The Clash of Civilisations in Qatar

As the football reached its epic climax in the Qatar desert last week, the increasingly unhinged FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, declared the 2022 World Cup “the greatest ever”. It was certainly melodramatic. In a curious way the month-long event in the uber wealthy Gulf Sheikhdom reflected and magnified the state of the post-Western world disorder and what the late Samuel Huntington presciently described in 1996 as the inexorable clash of civilisations. Huntington observed that as the West declined economically, demographically, and territorially compared with challenger cultures like China, the Muslim world, Latin America and Eurasia, so too would its soft power.