The return of ‘History’?

In mid-1989, Francis Fukuyama predicted the collapse of the Soviet empire and the fall of the Berlin Wall in his article ‘The End of History?’. But more than that, this (then) neoconservative intellectual claimed that the ideological defeat of Soviet communism—represented by Mikhail Gorbachev’s restructuring under perestroika and glasnost—meant that liberal democracy, as a form of political organisation, had triumphed over all alternative forms of government.[1] Here, a lot of silly people misunderstood precisely what Fukuyama meant by this: he did not mean that historical events would end; or, necessarily, that liberal democracy was a utopian form of government. What Fukuyama did mean, however, was that the idea of liberal democracy could not be improved upon—as such, it represented a political omega point. As he put it:

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.[2]

Fukuyama expanded his thesis in a later book, entitled The End of History and the Last Man, which was published in 1992, during the height of the post-Cold War euphoria. Here, by invoking the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Hegel, he claimed that History had a progressive tendency; that the double forces of technological development and political innovation pushed people on a course towards greater emancipation from the forces of repression. According to Fukuyama, science unleashes ideas and enhances human power over the natural environment, producing ever-greater economic yields, while evolution in politics relinquished men from their need of recognition through superiority, and thus ended forms of servitude and slavery associated with despotism. The structures of liberal democracy, by providing the optimum solution for the pursuit of wealth and science, and the means to enable individuals to pursue their need for recognition—without recourse to violence—would lead, claimed Fukuyama, to peace, prosperity and untold levels of wealth and technological progress for all those lucky enough to live under such forms of government.

Yet Fukuyama also introduced a caution: He claimed that the forces produced by liberal democratic structures, could, in turn, lead to unforeseen consequences, not least the creation of the ‘Last Men’. He attributed the idea for these pitiful creatures to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, who claimed that socialism, democracy and progress could produce individuals so weak-willed and concerned only with their own self-comfort, that they would effectively stagnate and wallow in their own ignorance. John Stuart Mill also conceptualised something similar:

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.[3]

Fukuyama warned that unless ways could be found to prevent individuals from falling into this dangerous trap, the centuries of struggle for democratic government could be in vain. At which point, what were once solid democracies might return to pre-History, back to an age of suffering, poverty and repression.

The End of History has been criticised heavily, not least by its own author, who has reneged to some extent over the original thesis. In many ways, it may have even been a product of its time, influenced by the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the globalising communications systems during the 1990s, which seemed to be offering a world of hope—which has become increasingly naïve, given the ongoing crises in so many parts of the world. So in his latest tour de force, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan, another prominent neoconservative intellectual, questions the idea of a progressive History. Or rather, he questions the forces at work in pressing History forward. Kagan takes issue with the idea—prominent among many Europeans, and advocates of so-called ‘soft power’—that liberal democracy is itself an idea so powerful that it is able to diffuse itself entirely of its own accord. In his words:

The great fallacy of our era has been the belief that a liberal international order rests on the triumph of ideas and on the natural unfolding of human progress. It is an immensely attractive notion, deeply rooted in the Enlightenment worldview of which all of us in the liberal world are the product. Our political scientists posit theories of modernisation, with sequential stages of political and economic development that lead upwards to liberalism. Our political philosophers imagine a grand historical dialectic, in which the battle of worldviews over centuries produces, in the end, the correct liberal democratic answer. Naturally, many are inclined to believe that the Cold War ended the way it did simply because the better worldview triumphed, as it had to, and that the international order that exists today is but the next stage forward in humanity’s march from strife and aggression towards a peaceful and prosperous coexistence.[4]

Kagan goes on:

Such illusions are just true enough to be dangerous. Of course there is strength in the liberal democratic idea and in the free market. In the long run, and all things being equal, they should prevail over alternative worldviews, both because of their ability to deliver the material goods and, more important, because of their appeal to the most powerful aspect of human nature, the desire of for personal autonomy, recognition, and freedom of thought and conscience...[But] the focus on the dazzling pageant of progress at the end of the Cold War ignored the wires and beams and the scaffolding that had made such progress possible. It failed to recognise that progress was not inevitable but was contingent on events—battles won or lost, social movements successful or crushed, economic practices implemented or discarded. The spread of democracy was not merely the unfolding of certain ineluctable process of economic and political development. We don’t really know if such an evolutionary process...even exists.[5]

What Kagan is trying to point out here is that while the liberal ideal has enormous traction, it is also nurtured and protected by formidable organised power. Is it that liberal democracy has become dominant because it is liberal democracy, or is it because the world’s greatest political, economic and military powers, not least the United States and the European Union, are protecting and planting its seeds? It is an interesting question, and one that the European strategist, Robert Cooper, and Kagan debate extensively in the latest edition of Prospect Magazine. Kagan’s view—in many ways not so dissimilar from Cooper’s—is that power is important, and it is good that Europeans and Americans hold much of it:

[We]...know...the global shift towards democracy coincided with the historical shift in the balance of power towards those nations and peoples who favoured the liberal democratic idea...The liberal international order that emerged after these two victories [World War II and the Cold War] reflected the new overwhelming global balance of power in favour of liberal forces. But those victories were not inevitable, and they need not be lasting.[6]

While Kagan may have misunderstood Fukuyama in asking whether History has returned again (Fukuyama, after all, did not say that democratisation would not suffer set-backs, stagnation or periods of reversal), he is certainly right to attack not only liberal determinism, but also the delusions and dreams held by many in the field of international relations more generally. Indeed, much like his previous work, Of Paradise and Power, The Return of History and the End of Dreams seems targeted particularly at Europeans, many of whom are in no doubt that History has ended for them: that the world will simply pass them by, that Europe can resign itself from great power competition, from overseas conflict, from Islamist extremism, and other forms of pre-History, while simultaneously remaining secure and safe. Kagan’s answer to such people is succinct and biting:

The world has not been transformed. In most places, the nation-state remains as strong as ever, and so, too, the nationalist ambitions, the passions, and the competition among nations that have shaped history…international competition has returned, with Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, Iran, the United States, and others vying for regional predominance. Struggles for status and influence in the world have returned as central features of the international scene. The old competition between liberalism and autocracy has also re-emerged, with the world’s great powers increasingly lining up according to the nature of their regimes. And an even older struggle has erupted between radical Islamists and the modern secular cultures and powers that they believe have polluted their Islamic world. As these struggles combine and collide, the promise of a new era of international convergence fades. We have entered and age of divergence.[7]

In short, the idea of an ‘international community’ or anything of the sort is an increasingly a dangerous fiction. As new political projects—from Islamism in the Middle East, to ‘sovereign democracy’ in Russia, and to Chinese autocratic capitalism—capture the imaginations of the citizens of other countries, the democracies of the Euro-Atlantic community will come under sustained and mounting challenge, not only for global influence, but perhaps also for their own domestic legitimacy. If the conflicts of the early twenty-first century seemed extreme, those of the next few decades may make them pale in comparison. Worse, Europeans are sleeping during times of great change and tension. Unlike the other great powers, with their integrated political command chains, Europeans still have nothing of the sort. In the struggles of tomorrow, the hotchpotch of countries like Belgium, Poland, Greece, Spain, Germany, and so on—even France and the United Kingdom—will have insufficient clout to count for much on the global stage, alongside rising, nationalist, and potentially aggressive autocracies like China and Russia. Kagan notes, for example, that Russian resurgence has angered Europeans in recent years, but asks in his normal caustic, but nevertheless, elegant style: ‘But would Europe bring a knife to a knife fight?’[8] For all Europeans, the European Union therefore becomes essential not only as a mechanism for security and protection, but also to project European power in service of Europeans’ collective values and interests. Yet this requires a harder and more assertive European approach.

The biggest question, however, is: can it be realised? Do we—Europeans—have the political vision and will to make it happen? Do we want to remain the shapers of history, or would we rather continue under the delusions so ruefully picked apart by people like Kagan? Indeed, would we be content to drift into the age of the ‘Last Men’, so concerned with our own affairs that we become unable to defend ourselves from the outside world? One day, unless we take sufficient action over the next ten to fifteen years, we may be faced with far worse than disturbing warnings from American scholars. Surely, based on past experiences, it is not too hard to imagine that we may, in the future, be facing a determined aggressor, bent on overturning our liberal European order, and with it, everything we have struggled for since the mid-twentieth century? On the present trajectory, of declining European military budgets; ill-equipped and under-prepared armed forces; poorly crafted foreign and security policies, particularly on the part of European Union Member States like Germany, Italy and Spain, one could be forgiven for thinking that the European Union’s future looks rather bleak. And as Kagan warns us, we need more than hope to prove them wrong...

[1] Francis Fukuyama, angered with many of his neoconservative colleagues’ unquestioning belief in the Iraq war, parted company with them in roughly 2006.
[2] Francis Fukuyama, 1989, ‘The End of History?’.
[3] John Stuart Mill, 1862, The Contest in America.
[4] Robert Kagan, 2008, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, p. 102.
[5] Ibid., pp. 102-104.
[6] Ibid., pp. 104-105.
[7] Ibid., pp. 3-4.
[8] Ibid., p. 23.