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Samuel Huntington, who died over the holidays, was a very useful public intellectual. He forced Americans to think about things that make us uncomfortable and squeamish.

After the end of the Cold War, the assumption was that the world was in for a period of benign calm. Either the United States, as the world's sole superpower, would gently guide global geopolitics, or the spread of democratic capitalism would make the world less conflict-prone, reducing the importance of geopolitical power and influence.

Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard, sounded a strongly discordant note, with his Foreign Affairs essay and subsequent book about “the clash of civilizations.â€