Shared cultural identity dampens conflict between divided-nation rivals

Evidence

Again in contrast to Western Europe, the seeds for conflict among states are plentiful in East Asia. Two widely identified danger spots have involved the two Koreas and the two Chinas. These are, however, leftovers from the Cold War. Ideological differences are of declining significance and by 1995 relations had expanded significantly between the two Chinas and had begun to develop between the two Koreas. The probability of Koreans fighting Koreans exists but is low; the prospects of Chinese fighting Chinese are higher, but still limited, unless the Taiwanese should renounce their Chinese identity and formally constitute an independent Republic of Taiwan. As a Chinese military document approvingly quoted one general saying, “there should be limits to fights among family members.” While violence between the two Koreas or the two Chinas remains possible, cultural commonalities are likely to erode that possibility over time. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 592

Categorization

• QUESTION: Did this prediction hold? Taiwan’s de facto independent identity discourse never formally renounced ‘Chinese’ identity, so Huntington’s threshold condition was never cleanly met; worth revisiting with 2020s data.
• ADDENDUM: The ‘limits to fights among family members’ logic parallels the grievance-and-love framing of the sacrifice article about intra-community violence having different rules than inter-community violence.
• XREF: connects to: Unavailable cultural styles for activism can block otherwise obvious alliances — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1495; Civil War nationalism displaced nativism by supplying shared enmity and economic bonds. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 86; Culture divides and discriminates before it ever unites a community. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 815