multicultural country would be doomed. It would simply lose its
cultural core, and could “no longer endure as a coherent society.”
Knowing the opinion American conservatives have of the UN,
Huntington formulates a dire warning: “a multicivilizational United
States will not be the United States; it will be the United Nations.”^21
It is a fact, then, that the politics of identity has become more
important than ever in world politics, and it is also true that it cannot
be reduced entirely to an opposition between the left and the right. At
the same time, national projects are always of the left or of the right,
and identity claims consistently oppose progressives and conserva-
tives. Indeed, neglecting the left–right underpinnings of identity politics
would make it very difficult to understand this rising type of conflict.
The war on terrorism
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, terrorism has become a
prime concern in world affairs. Among elite groups as well as in the
media, the debate on this question has developed largely along the
fault line separating progressives and conservatives. In the United
States, where, it is sometimes said, the left–right distinction has dis-
appeared, the positions defended by the Republican Party and Fox
News have unquestionably been different from those put forward by
the Democratic Party orThe New York Times. It is true, of course,
that the debate on terrorism has included its share of ideological
outliers. Various left-wing commentators have defended the invasion
of Iraq on human rights grounds, while some pundits on the right
condemned it in the name of realism and national interests. Yet in the
United States, as elsewhere in the West, the fight against terrorism
has generally mirrored the Cold War pattern: it opposed hawks,
advocating a hard line, and doves, favoring compromise.
On the right, terrorism is understood as a security issue that jeop-
ardizes the freedom and lifestyle of all civilized countries. Several
politicians and analysts have depicted the phenomenon as one of the
most telling manifestations of Huntington’s “clash of civilizations.”^22
A few days after 9/11, President Bush implicitly endorsed this inter-
pretation when he stated: “What is at stake is not just America’s
(^21) Huntington,The Clash of Civilizations, p. 306. (^22) Ibid.
The core currency of political exchange 205