“The first is a belief in development, a term for the growing political and economic sophistication that emerges at the level of the nation-state. The second is the idea that development goes through stages — unidirectional phases that cannot be reversed or skipped. The third is a view of development as a homogenizing, Westernizing process, in the sense that nations adopt American values and traditions through capitalist growth. These studies often concluded that newly independent or decolonizing nations should forge closer ties with their former colonizers to attract foreign investment and open themselves up to trade — in short, to become modern. “He never accepted the implication of European superiority, or the small-mindedness of modernization theory, limiting our notion of social progress to technocratic or minimalistic ideas about growth. He preferred thinking in terms of equality: political equality, economic equality, cultural equality. “His experiences in Africa and the ideas o...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51