Samuel Huntington's landmark work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order argued not only that civilizational conflict represents the greatest threat to world peace, but that a new international order built upon distinct civilizations offers the best safeguard against war.
As the United States, Israel, and Iran remain locked in active conflict, revisiting Huntington's framework carries particular resonance — and a bitter irony: that in the 21st century, humanity continues to resolve disputes through armed force.
The conflict has now entered its sixteenth day. The United States holds a military advantage, yet Iran continues to resist without sign of capitulation — a stalemate that carries strategic ambiguity on multiple levels.
This analysis applies a Huntingtonian lens to assess current battlefield dynamics and the range of plausible near-term developments.
I. Key Observations on the Current Conflict
(1) The United States initially anticipated that Iran would be compelled to surrender within days or a week. That assessment failed to account for Iran's perception of the conflict as an existential threat — a framing that has stiffened its resistance considerably.
(2) Donald Trump reportedly calculated that the early elimination of Supreme Leader Khamenei and approximately forty senior officials would bring a swift end to hostilities. The ongoing stalemate suggests that assumption was flawed.
(3) Trump consistently underestimated the risk of a prolonged conflict's impact on global energy markets. Oil prices have now surpassed USD 100 per barrel, with Iranian officials warning of a potential rise to USD 200.
The resulting inflationary pressures and economic instability across multiple countries represent a significant and apparently unanticipated consequence of the decision to engage militarily.
(4) The administration appears to have conducted limited pre-war assessment of political and economic risk, and has been slow to implement real-time risk management or early-warning protocols. The cumulative effect is a situation marked by compounding instability and unpredictable outcomes.
(5) The assumption that Venezuelan oil exports could compensate for disruptions to Iranian supply has proven inadequate. The resulting energy shortfall has contributed to broader disruptions in international trade and emerging threats to global security arrangements.
(6) The U.S. 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed approximately 2,500 Marines aboard the USS Tripoli into the Middle Eastern theater. On March 14, the United States struck military installations near Kharg Island — Iran's critical oil export hub — while reportedly stopping short of targeting the oil infrastructure itself.
Analysts warn this restraint may not hold, and that the strike nonetheless raises the prospect of significant escalation.
II. Assessment of Likely Developments
(1) The conflict shows no clear path toward resolution. Iran's combination of national character, theocratic conviction, and an acute sense of existential threat has sustained its resistance beyond what conventional military calculus might predict.
When the war ends remains genuinely uncertain; the pace and nature of change on the ground have moved beyond a simple question of comparative firepower. Religious faith and fighting spirit are, in effect, Iran's most potent weapon.
(2) Iran has threatened attacks against high-technology industries based in Israel and Qatar, including firms such as NVIDIA. If carried out, such strikes would represent a significant escalation and pose urgent challenges for both the United States and Israel. Defense analysts characterize this as a contingency requiring immediate attention.
(3) Iran's continued resistance is understood to be partially sustained by backing — whether political, economic, or logistical — from China, Russia, and regional states with aligned interests. This external support structure complicates any straightforward military resolution.
(4) A reported divergence between Washington and Jerusalem over war aims may itself be shaping the conflict's trajectory. According to informed observers, the United States has signaled interest in an off-ramp, while Israel seeks to use the moment to decisively neutralize Iran as a long-term adversary.
This misalignment of objectives may be providing Iran with strategic breathing room. How this tension resolves will be a critical variable in the weeks ahead.
III. Trump's Willfulness and the Civilizational Clash
The deployment of the USS Tripoli and the March 14 strikes near Kharg Island have raised the conflict's intensity to a level that renders a passive Iranian response strategically implausible. Whether a still-sharper confrontation is imminent remains an open question — but one that serious analysts are watching closely.
Several structural implications deserve examination.
First, the question of whether the Tripoli's deployment signals the initiation of a ground campaign remains unresolved. What is clear is that the move carries symbolic weight — as a provocation, a signal, and a potential accelerant of broader regional dynamics.
Analysts note particular concern that the Kharg Island strikes could generate pressure within Iran for consideration of nuclear options. Whether the conflict could escalate to that threshold is, in the assessment of many security scholars, the most consequential question Trump's team must grapple with.
Trump's apparent "heroic" self-image and non-rational decision-making style make any major unexpected turn in the conflict all the more dangerous — and all the more deserving of close attention.
Second, Iran's continued resistance under sustained bombardment reflects a convergence of political will and ideological commitment that operates independently of conventional measures of military capability.
Defense analysts and military historians have noted that morale and strategic resilience — what might be called spiritual combat power — can sustain asymmetric resistance well beyond what material force assessments would suggest. This represents a model of combined kinetic and moral warfare that merits serious study.
Third, and most directly relevant to Huntington's framework, three structural concerns emerge from this conflict:
(1) The decision to initiate military action was taken without meaningful congressional authorization and without evident regard for international legal constraints. Legal scholars and institutional analysts argue this reflects a pattern in which unilateral great-power action operates outside the frameworks designed to govern it — what can only be described as hegemonic lawlessness, accountable to no one.
Many regard this as among the most serious challenges to the rules-based international order in the current era, and as the defining shame and tragedy of the 21st century.
(2) This erosion of legal and moral norms maps closely onto Huntington's warning about civilizational collision. Critics argue that when dominant powers act without institutional accountability, the resulting normative vacuum does not merely reflect a failure of individual leadership — it represents a broader degradation of the international order, an affront to human civilization itself.
Responsibility, in this view, extends beyond Washington to other major powers whose silence or inaction enables such conduct.
(3) The persistence of armed force as the primary instrument for resolving international disputes — in the 21st century, no less — raises fundamental questions about the direction of global governance. Whether this reflects human nature, the structural logic of unconstrained power, or something beyond either is a question political philosophers and strategists continue to debate.
What is beyond debate is this: who can hold Trump to account?
*The author is a researcher at the Chinese Strategic and Wargaming Association (中華戰略暨兵棋研究協會).
This article was originally published in le penseur（奔騰思潮） and is republished here with permission.
