Both sides in fault line wars benefit from redefining local conflict as civilizational

Evidence

In fault line wars, each side has incentives not only to emphasize it own civilizational identity but also that of the other side. In its local war, it sees itself not just fighting another local ethnic group but fighting another civilization. The threat is thus magnified and enhanced by the resources of a major civilization, and defeat has consequences not just for itself but for all of its own civilization. Hence the urgent need for its own civilization to rally behind it in the conflict. The local war becomes redefined as a war of religions, a clash of civilizations, fraught with consequences for huge segments of humankind. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 750

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how ethnic conflicts escalate through identity framing; parallels the mechanism behind moral panics where threat gets magnified through symbolic redefinition. — connects to: Dam opponents framed their fight as a clash between engineering and geological sublimity — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 436; Catastrophic conflict can rest on visible or cultural difference. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 700; Framing a civil war as foreign defense can legitimize aggression — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 308