The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?

The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, by Tony Blankley (Regnery, 256 pp., $27.95)

Does militant Islam's challenge to the West rise to the level of an existential threat, on the order of fascism and Communism; or is it a lesser danger, one that will yield to the solvent of conventional geopolitical thinking? Tony Blankley, editorial-page editor of the Washington Times, argues persuasively for the first alternative. Particularly startling is Blankley's description of culturally insecure Europe's transformation by Muslim immigrants who demand, with increasing boldness, that the West conform itself to their sensitivities. The worst-case scenario would be a "Eurabia," governed in part by sharia, that actively undermines U.S. strategic interests. Blankley proposes several tactics to counter the threat, some of which are obvious ("utilize ethnic profiling") and others vague ("win the European culture war"). The book's value lies mainly in its portrait of the danger. Blankley's prognosis is cautiously optimistic; he suggests that "the historic force of the Islamist insurgency ... should hammer us back into a common sword that we can call the West." One hopes so, and suspects that the publication of his book has made that outcome slightly more probable.

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