The political scientist whose "clash of civilizations" is, in this archive, the paradigm Bob Dobbs's five bodies are pitched against. Bob reads him institutionally rather than intellectually — the establishment's academic, the Trilateral Commission's, a man whose job was to supply the pattern by which the period would be described. The objection is not that the clash of civilizations is wrong but that it is too small: it holds the frame in war mode when what is happening exceeds war, which is where Bob says McLuhan's levels of World War III belong instead. New to it — start with dialogue 72.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the named rival the pamphlet needs — the establishment figure whose one simple pattern kept the frame in war mode, so that the five bodies can be offered as the account that supersedes it
Huntington placed as a function rather than a thinker — the elite's role is to determine what the big pattern is, and the clash of civilizations is that determination for the post-Cold-War period.
"He was the man who made up this simple little pattern."
The pamphlet's most explicit competitive claim — the five bodies are offered not as a complement to the clash of civilizations but as its replacement, on the grounds that Huntington's frame is strictly nineteenth-century and cannot exceed war.
"I claim this Five-Body paradigm is a lot more useful or comprehensive when applied to our post-911 scene than Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations probe."
Connections
Bob offers the five-body paradigm as the more comprehensive account of the post-9/11 scene, with Huntington's clash of civilizations as the rival it is meant to displace.