From the French Revolution until the end of World War I, nations fought rather than princes. From World War I until the Cold War's end came the wars of ideology with their transnational superpowers. What interests us here is not Huntington's shifting the focus from West to non-West, but from ideological and political goals to cultural clashes. They will not soon disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies and political regimes.
Religion reinforces the revival of ethnic identities.
In the future, as people differentiate themselves by civilization, countries with large numbers of peoples of different civilizations, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, are candidates for dismemberment. Some other countries have a fair degree of cultural homogeneity but are divided over whether their society belongs to one civilization or another. While admittedly Huntington focuses his eyes on non-Western countries, he misses what's right under his nose in the West. The same centrifugal cultural forces that drive Kenzaburo Oe away from Tokyo and Armenians away from Moscow drive Southerners away from New York, Washington, and Hollywood. As the U.S. government and Yankee culture has become more and more self-consciously pagan, their assault on the South's Christianity and identity has sharpened.