Iraq war ‘was a mistake,’ says Fukuyama
History’s gravedigger explains why he has abandoned the neoconservative movement but still stands by his ‘End of History’ theory


Nikos Kokkalias
‘I think the basic structural reasons for American hegemony will remain in place for some time but I think that this use of American power has generated a big backlash in many parts of the world, so that American power is going to be resisted a lot more strongly that it would have been in the absence of the war,’ Francis Fukuyama told Kathimerini English Edition in Athens last week.

By Harry van Versendaal - Kathimerini English Edition

Big shocks change perceptions. It was January 1998 when former neocon guru Francis Fukuyama co-signed, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other hawks, a letter to then-US president Bill Clinton calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Now that the Iraq war is in its third year and the number of victims exceeds even the most pessimistic forecasts, the Japanese-American theoretician has abandoned the sinking ship of neoconservatism and has turned against his former friends.

«I have concluded that neoconservatism, as a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something that I can no longer support,» writes Fukuyma in his latest book «After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads.» In this interview shortly before his speech at an Economist conference in Athens last week, he explains why.


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No regrets over hawks’ letter to Clinton for harsher stance on Iraq
So is it true that your neoconservative friends don’t speak to you anymore?

No, there are I think just one or two that are angry, but I think most of them still remain friends.

What went wrong with the neoconservatives? Was it that they tried to accelerate the process you had laid out in your “End of History” thesis? Was the problem with the means or the ends?

I think it was really a problem with the means rather than the goals. The problem was that there is just a tremendous overemphasis on the role of American military power that really started in the 1990s and became the centerpiece of the agenda — that is, to have coercive regime changes as a path toward promoting democracy — and I think that was the basic mistake.

I think democracy comes about because people want democracy and in every society the process is primarily driven by those internal forces. Outsiders can facilitate it in many ways but they are not really the ones that determine the timetable.

Do you think the neoconservatives were victims of their success in Eastern Europe in the sense that there was an artificial division that faded, unlike despotisms in other parts of the world?

I think that the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was a very unusual circumstance. I think we now understand in retrospect that communism was very artificial, in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and so forth. So it collapsed without any kind of violent resistance, which everyone at the time was expecting.

Nobody thought that communism would simply end that peacefully. I think the problem was that many neoconservatives watching that [development] overgeneralized and believed that this was a general characteristic of totalitarian regimes, i.e. that they were hollow at the core and that if you gave them a little push from the outside they would collapse, like the Romanian or Bulgarian regimes.

Is there no contradiction between your liberal interventionism and your rejection of social engineering?

Well, I don’t reject all forms of social engineering. I think what you need is an awareness that if you get too ambitious and you try to go at fundamental root causes of different forms of social behavior, it is very difficult to know how to operate properly in that realm. But I think there are lots of things you can do. When you build a democracy you have to do social engineering: You need to create a rule of law, a judicial system, property rights, i.e. the basic institutions of a democracy, so everybody has to engage in it to some extent. The problem comes about when you try to do it in other societies where you don’t really understand the way the society works, where there is not a lot of domestic support for democratic institutions, where you don’t have strong political players that carry the burden of political change.

Like Iraq for example?

Well, in Iraq there should have been a warning signal that in a totalitarian society like that you really don’t have a lot of political parties and civil society organizations. These are critical to creating a really democratic society.

Do you think the Iraq crisis was a sign of the decline of US hegemony?

Well, I think the basic structural reasons for American hegemony will remain in place for some time but I think that this use of American power has generated a big backlash in many parts of the world, so that American power is going to be resisted a lot more strongly than it would have been in the absence of the war.

Do you think the Republicans will survive the Iraq war?

I don’t know. I think that if the situation continues to deteriorate and it looks like it was a big policy failure, I think they’re going to pay a price for that, but it depends on who they nominate and who the Democrats nominate. This November, we will have to see if the Democrats could regain control of one or possibly both houses of Congress.

Do you regret having signed the letter urging former President Clinton to take a harder line on Iraq and Saddam?

I changed my mind on that. I don’t regret, at one point, ever having supported the war, because I think it was morally a difficult choice to make. There were important moral goods on the other side, in terms of removing a very bad dictator. And so simply taking a while to make up your mind about this I don’t think is something that is necessarily blamable. I think in the end, once I’d thought it through in the year prior to the war, I decided that for a variety of reasons it was an unacceptable risk to launch the war.

So it was not the war in itself but the way it was planned...

Well, unless you did it in a way where the costs would be commensurate with the objectives, then it’s not a good idea to do things and wars are very difficult to control. It’s not just the execution, I think the war itself was a mistake.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_artic...0/04/2006_68464

Who is Francis Fukuyama?
Born in Chicago in 1952, Francis Fukuyama is Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. He has been a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation and a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, specializing in Middle East affairs and then in European political-military affairs.

His first book “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992, based on a 1989 essay), a best seller in many countries, declared the triumph of the Western capitalist system and the death of communism.

Liberal democracies, he wrote at the time, “are the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government.”

His other works include “Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity” (1995), “The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order” (1999), “Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution” (2002) and “State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century” (2004).


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Europe is home of ‘last man’
Do you think your “End of History” thesis still reflects the world we live in?

You have to understand the thesis properly. “The End of History” comes out of a Hegelian-Marxist tradition that says there is a broad historical evolution of human societies. The Marxists believed that the end of history would come with a communist utopia.

My observation back in 1989 was that this didn’t look like it was going to happen. To the extent that there was an end of history, it would terminate in what the Marxists would call a bourgeois democracy in some form of market economy. And if you wanted to be modern, those were the conditions under which modern societies flourish.

I don’t really see that there is an alternative. The most plausible, I think, is some form of East Asian soft authoritarianism, like in China where they permit a market economy but they still have an authoritarian government. We’ll have to see whether in another generation the Chinese can keep that system working.

So you keep your eyes on China as a potential balance to American hegemony?

It’s not a question of hegemony. The challenge can come from anywhere, but the question as to what is an alternative model for modern society, I think the only plausible one is this Asian one.

I think these Muslim societies are never going to be modern, they don’t want to be modern, so that’s not really a challenge in that sense.

Do you think Islamic fundamentalism is a temporary setback to historical progress?

I think it’s a reaction to a failed process of modernization. I think that’s really what drives it. If you look at it, it is not really fundamentalism. It’s a different kind of Islamist ideology that is actually partly modern in its roots. It is not trying to resurrect an older form of Islam. If you look at places where that has actually come to power, in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, these are not happy societies.

I think people living in them don’t really feel they have solved the problems that exist in Western Europe. I think in fact just the opposite; I think they generate a lot of internal unhappiness. Iran is in some ways a very troubled society.

Failed modernization

Then it’s essentially a modern product, not an attempt to roll back modernity.

It is an attempt to roll back modernity but it is in response to failed modernization. That’s why Western Europe has actually been the source of a lot of this radicalism, as in the case of Mohammad Atta or Mohammad Buyeri in the Netherlands or the July 7 bombers in London. These are all people who don’t know who they are, they are not traditional Muslims and they are not integrated into Dutch or British society successfully.

Radical Islamism is a kind of ideology that tells them who they are; it provides a kind of identity for them. I think that’s why it’s very appealing and why so many of the organizers of these attacks have actually not been people that came out of traditional Muslim societies but people that were living in the West and confronting the West.

You have said that humans are made for liberal democracies. Some critics say you hold a deterministic view of history. Indeed, can you claim liberalism’s superiority without resorting to metaphysics? Various thinkers like the pragmatist Richard Rorty claim we should keep the political project but shed the philosophical one.

No, I think it is not possible to avoid the philosophical question. I mean if it’s simply a matter of what works, there have been a lot of societies that have worked over time and you can’t really tell what works until a lot of time has passed. So I do think that you need to resort to higher values and a rational discussion on the ends of man and what is ultimately more satisfying for human beings.

So do you believe that human nature exists, that if you scratch under the surface of cultures you will actually find a set of core values that we all share?

Yes, I think that a belief in universal human rights ultimately has to be grounded in some understanding of human nature.

Do you think that the US has anything to learn from Europe?

There is a view out there that says “The End of History” was all about promoting a specifically American model of democracy and modernization. That is completely wrong. I actually think that Europe is really the home of the last man at the end of history. That represents a more consistent effort to establish, not just on a national level but on a trans-national level, a set of democratic norms and values. So in that sense I think the European welfare state is more my vision of what the end of history looks like.

I think that both Europeans and Americans have had different experiences when it comes to sovereignty, nationalism, the role of military force. I think that explains their differing attitudes. I think the American national experience with military power has been in general more positive. In Europe the dominant historical memory is really World War I, which Europeans regard as the abuse of sovereignty and nationalism. I think that has led to a very different attitude toward wars. Which one of these is right I think is very hard to say because they do reflect different national experiences.

The counterargument by theorists such as Robert Kagan would be that Europe’s success in building a good welfare state was thanks to the US military umbrella during the Cold War.

I think that’s true. Like I said, neither of these views is wrong. Look, there can’t be a single theoretical answer to the question “Can military power be used for good ends?” In human history a lot of times it’s been used for terrible ends, but at other times it’s a means of resisting tyranny and aggression, so I think that there will be times when it is necessary to resort to force and other times when excessive force can get you into a lot of trouble.

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Is being Western the only way to be modern?
Isn’t it wrong to equate modernization with Westernization?

It depends on what you consider “Westernization.” For example, is women’s equality Westernization or modernization? I think you can make a strong argument that it becomes a kind of necessary offshoot of modernization, because in this kind of a society, where you have an economy that is open to talent, you have technology that allows women to spend less of their lives taking care of children. A society that doesn’t let women work will be at a big disadvantage to one that does.

So I don’t think this is a matter of Western values being imposed on other people. I think that is simply what happens if you move to a more modern society.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_artic...0/04/2006_68461

Clearly its due to either the neglectence or arrogance. For example he could bought a 20 dollar history book about the rich history of democracy in Eastern European states such as Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic States. Also there are clear democratic movements in even during the communist era of Eastern Europe such as Solidarity movement of Poland during the 80's and the Spring revolution in Hungary '56. Instead he'd rather want to stick to the doctrine of so called hollow despotic states support the multi billion waste of resources and human lives just to come to the same conclusion.

He should could have known this lesson from the over a decade ago. The great tragedy of the American foreign policy during the cold war: That was a paper I wrote in high school for History. The tragedy was that America during the cold war in her quest to defeat left-wing dictatorships supported right-wing dictatorships and even more activily involved herself in the domestic political/social developments of her allies and third party countries in order strengthen or position an American friendly regime/situation in those countries. I am no child-prodigy like this gentleman, these were all in my highschool history book. Shurely he could have thought of it himself, yet this big-shot gentleman realises it after 3 years of unfruitfull occupation.

I tell it is because of group thinking, a rather shockingly common phenomena in the political world. Small groups with a certain political agenda, or a small group in the administration will convince eachother in their rightousness and neglect the input of non-conferming information/ideas from the outside. Its a shame this gentleman realised it so late.

Given his a number of changes of opinion, I'm not sure if Fukuyama will come up with the idea in a couple of years (months, days?), that Iraqi war was not an error, but a glorious attempt by farseeing leaders. LOL

Poor Fukuyama..!

P.S: Don't forget that he had declared the death of nation state, ahahahahahaha. We are in the midst of new nationalistic era now.

Actually Modus, I agree with Fukuyama on the death of the nation-state (not that I actively seek for it, LOL)

You see the current rise of Nationalism is IMHO actually a counter effect to the globalisation and the fading away of borders. Many elements of the concept of Nation-state are finding troubles in this environment. And given the economic/social developments and tendency, I think the future of the Nation-State is grim.

PS let me refrase that death is too strongly expressed, I would rather express it as the demise of the Nation-State

But he renounced his ideas too, that's what I am speaking of... LOL

LOL now I think he switches too fast :lol:

Still I think human societies stand for a great ordeal in the upcoming century from, in almost all fields; Political, Social and Economic.

The Nation-State is a total concept organ comprising to a certain extend control and influence in all the aforementioned fields.

With the fading away of borders, more direct long range contacts between cultures, mass disctribution of foreign cultures, emergence of mega corporations with incomes of states, the nation-states faces serious problems.

Already some of the legal scholars advocate a resctructure of the legal system (one of the foundations of all nation-states) to such extend, the political/social structure of society deems reordening.

For example this night I wrote a paper on the fluxation of Legislation between Communitary based and nation based. In the legal area there is a paradox of 2 paradigms of law (strongly in the European Communitary level) For example with regard to remedies in many cases the communitary legislation provides far reaching more strict legislation. Because of this there is a possible effect of Inländerdiskriminierung (discrimination against own population in strict domestic affairs). Thus national courts are naturally in favour to apply Communitary legislation (Even England applies the Proportionality principlce in administrative matters, which is unthinkable considering their doctrine of Sovereignty of Parliament). So you see there is an ongoing formation of Ius Commune. My advise on the issue was that the ECJ should refrain from unbalanced activism, remain active in cases of Fundamental rights and in other cases become more passive untill there is a political backing in one form or another (constitution?) In essence we can see that the power of the national legislation is seriously beeing undermind because of the effects of the developements on Communitary legislation.

Look here for Francis Fukuyama's appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, basicly talking about the abondenment of his neoconservative perspectives and the reasons for it, which I personally find it agologist like and actually not that radically insightful.

Link- > Francis Fukuyama

Indeed, basically his argument was that his former (theoretical) thoughts weren´t represented any more in the practical implementation.