The Rubio Doctrine and Huntington’s Ghost: Justifying Civilizational Warfare

EDITORIAL, 23 Feb 2026

#939 |  Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service

Marco Rubio’s speech of February 14 of this year to the Munich Security Conference was greeted by high praise on the right, mild criticism on the left, and sighs of relief in most European capitals.  Many diplomats and pundits feared that the U.S. Secretary of State would echo Donald Trump’s cold devaluation of the Atlantic Alliance and his apparent contempt for most European leaders. But, although he rehearsed some characteristic Trumpian tunes, Rubio’s tone was warm, and his dominant theme was one of civilizational unity and pride.

“We are part of one civilization, Western civilization,” he declared.  “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.” 

When the speech received a standing ovation in Munich, it was clear that its real significance as a new and dangerous turn in global policy had not been recognized.

Philosophically, Rubio’s speech represents the triumph of the ideas of Samuel P. Huntington, the Harvard professor who wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order in the 1990s. Huntington declared that from now on, global conflicts would not be based on differences of nationality, social class, or political ideology, but rather  on cultural differences embodied and expressed by competing “civilizations.”  Civilizations he defined as large multi-national units united by shared cultural and religious values – for example, “Western,” “Islamic,” Serbo-Orthodox,” “Hindu,” and “Sinic” or “Chinese” civilizations.  For tactical reasons, one suspects, he did not call Western civilization “Christian” – but Marco Rubio is not constrained by any such inhibition.

Huntington’s vision was not a peaceful one.  Because their values and interests were often incompatible, he said, these civilizations would inevitably engage in violent conflict. The most important struggle, he asserted without much explanation, would feature “the West against the rest.”  This being the case, Westerners would be well advised to prepare themselves militarily and psychologically to do battle against their civilizational enemies – particularly the dreaded “Sino-Islamic” axis.

Huntington wrote his first article expressing these views in 1993 for the magazine Foreign Affairs.  A few months later, Jarle Crocker and I wrote a response in Foreign Policy called “Challenging Huntington” which made three major criticisms of the theory:

First, Huntington’s “civilizations” were nowhere near united. Islam, for example, was violently split between Sunni and Shiite factions, as well as along ethnic lines, and such internal conflicts were developing rapidly elsewhere.

Second, To the extent that it made sense to talk about civilizations as coherent political units, there was no need consider them fated to fight. Huntington was a conservative “Realist” who had taught that violent conflict between nation-states was inevitable because of human nature. He simply transferred that pessimism to the realm of civilizations.

Third, and most important, “the West against the rest” was a prediction not really based on cultural differences but reflecting a reality that Huntington preferred to ignore: the reality of U.S.-led empire-building.  Future violence was likely not because the Westerners were freedom-loving Christians, but because America had succeeded Europe as the world’s major exporter of capital, neo-colonial repression, and imperialist warmaking.

Marco Rubio’s speech, which might have been written by Huntington’s ghost, was intended to put these doubts to rest.  Its real purpose can be understood by recalling what President George H.W. Bush said in 1990 after unleashing U.S. forces against Saddam Hussein’s army in Kuwait: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all!”  The state of mind that Trump and Rubio want to “kick once and for all” is the Anti-imperialist Syndrome: the consciousness, shared by many on the U.S. and European Left, that their nations’ economic and political leaders were responsible for some of the most repressive and violent occupations of other people’s territory in world history.

But no, says Rubio. Instead of recognizing past atrocities, the West should take unlimited pride in its historic military and cultural accomplishments:

Armies fight for a people. Armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending. A great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny. It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born. It was here in Europe where the world which gave the world the rule of law, the universities and the scientific revolution.

One might call this the either/or approach to complex questions of pride and responsibility.  Rubio is apparently unaware that one can appreciate the beneficent features of a culture and at the same time recognize, criticize, and repent for its misdeeds.  No – either you must love your traditions unconditionally or be considered a cultural traitor! Among other vices, this simple-minded cheerleading produces a mythologized history designed to bolster a doctrine of racial, religious, or cultural superiority.  “It was here in Europe where the world which gave the world the rule of law, the universities and the scientific revolution.”  No.  Sorry Mario, it wasn’t.  Europe developed ideas of law, education, and science that originated in the ancient world and were brought to a high level by the brilliant Muslim civilization of the Middle Ages. Of course, Europe made important contributions to human betterment.  And, as in previous empires, its accomplishments were accompanied by atrocious crimes.

To deny this complexity sets the stage for future crimes – but that is exactly what the Rubio speech means to accomplish.  After World War II, he tells us, some naysayers argued that “the great western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come. Against that backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end, and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past . . . But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.”

Remarkable!  Rubio characterizes the postwar anti-colonial revolutions as part of a Communist plot and openly regrets the end of “the West’s age of dominance.”  Not even the Dulles brothers spoke this frankly about their love of empire!  But, of course, if Western civilization is superior, it should be dominant.  And, to enforce that dominance, military force will be necessary – as it was in the imperialist wars that have killed an estimated 10 million non-Western people since 1950. Rubio’s jingoism is no mere exercise in morale-raising. Its aim is to encourage Europe to rearm rapidly in order to put the Atlantic Alliance (dominated, of course, by the U.S.) on a war footing.

Why should this be so important to the American leaders?  Where – unless one subscribes to the absurd myth of a Russian plan to subjugate Eastern Europe – is there any serious threat to European or U.S. security?  The answer, I fear to say, lies in the continued presence and influence of Huntington’s Ghost.  If one accepts the premises that civilizations are the new units of conflict and that they are bound to come to violence, and if one refuses to recognize the existence of Western imperialism as a violence-generating machine – a continued provocateur of rebellion and interstate warfare – then it is easy to see multiple “civilizational” threats on the horizon.

Huntington’s Ghost declares “Serbo-Orthodox” Russia to be a potential enemy, and one wonders whether Trump, the alleged Putin-lover, has come to agree with this judgment.  His passion for rearming Europe as well as his newfound interest in acquiring Greenland are maneuvers clearly intended to keep Russia in its place. China, of course, is the most formidable civilizational Other – and the current U.S. campaign to subjugate Latin America clearly aims to make the Western Hemisphere as unfriendly to “Sinic” interests as NATO Europe is to Russian influence.  Meanwhile, the U.S. plays a classically imperialist role in the Islamic world, forging an alliance between Israel and the conservative Sunni states that will permit them to act as American agents in suppressing rebellion throughout the region, and putting an end to the “Sino-Islamic” alliance so feared by Huntington. This strategy is currently taking shape under the aegis of Trump and Rubio, but it was pioneered by Obama and Hilary Clinton when they invited NATO to participate in the destruction of the Gaddafi regime in Libya and the dismemberment of that oil-rich nation.

Mario Rubio’s speech in Munich foretokens one, two, many Libyas.  It should be studied with the same attention that one might give to a speech by the Roman emperor Diocletian on his scheme to revive the Roman Empire, or by Von Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister, on German plans to “civilize” Eastern Europe. Rubio plays on the themes of ethnocultural unity and superiority, offers Europeans relief from any guilt they may feel over their past colonial adventures, and invites them to accept a subordinate role in the Atlantic Alliance in exchange for a share in the spoils of a revived Western imperialism.

The speech is a vicious work of art.  Think about it – and about the gang at Munich that stood and applauded it.  Then think about what it will take to put Huntington’s Ghost finally and permanently to rest.

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Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017).

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 23 Feb 2026.

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