Post-Cold War politics reconfigured itself along cultural identity lines.

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)

In the late 1980s the communist world collapsed, and the Cold War international system became history. In the post-Cold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. They are cultural. Peoples and nations are attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face: Who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 41 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Place-based identity politics replace class politics and revive geopolitics. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1725; Arab political solidarity dissolved once cold war patrons and external enemies receded. — Youssef Cherif, Neo-pan-Arabism: a renewed contract of…, 39; Liberal democracy’s post-Cold War triumph masks deep popular disaffection — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 372 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• 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 world divides people primarily by culture, not ideology or economics. #corroborates (0.95) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 41