Samuel P. Huntington's seminal work, 'The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,' posits that in the post-Cold War era, the primary source of global conflict will not be ideological or economic, but rather cultural and religious. He argues that civilizations, defined by shared cultural values and history, will be the main actors in international politics.

Samuel Huntington categorized the world into major cultural civilizations, including Western, Islamic, Hindu, Sinic, and others. He argued that future conflicts would be cultural rather than ideological. Communist ideology is a political and economic system, not a cultural civilization, and Huntington explicitly argued that ideological divisions were being replaced by civilizational ones in the post-Cold War era.