According to Kennan’s long telegram, permanent peaceful coexistence
between the democratic ‘West’ and the communist ‘East,’ (led by the Soviet
Union), was next to impossible (Kennan, 1946). However, similar to Soviet
‘offi cial statements,’ Kennan’s assumptions were thinly veiled propaganda,
meant for domestic consumption. In hindsight it is clear that despite the multitude
of crises, socio-political and economic shocks and disturbances, the
relationship between the ‘West’ and ‘East’ was unlikely to have degenerated
into an open and direct confrontation. The end of the Cold War did not bring
about universal peace, but rather witnessed the emergence of another fault-line,
one based more on political identities than geopolitics, but still pointing to a
supposedly inevitable confl ict. This time the line of impossible coexistence
runs along the border of the Islamic world and a new, expanded ‘West’ which
includes the ‘traditional West’ (the US, Canada, West European states, NATO),
former Warsaw Pact countries (re: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria) and some post-Soviet states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia).
As Huntington indicated as far back as 1990, we can expect a clash between
Islam and the West.