Ukraine and the End of History
We need Fukuyama to be right.
The Ukraine War predictably has sparked discussion once more of Fukuyama’s famous 1989 “Have We Reached the End of History?” essay, which he later published in a greatly extended book form. Reports of History’s death, many have insisted, have been greatly exaggerated. Of course, as Fukuyama always made clear, he was never arguing that events would stop happening or that history—small “h”—was over. He was talking about Hegel’s conception of History—capital “H”—and the idea that there was a teleology of human progress specifically regarding ideology, according to which liberal democracy’s triumph represented an end-stage. Fukuyama was not concerned that liberal democracy did not reign everywhere, or that it had not achieved perfection anywhere. Only, it was the culminating ideology of human society. This is what Fukuyama saw at the end of the Cold War. The phenomenon of Putin’s authoritarianism, not to mention Trumpism, certainly give one pause, but it remains true that we need Fukuyama to be right.
If Fukuyama is wrong, either one of two things are true: 1) there is no teleology, no progress. The consequences of this for us would be profound. 2) there is a teleology, only we are not there yet at its end, and Hegel was jumping the gun. Meaning: there will emerge some new triumphant ideology that will be somehow greater than liberal democracy. But what will that be, and will it be a good thing?
Taking the teleology out of our understanding of history is no small thing: It’s baked into Enlightenment values and, ultimately, liberal democracy, with ramifications for everything from our education system, our approach to law enforcement, and economic development. In a nutshell, the very idea of “civilization” implies some sense of progress. This is the heart of any conception of “modernity” and the many modernisms, of which the concept of liberal democracy is but one. Of course, modernity has been under fire at least since the horrors of the First World War, not to speak of Hiroshima and the Holocaust. Post-modernism—a rejection of modernity, implies no progress, for there is no truth. Fukuyama is keen on pushing back on this sort of approach, insisting that there is progress despite everything. Other forms of anti-modernity are far older and have roots in pessimistic views of humanity such as those espoused by Joseph de Maistre or, in a more moderate version, Edmund Burke. The gist of it is that humanity does not move forward; we do not as a whole become better or freer. For that to happen, some, like Maistre, placed their faith on some ultimate end of history, but that would be God’s work, not man’s.
Joseph de Maistre, Architypal Anti-Modernist and all-around Pessimist
Such a conception would have troubling implications for international relations. Without the belief in progress or in modernity, we are left with a world view based on cold estimations of interest and power. We, as Americans, would have a difficult time seeing ourselves as any better than our adversaries or those we might consider trying to improve, through assistance of some kind. Indeed, we might not be.
I have already seen this view at work in Afghanistan, where those American officials and bureaucrats ostensibly there to foster modernist programs of development and democracy in fact did not believe in modernism or the viability of liberal democracy, sometimes out of cynicism or a misguided notion of cultural relativism that is an inevitably byproduct of post-modernism. If we do not believe in modernity, our engagement in places like Afghanistan or anywhere else in the developing world can only be about raw power and the advancement of our own interests. In the Afghan case, this cynicism led us to undermine our own efforts and do things like empower warlords. We failed to promote democracy with any real conviction. In this sense, perhaps we should abandon the pretense. Imagine the money we would save if we defunded the World Bank—an institution founded on a form of modernism. But then maybe we should also defund public schools, a proposition more than a few people on the anti-modernist American Right support.
What about the second possibility, that Hegel jumped the gun, and his dialectic has at least one other cycle left in it? In truth, if this is the case, we might never know until after it happened. At present, there appear to be two tendencies that at the very least threaten modernity’s gains. The first is the return of authoritarianism and sometimes outright fascism, which often draws on nationalism. Putin’s Russia is the obvious example. Fukuyama, I believe, argues that this does not disprove his theory but instead simply represents a setback rather than proof liberal democracy is failing, sort of the way a cold snap does not disprove global warming. For him, it is about viewing events on the appropriate timescale. The second, which I see at work in West Africa, is a rejection of liberal democracy because of its Western provenance, the perceived hypocrisy of its Western proponents, and its historical ties to imperialism and colonialism. This is not so much an ideology as an anti-ideology, though for the moment it appears to be useful to authoritarians and their supporters, who mobilize it to justify coups or putting off elections. Western Leftists, despite their purported Enlightenment values, can be vehicles for this approach because of their “anti-Imperialism” or anti-racism commitments.
The existence of these trends only threatens Fukuyama’s thesis if they either succeed in hobbling permanently liberal democracy, or if they combine with it (thesis/antithesis) to produce something new and transcendent. Aufhebung. It is hard to imagine today’s authoritarianism, sort of a low-rent fascism, evolving into something that has enduring appeal, though only time will tell. It might just be a recurrent malady, much like the persistent idolatry in ancient Israel the battle against which gives much of the Bible its narrative drive. As for what I am seeing in West Africa, there still might be room for some sort of decolonized liberal democracy, though its possible contours are difficult to imagine.
I find myself wanting Fukuyama to be right even if we do not know if he is right. My own religious faith is deeply invested in messianism, which tends to imply that there is no real progress in the world until the true End of History, but it does not absolve us of trying each in his or her own way to make the “world a fit dwelling place for God.” This is not necessarily a good guide for international relations, however, where a measure of cynicism is only prudent. I do believe, however, that if we give up on the idea of progress, the world becomes a darker place. After all, if we are not better, there is no point in trying to be better.