OPINION:
In his utopian 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama wrote that as a result of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, humanity had reached not just “… 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 universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
But mankind never was – and never will be – as enlightened as Mr. Fukuyama dreamed. Liberal democracies usually don’t make war on each other, but there will always be people who want what other people have. Such people will embrace the dictators, despots, rogues and terrorists who will take power and go to war to conquer others. There will always be ideologies and religions that believe their destinies are to dominate the world.
Humanity’s natural state is not some idealized version of Western democracy; it is conflict and war.
In a high-profile March 1 op-ed in the Financial Times, Mr. Fukuyama continues to be wrong. He writes that America is the worst example of political decay, and the way forward for America is to embrace President Biden’s agenda and reject Donald Trump. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
The fall of the Soviet Union brought about the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mao Zedong’s death did not bring about a Chinese version of Western liberal democracy. China remains a totalitarian state, as does North Korea. The 1979 Iranian revolution brought about one of the world’s most odious and dangerous regimes.
History lumbers on, crushing idealism in its path. Mr. Putin’s Russia is, for now, the best example. His 2022 war on Ukraine brought a larger war to Europe than it had suffered in seven decades. Even though he is apparently winning that war, Mr. Putin is going out of his way to magnify the nuclear threat against America and its NATO allies.
As this column pointed out about two weeks ago, Russia has renounced several major arms control treaties in the past five years. These treaties include the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, limiting Russian and U.S. force strength, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (which Russia was violating by placing nuclear-armed missiles too close to Western Europe), the New START Treaty limiting the number of nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which bans nuclear testing on Earth. By planning to orbit nuclear weapons in space, Russia intends to violate the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits them.
Mr. Putin has made explicit his threat that nuclear war would result if NATO nations sent troops to fight in his Ukraine war. His threats of nuclear war seem to have become almost commonplace since February 2022. His closest ally, former Russian president Dimitry Medvedev, said in January that Russia could strike back with nuclear weapons if Ukraine used Western-supplied missiles to strike missile silos in Russia.
On Feb. 28, The Financial Times published a report on 29 secret Russian documents revealing that the Russian threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons is all too low.
Mr. Fukuyama was wrong about history ending in his 1992 book. He’s equally wrong in his new op-ed.
Mr. Fukuyama wrote, “According to the non-profit Freedom House, there has been a steady decline in the quantity and quality of liberal democracies around the world for the past 18 years. Among the backsliders, no case is more serious than that of the United States.” He wrote correctly that U.S. institutions have been decaying for some time and are now at a major crisis point.
Mr. Fukuyama’s major crisis point? The possible reelection of Mr. Trump, of course.
Mr. Fukuyama prescribes remedies, each one out of the progressive playbook and each utterly wrong. On his list are everything from the elimination of the Electoral College to rank-choice voting and greater limits on campaign financing. He recommends Mr. Biden’s (entirely false) play at border security.
Mr. Fukuyama bashes Mr. Trump for his comments that he wouldn’t defend NATO nations that don’t spend enough on defense. That brings to mind the comment that Mr. Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally, while his critics take him literally but not seriously. Mr. Trump won’t renege on the NATO Treaty’s mutual defense obligation. At some level, he must understand that – no matter how much we dislike the NATO deadbeat nations – their freedom is crucial to ours.
Mr. Fukuyama writes that he wants the Democrats to win decisively in November. He wrote that the Democrats need to win decisively to “…reduce the ability of political minorities to stymie majorities, and streamline our impossibly complex processes and procedures to make government more effective.” In short, he wants to enable the Democrats to limit Americans’ constitutional freedoms.
It is, in a way, unfair to pick on Mr. Fukuyama simply because he has expressed so well the common view of European and American elites. Instead, we should be grateful to him for clearly explaining what this election is about.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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