Abstract
Samuel Huntington, a severe critic of decline theory and an adamant revivalist, shifted radically to the declinist camp with the end of the Cold War, his penultimate declinist vision being found in The Clash of Civilizations. A chronological analysis of his work (intellectual biography), though, shows continuity in his analysis of what is ‘wrong’ with America. His true focus is not relative, but absolute decline, or normative (moral) decline, a concern he shares with the new declinists, that is, right-wing realists who were also revivalists. For them decline is a code word for what is wrong with America, normatively, and an instrument of mobilization to return America to a state they consider ideal. The clash of civilizations thesis is part of this project. Unlike these new declinists, Huntington is a Democrat who grounds his appreciation of the new declinists’ ‘conservatism’ in his analysis of America’s ‘liberal’ exceptionalism, which makes it difficult for the country to adopt a realist foreign policy.
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