Civilizations with little cultural affinity can still align against a shared rival

Evidence

A general anti-Western coalition, however, seems unlikely in the immediate future. Islamic and Sinic civilizations differ fundamentally in terms of religion, culture, social structure, traditions, politics, and basic assumptions at the root of their way of life. Inherently each probably has less in common with the other than it has in common with Western civilization. Yet in politics a common enemy creates a common interest. Islamic and Sinic societies which see the West as their antagonist thus have reason to cooperate with each other against the West, even as the Allies and Stalin did against Hitler. This cooperation occurs on a variety of issues, including human rights, economics, and most notably the efforts by societies in both civilizations to develop their military capabilities, particularly weapons of mass destruction and the missiles for delivering them, so as to counter the conventional military superiority of the West. By the early 1990s a “Confucian-Islamic connection” was in place between China and North Korea, on the one hand, and in varying degrees Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Algeria, on the other, to confront the West on these issues. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 494

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to balance-of-power realism and the Milgrom/Roberts work on cooperation emerging from a common adversary — and to the general theme of common-enemy alliances across the reading list.
• QUESTION: Worth checking how this ‘Confucian-Islamic connection’ prediction actually fared through the 2000s and 2010s — did Russia’s post-2014 pivot scramble the alignment?.