colonialism and neo-colonialism, whose goals stretch beyond economic exploitation to cultural emasculation.

Secularism versus religion debate in Huntington’s clash of civilisation has been intriguing because if there were religious resurgence, secularism would definitely have to contend with religion. However, for Marty (2003), the world is best described as religio-secular, a concept which collapses the binary positionality of religion versus secularism. Igboin (2022) corroborates the concept of religio-secularity as operational in much of pre- and post-colonial Africa. He argues that religio-secularity recognised the interdependence and synergistic cooperation of religious and secular authorities with the aim of ensuring vitality and human flourishing. He further makes the point that it will be necessary to historically ground secular ideology and influence in context rather than assume an overarching universal position already dominated by Western impulses. In other words, the study of some pre-colonial African kingdoms attests to the theory and praxis of religio-secular politics, though its goal—vitality and human flourishing—might be different from the Western conception of its resurgence in international politics.

Also, there is a split in religion in the religious resurgence thesis: here, certain religions are classified as either dangerous or peaceful, depending on the visible or empirical contributions of such religions to global peace and security. Huntington’s nuancing of religion is narrow and shallow, and as Robert Kelly concludes, “lazy and reductionist” (Wilson 2022, p. 12). However, Wilson (2022) argues that the public perception of religion depends on how a particular state perceives or tolerates a particular religion. In a passively secular state, religions may be viewed positively. But this does not mean that all religions are given the same degree of space to operate at all times, in all contexts. In an assertive secular state, religions are strictly policed in the public sphere because they are regarded as a ticking time bomb that can explode or as irrational intrusion that could potentially imbue violence. The fact, however, remains that such classification of religions sets boundaries of interaction and relations even though religions still play their roles of influencing cultures and cultural wars. In reality, religion is spontaneously ambivalent; it is capable of being used for positive and negative ends. In addition, it is difficult to neatly think that religion versus secularism represents an unbridgeable gulf. One of the things that helps to connect the bridge is the prevalence of existential threat. Many countries, including Egypt, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, have demonstrated that secular and religious authoritarianism is dangerous to the well-being of the people; hence, they massively supported the overthrow of regimes in those countries regardless of the huge religious demography that tilts towards one religion—Islam (Marty 2003; Bania 2025).

Huntington’s (1996) conceptualisation of religions in a monolithic sense is also problematic. For instance, he did not recognise that the diversities inherent within Islam have affected how Islam relates to world politics over the years (Bania 2025). The approach was extended to Christianity; Huntington thought that Orthodox countries would not go into war with one another. The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine is a salient proof against Huntington’s thesis. Since 2022, Russia and Ukraine have been entangled in warfare, needing mediatory fraternity (Wilson 2022). It would seem to policy makers and military strategists that the war has nothing to do with religion at all. But as Wilson (2022) carefully analyses, the NATO, socio-political aim, access to oil and other minerals, Putin’s expansionist goal, cyber-security and so forth, approach the war from an “all or nothing” paradigm. In reality, “Putin’s framing and justification of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has invoked notions of civilisation and shared spiritual heritage between Russia and Ukraine” (Wilson 2022, p. 13). Ayoub and Stoeckl (2024, pp. 139–40) elucidates this religious factor further when they write:

Russia launched a military attack and large-scale territorial war against neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. Russian leaders and commentators advanced many arguments to justify the war… Among these claims, one stuck out: the defense of orthodox Christians against Western values and gay Pride parades… But, however, unsurprising, it remains alarming to observe anti-SOGI [Sexuality Orientation and Gender Identity] speech employed to justify a war.

Culture wars are also fluid and somehow complex in international relations. It is difficult to posit that the West has maintained the same or a uniform view of culture in the last 30 years. The conservative and liberal views of culture clearly express this position. For instance, “the central place of sexuality and gender in geopolitics is important for international relations scholarship to recognize” (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024, p. 5), particularly given Huntington’s civilisational clash. Although cultural fault lines are not entirely new in geopolitics, they have been brought into sharp attention in the last three decades since Huntington’s thesis. These wars cannot be said to be stable; they have been influenced by political actors who are bent towards either liberal or conservative politics. In this regard, scholars have thought that the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States of America was partly possible because he tilted towards the cultural war of the Christian Right that has had considerable impact on the global stage in recent decades (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024). Trump’s win has reversed the gains of liberal policies that accommodated sexual diversity in the US, the argument goes. Like Trump’s US, Poland has defended religion and its influence on human and cultural development, accusing Western Europe of acting as militant secularists aimed at destroying religion and its values. Poland seems to maintain that Western Europe, by its rejection of religion, is actively promoting an agenda that does great harm to the family values Europe had held onto, for instance, in its legitimisation of LGBTI rights. Ayoub and Stoeckl (2024) argue that the family values, religious freedom and religious conformity politics have continued to be central in global politics. They note that, in 2021, Hungary banned gay practice, holding on to its Christian values. Russia’s position against LGBTI has been decisive because it believes that it is a Western ‘disease’ that should not be spread to its territories, despite ruling that public assembly of LGBTIQ+ should be allowed (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024, p. 139).

In this regard, Pap (2018) analyses the Eastern Europe’s cultural standpoint against the West as illiberal and abuse of powers. According to him, “The political–legislative strategy of ‘over-constitutionalisation,’ that is, amending the Constitution/Fundamental Law in order to legitimize unconstitutional legislation” (Pap 2018, p. 17) explains the illiberal attitude towards minority or opposition groups. For Pap, the paternalistic and essentialising position towards Christian values in Hungary violates the rights of non-Christians and hampers secular freedom and equality. He posits that constitutionalising cultural rights erodes individual autonomy, which is capable of leading to abuse of fundamental rights of citizens. In a democracy, therefore, there exists the possibility unfreedom, inequality and marginalisation on the basis of status, cultural expression or political alignment. Although the West boasts of democracy as an ideological product to be sold to the rest of the world, it is increasingly apparent that democracy has not fully guaranteed freedom and equality in all realms of life. Apart from the fact that cultural rights have posed a serious challenge to how the West conceives democracy, Riaz and Rana (2024) analyse how democracy has become a camouflage for despotism and authoritarianism in the very West that prides itself in promoting democracy.

As I hinted above, there is obviously a fluid mapping of how the cultural wars are fought. Russia and several Muslim states, including some in Central and Eastern Europe to the global South, Evangelical, Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants and so on, do not have everything in common, but they avidly fraternise on the basis of their being pro-life and anti-LGBTI. Their fraternity on this premise does not obliterate the point that they have other “persistent divides” (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024, p. 13). Even the so-called homogeneity of the EU cannot be sustained on LGBTI, as Poland and Hungary have shown that there are conservative values inherent in family that can be threatened if LGBTI is allowed in their spaces. Despite the political and ideological differences between Russia and the West (Kahlina 2022), “moral conservative groups in the United States and Western Europe have begun to look up to Putin’s Russia as the last bastion of conservative political power” (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024, p. 13). Putin (2021) strongly expresses this conservative position thus:

We look in amazement at the processes underway in the countries which have been traditionally looked at as the standard-bearers of progress. Of course, the social and cultural shocks that are taking place in the United States and Western Europe are none of our business; we are keeping out of this. Some people in the West believe that an aggressive elimination of entire pages from their own history, “reverse discrimination” against the majority in the interests of a minority, and the demand to give up the traditional notions of mother, father, family and even gender, they believe that all of these are the mileposts on the path towards social renewal.

Putin maintains that his conservative views are an “optimistic conservatism” because they are based on fact, and upon them, there could be some fraternal cooperation. The global reconstruction of gender the West represents, he argues, does not guarantee “the preservation and growth of the population.” Putin’s anti-woke position is further expressed thus:

Zealots of these new approaches even go so far as to want to abolish these concepts altogether. Anyone who dares mention that men and women actually exist, which is a biological fact, risk being ostracised. ‘Parent number one’ and ‘parent number two,’ ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother,’ and ‘human milk’ replacing ‘breastmilk’ because it might upset the people who are unsure about their own gender.

(Putin 2021)

For Putin, being a conservative is rational insofar as it is based on, and protects, facts. Revisionism, he seems to argue, can only lead to adversarial relationship and culture shocks, which are already being pervasively experienced.

4. The Implications for Africa

Beyond the moral compass above, the Sahelian states in Africa—Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger—now also look up to Russia for political and economic cooperation and liberation from the exerting influence of France. At the regional level, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have redrawn the political map of West Africa by pulling out from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) formed in 1975 and establishing the Alliance des Etats du Sahel or the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) in September 2023 with the main purpose of supporting members’ economy and security. While ECOWAS, as it is now presently constituted, maintains political and economic relations with their former colonial authorities, ASS has almost completely broken ties with France, insisting that its member states must have full control of their mineral resources and political destiny. In other words, France ought to have understood that states should be independent in terms of equality and freedom (Richards 2025). Richards (2025) analyses the political development and its implications, stating that their bold step redefines “sovereignty and security in the Sahel” which definitely has affected “regional politics, security, and global geopolitics.” For him, while ECOWAS relies on France to combat terrorism in the region, the ASS expresses a strong suspicion that terrorism in the Sahelian region is exacerbated by foreign powers and, therefore, it adopts a self-reliant approach.

In reality, the ASS has ties with the Wagner Group in its counter-terrorism combat, a development Richards (2025) believes can trigger economic sanctions from the West. The Western influence in the Sahel may further wane as the ASS tilts towards Russia and China, and if it succeeds to concretise its strategic alliance with BRICS, it will further redraw the financial and economic map and affiliations, not only within the African sub-region but also at the international level (Richards 2025). However, while the Sahelian politics is analysed within the broader geopolitical fault lines, the ASS argues that freedom and liberation should be viewed as a cultural value, which when conflicted or lost, will trigger critical response, which is being witnessed in the sub-region. This thinking has been emphasised by Putin:

Accordingly, any effective international order should take into account the interests and capabilities of the state and proceed on that basis, and not try to prove that they should not exist. Furthermore, it is impossible to impose anything on anyone, be it the principles underlying the sociopolitical structure or values that someone, for their own reasons, has called universal. After all, it is clear that when a real crisis strikes, there is only one universal value left and that is human life, which each state decides for itself how best to protect based on its abilities, culture and traditions.

(Putin 2021)

Putin seems to conclude that cultural diversity must be inputted into international order rather than a top-down, zero sum or one-cap-fits-all approach that de-recognises and de-fraternises international actors. The neglect of fraternity, based on reasonable and untainted facts of life and the revisionist and unbounded liberal agenda Putin seems to emplace, are critical elements for international conflict.

Analysing the implications of the foregoing analysis, Degterev (2024) argues that Russia not only recognises the freedom and sovereignty of the Sahelian alliance, it has, for a long time, maintained friendship with Africa, protecting Africa’s interest against Western hegemonic politics. Degterev (2024) portrays the West as pursuing hegemonic politics in Africa, unlike Russia that insists that, instead of hegemonic stability, Africa should be empowered to resist the West in order to access freedom and equality. He seems to argue that fraternity, which is missing in Western political vocabulary and relations, is present in Russian relations with Africa. Degterev thus concludes that the recognition of fraternity is a pivotal social capital in international relations, as demonstrated in the Sahelian states. He states:

Indeed, the leaders of the three Sahel states, who came to power through military means, recognize each other’s legitimacy and sovereignty and are committed to jointly defending it. This minilateralism of ASS [Alliance of Sahelian States] can be regarded as a transitional phase, a process of getting out from under the hegemonism of individual countries to the formation of self-sufficient regional organizations, the poles of multipolar world.

(Degterev 2024, p. 36)

This implies that, first, military intervention in politics is an ideological conflict rather than a cultural, civilisational or religious conflict, as Huntington thought. Second, denying sovereignty to African states is an ideological—colonial and neo-colonial—hegemonism that every African state has resisted. Third, fighting for freedom and equality is ideological, because in it lies the principles of modern Western democracy that neglects fraternity. Fourth, although the ASS does not largely share the same religious and cultural tradition with Russia, its relationship with Russia is perceptibly grounded in fraternity.

5. Conclusions

Samuel Huntington’s prophecy that future conflict would be based on a clash of civilisations is not only self-fulfilling, because it left out the potentials of fraternity to reconstitute global relations, it is also not new, because such clashes had been experienced prior to his prophecy. The argument is not whether there would be clashes—civilisational or ideological—but why should fraternity be neglected because it seems conciliatory in its approach? I argue that agonistic fraternity is not an emotional feeling; it is a political principle whose value can help nations to better align, rather than freedom and equality, which are only expressed superficially. Freedom and equality, not tampered by fraternity, retain their rough edges, and constantly remind us that conflict is around the corner.

Although agonistic fraternity does not envisage an egalitarian utopia, it realistically canvasses that the extremes of freedom and equality can be mediated, and thus the possibility of clashes can be drastically reduced. Freedom and equality, as presently constituted in the Western lens, are expressions of tolerance and condescension because of the obvious hegemonic relations that exist among different nations, particularly between the West and the rest—having Africa in mind. Freedom and equality mediated by fraternity holds a stake in reconstructing a new world where conflict would be less and resolved through other means than war and violence. Although religious, cultural or civilisational differences are bound to cause conflict as Huntington prophesied, it is equally true that, as ambivalent values, they can also be utilised to ‘wage’ peace. As the Alliance of Sahel States seems to demonstrate, Huntington’s hypothesis of post-ideological conflict is challenged, hence the critical restoration of fraternity will balance the political creed that goes in the name of freedom and equality that do not have corresponding impact on Africa’s relations to the West.