Latest news with #FrancisFukuyama
CNBC
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNBC
Francis Fukuyama discusses the unintended consequences of an 'America First' policy
Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University and Author of The End of History and the Last Man sees a longer-term trend of old liberal world order ideas being supplanted by those of national self-interest.
New Indian Express
03-07-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Out with the new order, in with the old
In 1992, Francis Fukuyama, in his acclaimed book The End of History and The Last Man, argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the 'end point of mankind's ideological evolution' and that the liberal template would be the default world order. However, in 1996, Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, in which he argued that the epoch of ideology had reached an inflection point, and thereafter, humankind would regress into an age delineated by cultural conflict all over again. Clashes would be along religious, ethnic and cultural lines. Both Fukuyama and Huntington were gazing into the crystal ball, trying to predict the ebb and flow of historical impulses in shaping the post-communist world order that had led to a unique situation of unipolarity in international affairs. On September 11, 2001, when semi-state actors put the only omnipresent hyper-power, the US, on notice by crashing passenger-filled jets into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, liberal democracy certainly had not emerged as the global choice. The events of 9/11 inaugurated a new chapter in global affairs, wherein 'war on terror' became the new buzz phrase. The events in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 demonstrate that despite the US spending $2.3 trillion on the war, or almost $300 million a day, the country did not turn into a democratic haven for the Afghans. In fact, Afghanistan was a classical test case for the Fukuyama thesis, courtesy the direct involvement of the US for over 20 years. Neither was it a clash of civilisations—for, if that had been, the US would not have engaged with the same Taliban it ousted 20 years ago. The Doha Agreement of February 29, 2020 paved the way for the return of the Taliban. It was a classical case of raison d'état at play. The invasion of Libya in 2011 under the rubric of Right to Protect did not turn that country into a democracy. The impulse was to get rid of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's despotic regime, as the Iraq invasion in 2003 was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Likewise, after the collapse of communism in the 1990s, China did not become democratic, nor is its ominous rise a civilisational struggle with other cultures. It is again purely driven by what China perceives as its national interest—the Middle Kingdom's destined place in the natural order of things. Therefore, the affairs of people and nations are still governed by two fundamental precepts, both dating back to the 17th century. The first, raison d'état, and the second, the balance of power doctrine and alliance system. Technology and economics can be drivers, but are not determinants. The determinant is still state sovereignty. We are indeed back to the old order. This would, unfortunately, be the fundamental underpinning of the new world order in the decades ahead. Manish Tewari | Lawyer, third-term MP and former Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting (Views are personal) (manishtewari01@
Middle East Eye
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Why western visions for a 'new Middle East' are irrelevant
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, political scientist Francis Fukuyama announced, with unprecedented bravado, 'the end of history' - declaring the victory of not only the United States over the USSR, but also of liberal democracy and capitalist economics. The US reshaped the international order. It took Russia two decades to rebuild its strength, declare wars on Georgia and Ukraine, and witness the rise of an emboldened China. Today, the international system has demonstrated that history did not end at all - and that liberal democracy is in retreat, grappling for its identity and for the global order born out of the Second World War. With the end of the recent war between Israel and Iran, claims have reemerged that this could give rise to a 'new Middle East' - one where Iran's axis of resistance has been weakened, with its influence rolled back in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. This echoes claims that have been repeated every decade for the past century. Ever since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the partitioning of the Middle East by western interests, the refrain has been the same: after every war, a new era will dawn, and the Middle East will flourish. But every military campaign has only planted the seeds for the next conflict. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Consider the Six-Day War of 1967. Israel defeated three Arab armies and conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the rest of historic Palestine. Yet from this victory emerged its biggest long-term challenge: the rise and entrenchment of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Until then, the PLO had been largely shaped and dominated by Arab regimes, but after the defeat of those regimes, Palestinians asserted their independence within the organisation, aligning it with their own interests rather than those of Arab states that treated Palestine as a political tool. Undermining democracy Similarly, after Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, it achieved a remarkable military feat, swiftly reaching Beirut and occupying the country's south. But from that victory emerged Hezbollah, a force that has posed a direct and constant threat to Israel for four decades now. Unlike Arab regimes that often fail to recognise or utilise the strength within their own borders, Israel understands the latent potential of Arab states. The recurring Israeli fantasy of a 'new Middle East' is not only unrealistic; it rests upon demands that no Arab regime can accept At the outset of the Arab Spring, after the fall of Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and amid the beginnings of a democratic process in Egypt, Israel acted quickly to undermine that democratic wave, focusing especially on Egypt. The reason was plain: Egyptian public opinion is largely hostile towards the Camp David Accords and normalisation with Israel. So it came as no surprise when Israel leveraged its influence in Washington to legitimise President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's regime following the 2013 military coup. The recurring Israeli fantasy of a 'new Middle East' is not only unrealistic; it rests upon demands that no Arab regime can accept. Even when states consider making far-reaching compromises, Israel always demands more. Just weeks before 7 October 2023, Saudi Arabia was reportedly ready to join the Abraham Accords - a move that would effectively empty the Palestinian cause of its meaning - without receiving anything substantial in return, other than increased lobbying power in Washington. Constant reinvention After two years of Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon came the unexpected Israeli attack on Iran. The West found itself once again supporting a blatantly illegal campaign that violated international law, risking the lives of millions. The Israeli and US strikes on nuclear installations risked causing a radiological disaster across multiple nations, and flew in the face of intelligence assessments - showing once again that international law applies only when it serves western interests. Western leaders have embraced the mantra of a 'new Middle East' as if it were gospel. In reality, this term is fiction; the Middle East is perhaps the only place in the world that reinvents itself every decade. Vital lessons can be drawn from the recent war between Israel and Iran. There was no decisive victory, but both sides exposed their advanced military and intelligence capabilities, while also revealing vulnerabilities. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu grows stronger domestically and the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endures, tensions and future confrontations will likely continue. Israel-US attack on Iran: The price of Netanyahu's forever wars Read More » Secondly, Arab states proved how exposed and militarily irrelevant they remain. When drones crashed in Jordan and Iran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf states could only defend themselves by aligning with Israel and relying on American bases, apparently unable to assert their own role. This confrontation has exposed Arab nations to two profound threats. Iran will likely try to rebuild its 'soft power' across Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, presenting itself as the only force capable of standing up to Israel and the US. Meanwhile, Israel, emboldened by messianic forces within its government, will pursue policies that could forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank at the expense of Arab states. As Israel and Iran jostle for position in the Middle East, much rests upon neighbouring Arab nations. Two years into the Gaza genocide, in a world that has failed to halt the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians, Arab nations must ask deeper questions about the two prevailing approaches that have shaped their politics for decades: pro-western secularism and Islamism. As proponents of each have clashed, Arab peoples have been left exposed and vulnerable. Perhaps the time has come for Arab nations to pursue a vision for a truly new Middle East: one that serves Arab interests first, and is shaped by Arabs themselves - not by external powers from the West or East. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Telegraph
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The world is drowning in blood – Westerners, wake up
It is almost four decades since the collapse of the Iron Curtain was meant to herald a new era, one in which the prospect of nuclear-armed states threatening to destroy the planet would be consigned to the past. As the former subject states of the USSR embraced their liberty and freedom, prominent scholars such as America's Francis Fukayama predicted that, with the end of the Cold War, everyone would move forward to a new Western-led world order: peace and prosperity, not superpower rivalries, would be the motivating forces. Witness Fukayama's famous essay, 'The End of History?', published in November 1989, on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. Today, it would be hard to find anyone in Western political circles who subscribed to this Panglossian view of modern history. The latest generation of politicians are more likely to argue that the world has never faced greater peril. For them, instead of enjoying the prosperity of the post-Cold War 'peace dividend', we should be rebuilding our defensive capabilities after decades of abject neglect. Such was the main talking point at the recent Nato summit in The Hague. A study conducted at Uppsala University in Sweden found that 2024 saw the largest number of conflicts across the globe since the Second World War. In such circumstances, it's vital that our leaders have an understanding of how conflicts develop, as well as the most effective means of resolving them. Such issues are examined in exhaustive detail by David Kilcullen and Greg Mills in their well-researched new book, The Art of War and Peace. The pair have decades of experience as policy advisers in conflicts as far apart as Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia; as such, they're well-placed to provide a detailed analysis of the nature of modern war, from large-scale, high-intensity, state-on-state conflicts to irregular, low-intensity, smaller wars. One of their central concerns is to show how the world has evolved from the 'end of history' mindset, and come to its present calamitous state, in which the failure of deterrence has led to the collapse of the international rules-based order. In the 1930s, Kilcullen and Mills argue, the terrible costs of war were fresh in everyone's memory, and the prospect of another war could thus spur rapid industrialisation and rearmament. By contrast, for most Westerners in 2025, the notion is a distant one. War, too many of us believe, is something conducted by others in faraway places. As a result, Western leaders have often found themselves singularly ill-prepared to the challenges they suddenly face, whether it's the more aggressive military posture adopted by Russia under Vladimir Putin or China's emergence as a major power to rival the US. Kilcullen and Mills lament the failure of our politicians to acknowledge this rapidly changing global landscape, and suggest that it has resulted, at the grand-strategic level, in the erosion of credible deterrence on the part of the United States and its allies – and that this, in turn, has led to a decline in the Western powers' global influence. For example, a significant portion of The Art of War and Peace focuses on how the Biden administration handled the US-led coalition's withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, a chaotic process that, the authors argue, led Putin to believe that he would encounter no serious opposition from the West if he proceeded with his plan to invade Ukraine in February 2022. They write: The abject performance in Afghanistan led the Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese and every terrorist group on the planet to believe the Western alliance was weak. Chinese officials and state media outlets, for instance, repeatedly condemned the withdrawal, citing this action as evidence that the United States was an undependable partner and a declining power. Kilcullen and Mills don't disagree with that assessment. 'The US,' they say, 'has repeatedly engaged in military interventions abroad, rallied coalitions and allies to support it, then blithely walked away when policymakers or the public became bored or distracted.' They conclude that 'Washington's unreliability remains an omnipresent danger for America's allies.' On the other hand, the authors accept that ending wars in the modern age is more difficult than it was in previous eras. In the Second World War, the overwhelming military defeats suffered by Nazi Germany and Japan meant that they had no option to allow the Allies to declare total victory. This permitted the West to dictate peace terms. Conflicts these days are a great deal more messy, especially when other actors are involved, whether it's Western nations supporting Ukraine against Russia or Iran's continued backing for Hamas. By far the most important conclusion to be drawn from this excellent study, then, is a broad and philosophical one: that the West can no longer afford to ignore the challenges presented by the changing nature of modern warfare. We must instead prepare – just as we did during the Cold War – to defend our liberty. ★★★★☆
Mint
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Why the Indian government needs to redefine the idea of reform
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, political scientist Francis Fukuyama prematurely declared the 'end of history'. He believed that capitalism and democracy—the Washington Consensus—had finally prevailed over socialism and totalitarianism. History has returned. Ideological conflict between democracy and capitalism has not ended. In fact the two ideologies are conflicting within the Western victors of the old Cold War. Civil society movements are speaking in the West on behalf of people left behind by the 'free market' of private enterprise. Other voices on 'the Left' demand a larger role for governments in providing public services and social security. And others speak for protection of the natural environment. Meanwhile the Right advocates for lower taxes, less regulation, and more freedom for capital to roam the world. The fundamental conflict between the core principles of capitalism and democracy—i.e. between the rights of owners of capital on one hand, and the rights of all humans on the other—continues. It is a conflict between political conservatives and political progressives. Between conservatives, who want to retain their power to fix the rules of the game from which they have benefitted, and progressives who want to change the rules for the benefit of those left behind. Also read: How John Matthai became a leading light of economic policy Democracy and capitalism are founded on different conceptions of fundamental rights. Capitalism's foundation is property rights. Democracy's is human rights. Capitalist institutions run on the principle that whosoever owns something has the right to use it as he wishes, and also that whosoever owns more of a shared resource must have a greater say in how that resource is used. Therefore, whoever owns more shares in a corporation has a larger vote than those who own fewer shares. On the other hand, ownership of property does not matter while assigning voting rights in democratic institutions. Because, in democracy, every living person, whether she has a billion dollars of wealth, or no dollars at all, has an equal vote in the governance of the collective human enterprise. The clash between capitalism and democracy is a clash of fundamental principles for good governance of societies. When appliances designed to run on AC power are plugged into sockets providing DC power, there will be blow-outs. Similarly, when institutions of governance designed to run on fundamentally different principles are plugged into each other, something will blow up. Fundamental contradictions between the principles of capitalism and democracy are causing violent conflicts amongst nations and within nations. To create an equitable, sustainable, and more harmonious world in the 21st century, institutions of democracy and capitalism must evolve, from the shape in which they have been locked in with the so-called 'Washington Consensus'. Humanity must find new solutions to many societal, economic, and environmental challenges in a hurry. They are listed in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals all governments have signed up for. Institutions are vehicles designed by humans to realize their collective aspirations. Institutions of capitalism, as well as institutions of democracy, must be reformed to solve the existential crises of increasing inequalities and rapid climate change that are threatening all humanity. Reforming Capitalism [Lawyer and Deputy Chairman of the Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (Telco)] Nani Palkhivala supported private enterprise for economic growth. He was also a great defender of the democratic rights of citizens. When Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency and suspended political freedoms, he withdrew from a case in which he was representing her. This caused consternation in the Tata companies. J.R.D. Tata was naturally concerned about the effect Palkhivala's uprightness would have on Tata's businesses. But he supported Palkihivala nevertheless. Designs of new forms of capitalist institutions, such as the limited liability company invented in the 17th century enabled capitalism to expand. With the evolution of institutions for governing international finance and international trade in the twentieth century, capitalist corporations have been able to spread across national borders. Capitalist institutions have enabled global and national GPDs to increase and have lifted millions of people out of economic poverty. Also read: Fitzgerald's critique of capitalism in 'The Great Gatsby' remains valid 100 years later Economists promoting free markets gained more power within Anglo-Saxon governments from the 1970s onwards. Milton Friedman, who became famous for his dictum that 'the business of business must be only business', and Frederik Hayek, known for his thesis that more governance was 'the road to serfdom', persuaded Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US to push back against governments in their countries and to privatize public services. Reagan even said that Government is not the solution; rather, Government is the problem. This turn of ideology gave big capital greater power. Democratic governments, as mentioned before, must represent the interests of all people, rich and poor equally. Though the richest people within any society will always be numerically less than the numbers of poorer people (it is a mathematical distribution as the Italian economist Vilfred Pareto had pointed out in the nineteenth century). However, the rich few will acquire greater power in the governance of societies than the poorer many whenever the principle of property rights dominates. The shift in the balance between democracy and capitalism towards capitalism in the last thirty years is made vivid by the creation of international tribunals who adjudicate in disputes between foreign investors in countries and the governments of those countries. Governments of countries represent the interests of millions, even billions, of people in their countries. On the other side in the dispute are a few investors of capital. Global institutions have come to pander too much to financial investors, making it easier for them to enter and exit countries at will, while stopping human migrants searching for better opportunities across national borders. The rules of globalization have made life much easier for capitalists than for workers. The word 'reform' has taken on a one-sided connotation: reforms seem to imply removal of constraints on investors and businesses. This was starkly revealed in India, and other countries too, during the Covid pandemic. The poor lost incomes and homes while stock markets broke records making investors even richer. The Indian government's move at that time, to 'reform' labour laws to attract more foreign investments, making it easier for employers to fire workers and curbing unions too, made clear that large investors had more political power than common people. Excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger Books. Also read: This women farmers' network envisions a feminist future for agriculture
