Cultural Clashes

1. Cultural Clashes EQ: Why do certain barriers produce conflict? When do they encourage cooperation?

2. India and Pakistan • Indo-Pakistan War of 1947, 1965, 1999 • Kashmir is the region between Pakistan and India. • The conflict is political and often considered to be religious due to the vast differences between the two countries. • At the current moment, China, Pakistan, and India each control their own section of the region. • The Muslim population was 77% of the total population. While Hindu’s were 20% of the population. • However, the two nations clashed as they tried to gain more control of the area for power.

3. America and Russia • The conflict is very political in nature. • Not all conflicts are limited to these three listed barriers, but sometimes a conflict can be political and often a mix of all these. • This goes as far back the end of World War II. Communist Russia and democratic USA fought a Cold War with hot words. They never engaged directly in conflict. • “An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.” • The USSR and the United States had different national religions as well. The Soviet Union banned all religions to prevent distractions from obedience to the state. However, the United States remained a Christian nation. • Tensions are high now because of Russian allegiance to Syria.

4. China and Japan • The ethnic conflict between these two began long ago. • It can be tied to linguistic issues as well. • When Japanese forces attack the Chinese city of Nanking, it was the propitiation of constant fighting. • Almost 200,000 men, women, and children were killed by armed forces during the Japanese occupation. • Different religions, languages, and each viewing the other was a lower race brought the fight into its most heated moments.

5. Palestinians and Israelis • This is a smaller sample of the larger Arab-Israeli issue that has been long running. • The conflict began when Israel was created by an executive United Nations order. • This conflict is religious in nature. Jewish and Muslim followers clash on ideas. • The conflict is of an ethnic and political nature. Arabs and Israeli differences in ethnicities lead back to thousands of years of clashing religious and land disputes.

6. India’s Ethnic Cleansing • India’s religious wars are a result of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and Sikh religions clashing over power and importance in the country. • Ethnic and religious causes are the main reasons this clash occurs. • “Tensions between Hindu and Muslim started coming to light a few years before the independence of the Indian-sub continent. This thought contrasts with the more widely held Two Nation Theory as the main reason. These riots were supposedly provoked by colonizers and politicians for personal gains and vested interests.”

7. Separate Answers • 1. Linguistic is the easiest conflict to solve. After use of translators to find common ground, you can actually build a coalition of different cultures. The European Union is an example of these different cultures coming together. In the past, many of these countries fought world wars against each other. • 2. Quite often, Hispanic immigrants are fluent in little to no English. Their inability to speak English can frustrate citizens in America. This actually occurs anywhere an immigrant does not speak the native language. The disparity is actually the result of the English language being one of the most difficult to learn.

8. Barriers • Linguistic, religious, and ethnic barriers create more conflict than cooperation. Very rarely do countries with such stark differences come together. • The European Union came together to form an economic climate that has common currency and allowed them to trade much more easily. • However, some barriers will never be broken down. Some of these conflicts go further back than the 20th century.