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Is the end of cold war end of History?

Sardar Aziz

“We are going to fight them and we will capture or kill them. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on the country” Paul Bremer

This question is pregnant with many problems. First of all it is a question about future and predicting what is coming. Predicting is always problematic, especially in the field of social science. It is not easy and to foresee the future action of human beings. On there hand predicting in the field of humanity is never innocent or scientific activity. It is rather an ideological. When Fukuyama in his article, End of History, says: “I argue that liberal democracy may constitute the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government,” and as such constitute the “end of history”. It is easy to realise that the author want to us to believe like himself that the future is belongs to the ideology that he believes in it. In that term the work mainly propaganda and when Fukuyama wrote it he was employed by State Department, as an adviser.

It is in some how strange if one look at the up and down of the democracy in the twentieth century. In the beginning of it; David Starr Jordan, the president of the Stanford University in his book, The Call of The Twentieth Century wrote, “the man of the twentieth century; will be a hopeful man. He will love the world and the world will love him” (Schlesinger, 2004; 105). That was in 1900. At the middle of the century with the rise of Nazism, Fascism, and communism, a lot of people lost hope not only in democracy but in all entire modernity and enlightenment project. Even some blamed modernity for death camps and genocides. At last part of the twentieth century Isaiah Berlin wrote, “The most terrible century in the Western history”.

However Fukuyama neither in his article which was published in the National Interest summer 1989 nor in his book; the End of History and the Last Man; predict the end of violence or war, but he is convinced that the Neo-liberalism and democracy constitute the final form of mankind’s ideological evolution.

To understand how accurate such prophesy one has to look at pre and post Cold War era, in one hand. On the other hand, what was Cold War and how Fukuyama and other looked at and interpret it. Fukuyama like his friend and university colleague, Lipset considers Cold war as, “one in perhaps a 300- year series of contest between increasingly liberal, increasingly democratic states, and a succession of monarchical autocratic authoritarian, ultimately totalitarian, rivals”. This vision is also repeated by Samuel P. Huntington (1993), “during the Cold War conflict became embodied in the struggle between the two superpowers, neither of which was a nation state in the classical European sense and each of which defined its identity in terms of its ideology”.

So, according to those definitions; Cold War was basically a conflict between two major powers who were oppose to each other; politically, economically, socially, and ideologically. One was communism or god-less, evil power, as Reagan used to label them. And the other one is liberal democratic free economic capitalist system. Since the communist system collapsed and defeated then it was bad and failure. The victorious was capitalism and free market. The victorious is always better. Those assumptions seems simplistic but that is what Fukuyama based his entire prophesy on it.

However it was not cold as they claim. It was cold because American did not die in it. There was war by proxy every where. “It started with the issue of Poland”, just after the end of world war two. The alliance between Soviet Union and the West during the war was based on realistic notion; they both shared same enemy, which was Germany. But when the war ended; it became painfully obvious that the alliance is fractured.

“The Russian armies are pushing back against the Nazis and on the way to invading Germany. In their march toward Berlin, they have to make entire way through Poland.” Both side Soviet Union and West had appetite to increase their power as Chomsky put it “states don’t seek security, they seek power”. Germany and the territories were controlled by Nazi looked at by the victorious as a spoil of war, and each one wanted to gain as much as possible. For that reason, as Professor Weber from University of California, Berkley (2005) put it;

“Stalin sets up a communist puppet government inside the Soviet Union as a kind of government in exile for Poland. This group consist of a group of polish lackeys that Stalin handpicked known as the Moscow Poles. There is another polish government at the same time consist of Polish nationalist in exile in London known as London Poles. The British backed London Poles because of their hostility toward the Soviet Commonest; however the Russian backed the Moscow poles”.

This event, fighting to control more and more territories and putting puppet government, marked whole entire cold war era. If Fukuyama claim that American liberal democracy will be the last ideology for humankind; it might uncover the hidden part of that ideology; which would be conquering the entire world and not allowing any other system to develop. Isn’t that called globalisation?

Because of the similarity of the world vision between Stalin and Roosevelt at the beginning Roosevelt was ‘rather sympathetic to the Stalin’s fear’ (Weber, 2005). At the end “the idea that the Polish government needed not be non-hostile to the Soviet was not a crazy idea” (Weber 2005). The lack of trust between Soviet Union and the West started and reached its climax with the George Kennedy’s telegram which later on later published under the pseudonym Mr. X. Kennedy worked as a junior consular at the American embassy in Moscow. He wrote a telegram back to the US state department argues:

“that the Soviets are divided between socialists and capitalists. They believe there is no reconciliation between them, nor do they believe in coexistence. He believed that the Russian will expand at any time to the determent of the United State, and the only solution would be to meet them with power. He suggested that the United State needs to build up the cohesion of the Western allies to prepare to countervail any and every effort of Soviet expansion that may emerge. This outlines the idea of containment in 1947” (Weber, 2005).

As it is become clear both power had aspiration to control more and more territories and establishing friendly governments; none of them were democratic. They were rather bloody dictatorial systems caused death of million around the world. On the other hand both powers portrayed each other as an enemy and used the image of each other for justification for their actions. Therefore as Chomsky says:

“To ask why cold war reached that level and continued for such a time, one has to go beyond conventional thinking. Conventional thinking regards Cold War as a confrontation between two super powers, which their allies and clients tailing along. But beyond this thinking there are many other explanation and interests. Therefore understanding Cold War era requires an account not only for the actual events, but also of the factors that lie behind them.

From the Russian side the Cold War served to strength the power of the military- bureaucratic elite whose rule drives from Bolshevik coup in October 1917. For the Unites state Cold War has been a history of world wide subversion, aggression and state terrorism. The domestically has bee the entrenchment of the Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex”- in essence, a welfare state for the rich with a national security ideology for population control.

If both power shamelessly used every spin to cover the actions which were in reality atrocities, how come the victorious one going to be the advocate of Rights, democracy, human dignity as Fukuyama tries to tell us. The history of liberal democracy proves those who claim and support liberalism and democracy they are also those who oppose it like what happened in Chile in 1973 and what is happening in Islamic world nowadays.

Here worth mentioning the relation between liberalism and democracy. Can this two always be together? Is it possible to have democracy in an illiberal society? Why many eighteen and nineteen century liberal thinkers “saw democracy as a force could undermine liberalism?” if liberalism about limitation of power, democracy is about accumulation and use; isn’t that contradiction in somehow? (Zakaria, 2003; 102)

Fukuyama in his essay and his book try to tell us that there is only one kind of democracy and one kind of liberalism. He fails to conceder the diversity of values and beliefs that contribute to producing divergent understanding of the meaning of liberalism and democracy, and their interrelations. Liberal democracy cannot spell the end of ideological struggle because it is itself the subject of ideological contestation, and will continue to be so.

The idea of culture and its importance in post cold war era highlighted more by another notorious thesis which was written by Samuel P. Huntington in Foreign Affairs. Summer 1993

“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future”.

This might be the strongest critic to the Fukuyama’s thesis. Huntington’s worry is that Fukuyama’s thesis might encourage American to underestimate the contemporary sources of political instability, and on this basis to relax their vigilance in foreign relation (1989).

For many simple minded people around the world the attack on twin towers on 9/11 was proving that Huntington is won against Fukuyama. But the state department (American) is using both in its war to impose an imperial power around the world. The National Security Strategy of the United State of America 2002, start like that; “the great struggle of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the force of freedom-and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise. It is clear how Bush’s language resonate Fukuyama’s, and other similar minded, view. The discourse of peace is dominated US’s political speech, a peace which is in every way Pax-Americana. “We have our best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the 17^th century to build a world where the great powers compete in peace instead of prepare for war” (G.W. Bush, 2002)

Compete in peace means all great powers are have same ideology. Same policy and economical philosophy; which would be free market capitalist liberalism. This prove United State is not tolerating any other ideology and sees peace only when others following its policy. In that sense; free market liberalism means opining local market for big American corporations and give them right to implement their policy without taking the need and desire of local population in consideration. This policy led to resistance against liberalism as it happened right now in Latin America, when more and more popularise anti liberal politicians wining elections. Evo Morales, Chavez and Lolla are leading this trend. It is also expected others to follow.

Fukuyama’s view has strong root in Immanuel Kant’s perpetual peace. While Fukuyama sees this peace as a positive and desirable end; for other this very peace is problematic. Robert Kagan; sees Europe as more Kantian and on the other hand America as a Hobbsian power. And the relation between this two are more and more weakening. For Kagan in paradise and power; Europeans are creating island apart from the rest of the world and America has engage in constant war. Europe can afford that only on the US expenses; that’s why Europeans are ‘free rider’. (Kagan, 2003) This tells another story a story of a world everyone fighting each other and force needed to settle peace. In Hobbsian world history is not ended and there is not any hope to be ended. With arriving of new cabal of thinkers in America, there is a new vision and they are not happy with the current situation. They are neoconservatives who see their fellow “Conservative have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America’s role in the world”. They want America with a mighty military power, they are fighting “for a defence budget that would maintain American security and advance American interest in the new century”.

Neoconservatives want America to be an empire; “we aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership”. It is hard to see any hope for end of history when America sees an end of one war as a beginning of another one; “having led the West to victory in the Cold War”. This new war is an “opportunity and challenge”. Therefore America has to be ready and take lesson for its previous war. This is clear in the Statement of Principles, which published as a letter to Clinton in 1997, under the most controversial headline “Project for American New Century”. The drafter of the letter continue:

“we seem to have forgotten the essential element of the Reagan administration’s success: a military that’s strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges. We need to increase defend spending significantly. We need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles.

In this project there are clear signs of a power that wishing and willing to impose its own rule and regulation on the other in a way to create a world, ‘friendly’ to its ‘security’, and serve American ‘prosperity’ and not challenging their ‘principles’. There is no mention for democracy or liberalism or human rights. The epoch of the project is ‘extending’, which is always been the role of empire. This dream of expansion might face challenge and resistance. It is possible this resistance might come from another liberal democracy system; as Todd (2003) sees it in the revival of Russia as a possible liberal democratic super power. On the other hand this very world vision threatening many states and political entity around the world. Take Iran for instance; one of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Crefeld said “obviously we don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don’t know if they’re developing them, but if they’re not developing them, they’re crazy”. The invasion of Iraq just instructed them to develop nuclear weapons. (Chomsky, 2006)

Since there is no any sign for history to be ended other came up with different interpretation for the Fukuyama’s myth. This new understanding came mainly from left as Hardt and Negri put it in tier book called Empire:

“the end of history is end of outside. The major power no more face the Other, but rather will progress its boundaries to envelope the entire glob as its proper domain. The history of imperialist, inter-imperialist, and anti-imperialist is over. Today it is increasingly difficult for the ideologues of the United State to name a single, unified enemy; rather there seem to be minor and elusive enemy everywhere” (2000; 189).

One of the main challenges in front of liberal democracy to spread around the world is the rise of Fundamental Islam. Contrary to Fukuyama’s optimism, it is off course now abundantly clear that the end of the cold war has presaged not a world in which the challenges to western liberalism have been exhausted, but one apparently quit hospitable to the survival and increasing stridency of movement and people who reject it. The demise of Cold War politics and categories has laid bare loyalties, identities, affiliations, and commitments supposedly rendered obsolete by the ascendancy of the ideological conflict. (Euben, 1999:5)

This new political thinking has its root in the principles of Islam and sees the modern world as a hostile place and not hesitating to rejecting it. One of the leading theorists of the modern political Islam is Sayyid Qutb.

At this time an outcry has arisen everywhere, a warning alarm about the fate of humankind in the thrall of the materialist civilisation devoid of faith and human spirit-the white man’s civilisation. The alarms are various; at times, they warn of the descent of all humanity into the abyss; others warn of its descent into Marxism; still others have made various suggestions to prevent these manifold dangers. But all pf these attempts are futile because they do not deal with the foundation of the problem, they do not attack the vast and extensive root of the problem which lie buried beneath European soil. All these outcries and all these remedies just make clear to us deficiencies and myopia of the European mentality and its vision. (Euben, 1999)

In conclusion

Today more than any other times there are talk about developing nuclear power. “In nuclear politics, every action is justified by the response it provokes. The US explains its missile defence programme by claiming that other states are developing new weapons systems, which one day it might need to shoot down. In response, Russia has activated a new weapons system, the Topol-M, designed to "penetrate US anti-missile defences".

Israel, citing the threat from Iran, insists on retaining its nuclear missiles. Threatened by them (and prompted, among other reasons, by his anti-Semitism), the Iranian president says he wants to wipe Israel off the map, and appears to be developing a means to do so. Israel sees his response as vindicating its nuclear programme. It threatens an air strike, which grants retrospective validity to Ahmadinejad's designs. And so it goes on. (Monbiot, 2006)

In the post Cold War era the war is not ended. The history is not ended. Today’s world is mix between the legacies and chose that left after the fall of the bipolar system, and the vacuum that seen by some as an opportunity to impose their won rule and regulation. The world is more hostile more than any other times. US and its liberal democracy seen by majority of the inhabitant of this planet as an unjust and cause for poverty. US itself is seen as state of torture and a country opposing international rules and bulling the world. Beside all that the United Stats itself and it is liberalism is under threat by the rise of fundamentalist evangelical Christians. History will never ends because the end is against the nature of human beings.

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Bibliography:

Euben, R. (1999) “Enemy in the Mirror; Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism”. Princeton University Press; Princeton, New Jersey. Pp5&58

Fukuyama, F. (1992). “The End of History and the Last Man”. Penguin.

Huntington, S. (1993) “the Clash of Civilisation” Foreign Affairs. Summer 1993, Vol. 72, No3, p22 (28)

Huntington, S. (1989). “No Exit; the Error of End-ism”. The National Interest fall 1989.

Chomsky, N. (2006) Interview with Irish Time

http://www.ireland.com/focus/chomsky/interview.htm

Chomsky, N. (1992). “Deterring Democracy”. Vintage UK.

Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2001) “Empire”. Harvard University Press 2001

Kagan, R. (2003). “Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New World Order”. Atlantic: London.

Monbiot, G. (2006). “Building bigger nuclear weapons will make us even less secure” The Guardian Tuesday January 24, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1693404,00.html

National Security Strategy of the United State of America September 2002.

Schlesinger, A. (2004). “War and the American Presidency”. W. w. Norton :London

Statement of Principles, (1997) Washington DC “Project for American New Century”

Todd, E. (2003), “After the Empire: the Breakdown of the American Order”. Constable: London pp10-11.

Weber, (2005). “Cold War”; University of California lecture Note. http://blln.securesite.com

Williams, H., Sullivan, D. & Matthews, G. (1997) “Francies Fukuyama and the End of History”. University of Wales Press, Cardiff

Zakaria, F. (2003) “Future of Freedom”