Islam, Latin America, and Africa lack civilizational core states largely because of Western imperialism

Evidence

Japanese civilization is virtually identical with the single Japanese core state. Sinic, Orthodox, and Hindu civilizations each have one overwhelmingly dominant core state, other member states, and people affiliated with their civilization in states dominated by people of a different civilization (overseas Chinese, “near abroad” Russians, Sri Lankan Tamils). Historically the West has usually had several core states; it has now two cores, the United States and a Franco-German core in Europe, with Britain an additional center of power adrift between them. Islam, Latin America, and Africa lack core states. This is in part due to the imperialism of the Western powers, which divided among themselves Africa, the Middle East, and in earlier centuries and less decisively, Latin America. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 369

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth pursuing: does the West’s history of having several rival core states correlate with its dynamism, and is a single core state structurally different for the West’s stability?