Post-Cold-War order now rests on civilizations, not global power.

Evidence

In the Cold War, countries related to the two superpowers as allies, satellites, clients, neutrals, and nonaligned. In the post-Cold War world, countries relate to civilizations as member states, core states, lone countries, cleft countries, and torn countries. Like tribes and nations, civilizations have political structures. A member state is a country fully identified culturally with one civilization, as Egypt is with Arab-Islamic civilization and Italy is with European-Western civilization. A civilization may also include people who share in and identify with its culture, but who live in states dominated by members of another civilization. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 368 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

During the Cold War, what order there was was the product of superpower dominance of their two blocs and superpower influence in the Third World. In the emerging world, global power is obsolete, global community a distant dream. No country, including the United States, has significant global security interests. The components of order in today’s more complex and heterogeneous world are found within and between civilizations. The world will be ordered on the basis of civilizations or not at all. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 422 (#expands, via linked claim)

Finally, all those developments make regionalization the central trend in military strategy and power in the post-Cold War world. Regionalization provides the rationale for the reductions in Russian and Western military forces and for increases in the military forces of other states. Russia no longer has a global military capability but is focusing its strategy and forces on the near abroad. China has reoriented its strategy and forces to emphasize local power projection and the defense of Chinese interests in East Asia. European countries are similarly redirecting their forces, through both NATO and the Western European Union, to deal with instability on the periphery of Western Europe. The United States has explicitly shifted its military planning from deterring and fighting the Soviet Union on a global basis to preparing to deal simultaneously with regional contingencies in the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. The United States, however, is not likely to have the military capability to meet these goals. To defeat Iraq, the United States deployed in the Persian Gulf 75 percent of its active tactical aircraft, 42 percent of its modern battle tanks, 46 percent of its aircraft carriers, 37 percent of its army personnel, and 46 percent of its marine personnel. With significantly reduced forces in the future, the United States will be hard put to carry out one intervention, much less two, against substantial regional powers outside the Western Hemisphere. Military security throughout the world increasingly depends not on the global distribution of power and the actions of superpowers but on the distribution of power within each region of the world and the actions of the core states of civilizations. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 247 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Post-Cold War military security is shifting to regional power distributions, not global superpower balance. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 247; Post-Cold War order must be organized by civilizations or not at all — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 422; Post-Cold War politics are organized around civilizational roles rather than superpower alignments — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 368 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Post-Cold War order must be organized by civilizations or not at all #expands (0.95) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 422
• Post-Cold War politics are organized around civilizational roles rather than superpower alignments #corroborates (0.95) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 368
• Post-Cold War military security is shifting to regional power distributions, not global superpower balance. #complicates (0.72) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 247