The PostCold War World: the end of history

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• The Post-Cold War World the end of history?
• The Clash of Civilisations
• World Politics Today

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The Post-Cold War Worldthe end of history?
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History

• development of men and nations
• chronological narrative of events

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History
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• If yesterdays event is todays history, how can
  there ever be an end of history?

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Francis Fukuyama

• Former US State Department official
• Third World Expert
• 1989 wrote The End of History the Last
• Man Standing
• 1994 becomes a book

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Francis Fukuyama

• Fukuyamas definition of history single,
• coherent, evolutionary process
• Fukuyama history since time of French
  Revolution has been driven by a conflict of
  forces supporting collectivism those supporting
  bourgeois democracy

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Francis Fukuyama

• What were the driving forces in the twentieth
  century or during the Cold War?
• 2 competing systems different ideologies
  planned economy versus capitalism

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End of the Cold War

• Why changes in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev?
• Various but economic stagnation of great
  importance planned economic system not working
• Fukuyama believes once system opened up people in
  Eastern Europe turned their backs on planned
  economy and chose capitalism

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Triumphalism

• end of history really means that liberal
  democracy had defeated all other systems it is
  the best system
• The triumph of the Westan unabashed victory of
  economic political liberalismthe total
  exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to
  Western liberalism.
• The West/US won the Cold War

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Liberal Democracy

• Elections
• Market allowed to decide all areas of life
• Not told what to do or think
• System is better than any other
  communism/fascism

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Liberal Democracy

• Liberal democracy will make the world more safe
• (1) democracies do not go to war against
• each other
• (2) globalisation interdependence
• (3) great faith in International Organizations

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Liberal Democracy

• 1990s West pushing this Washington
  consensus
• Increased role of the International Monetary
• Fund/World Bank/World Trade Organisation
• Does not matter if gap rich/poor increases
  experiment most important thing

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Time Scale

• 1989 crucial world going through great changes
• velvet revolution in Eastern Europe communism
  dead
• 5 December 1989 Pravda admitting Cold War over

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Time Scale

• Redemocratization in Latin America
  Chile/Argentina/Brazil
• 1991 1st Gulf War new world order
• 1991 end of the Soviet Union

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• Vast changes taking place that all appear to
  agree with Fukuyamas ideas
• End of any war time of great optimism 1989 with
  end of the Cold War no different
• Realism appears to be dead too much
  interdependence

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Is the End of History correct?

• Tomorrow clash of civilizations
• Kosovo/Iraq etc
• 2002 Fukuyama wrote Posthuman Future
  Consequence of the Biotechnological Revolution
  some regulation needed

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Conclusions

• 1989 the End of History
• End of evolutionary process of capitalism versus
  collectivism capitalism won
• The world will become more peaceful
• (1) democracies do not fight each other
• (2) interdependence globalisation
• (3) International Organisations

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Conclusions

• Triumphalism at end of the Cold War
• Great hope for a new world order
• Events at time seem to suggest Fukuyama correct
• Events since mid 1990s may suggest otherwise
• 2002 Fukuyama suggesting perhaps too hasty