The events of 2022 have served to vindicate Francis Fukuyama and his now famous dictum on history
Revisiting the End of History
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or 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.”
These were the famous words that elevated a young political scientist named Francis Fukuyama, who in 1992 was working for the global policy think-tank RAND Corporation. Fukuyama grew up in the American Midwest in the shadow of the Second World War, obtaining a B.A. from Cornell University before pursuing a Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University. Fukuyama’s pronouncement was made in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, as the Soviet Union had reached its terminal point. Although Fukuyama’s book is much more than the string of sentences that have now become his defining observations, Fukuyama has periodically revisited his conclusion over the more than thirty years since it was first made. Most recently in October of 2022, in an op-ed for The Atlantic, titled “More Proof that this really is the End of History,” where he reasserts that this central contention, made three decades prior, remains correct. This was the inspiration for my more in-depth investigation into whether and to what extent Fukuyama’s thesis remains true, and the events of the past year have provided a clear verdict. This piece will be split into two parts: Part one will provide a more detailed account of Fukuyama’s thesis and a survey of how the world has changed since its publication in 1992; part two will provide a timeline of the various events of 2022 that, this piece will argue, has vindicated Fukuyama’s thesis, despite the challenges it had faced in the decades prior.
Demystification of The End of History
It is important to provide a clear distillation of Fukuyama’s thesis, which is often misunderstood and misconstrued in the discourse. Fukuyama contended, from his canvassing of the history of ideas, that the perfection of liberal democracy, and the values that lay its base, were unsurpassable ideals. No other ideal has and can rival this, and history itself stands as the strongest supporting evidence of this. What Fukuyama did not express, but is often attributed as having done so, is that liberal democracy has realized this ideal. In fact, Fukuyama makes clear that liberal democratic countries have a ways to go before approximating their own core values of the rule of law, democratic will, individual liberty, equality in rights, and general prosperity.
A Golden or Gilded Age?
The world has changed considerably since 1992. The 1990s marked a period of optimism among the champions of liberal democracy, as its ideological nemesis, the USSR, met its end on 25 December 1991. The West, mainly made up of liberal democratic states in North America, Europe, and the Far East, that prioritized civil rights, a free market, and a tight separation of powers, had outlived and outperformed its most noteworthy foil: The socialist state that emphasized collective rights, state ownership of property, and strict a vertical arrangement of the political order. Institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), all designed to proliferate liberal democratic ideals, were now in full bloom, gaining purchase from states which decolonized over the post-World-War-Two period and the newly sovereign former-Eastern bloc nations. The leader of the West, both ideologically and materially, the United States of America, remained the final superpower left in the arena. It was at this pivotal transition point in history that Fukuyama declared that liberal democracy is the final form of political, economic, and social organization that humans will structure their civilizations around, and any alternative form, despite promises of a superior form of freedom, equality, or prosperity, would eventually falter and be disposed of into the “dustbin of history.” However, with the dawn of a new millennium, the durability of liberal democracy would once again be put to the test.
Populism Inside and Outside of the Gates
On 11 September 2001, the illusion that liberal democracy was an impenetrable fortress both from within and outside, was shattered over a Tuesday morning in New York City and Washington DC with terrorist attacks launched by Al-Qaeda against US landmarks. The US response to the deaths of nearly 3000 of its citizens was as harmful to liberal democratic impenetrability as the strikes themselves, launching unlawful, destructive invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, passing strict, illiberal surveillance and detention measures, and attempting to insulate the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre from judicial scrutiny. This crisis was compounded by the onset of the 2008 global economic recession, caused by reckless financial engineering by major banks across the Western world, specifically in the real estate finance market. The twin crises of democratic backsliding and capitalist economic recession continued into the subsequent decade, with the Occupy Protests in 2011 led by left-wing progressives of the middle and working class, most severely impacted by the financial crisis and frustrated with how frictionless a return to equilibrium was for those who were most responsible for the worst recession since the Great Depression. This populist left-wing awakening was paralleled with a populist right-wing awakening in Europe, in response to strict austerity measures passed by European states most impacted by the financial crisis in 2008, taking instruction from the European Central Bank looking to stabilize the Euro. These populist movements reached a crescendo in the mid 2010s when Donald Trump, a far-right populist championing protectionism, isolationism, and dog-whistling white nationalism rose to the presidency in a stunning defeat of a deeply entrenched institutionalized Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton. This was the start of a series of populist uprisings across the liberal democratic world, with Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left populist championing his own form of economic protectionism, foreign policy isolationism, and skepticism of the UK’s membership in the European Union, rising to become the opposition leader in British Parliament. This pattern was observable all over the world. Far-right populism saw the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, the election of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines in 2016, the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin in 2015 and the election of Narendra Modi in India in 2014. The far-left saw the consolidation of power in China by Xi Jinping, who was made General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, the disputed election of Nicolas Maduro in 2013, a series of presidents in Peru all deposed in quick succession for various rule of law breaches, and the election of Socialist Francois Hollande in France in 2012. Outside of governments, the far-right and far-left also experienced a surge in popular culture, capturing the hearts and minds of white, working-class men across the Western world who felt disaffected by the rapid transition to a knowledge-based economy, rearrangement of existing social hierarchies, and widespread globalization. The far-left similarly captured a share of this same population, in addition to young BIPOC and white women, developing a form of puritanical politics preoccupied with social control, ideological conformity, and political rigidity, rather than coalitional politics, ideological pluralism, and a focus on incremental change. It appeared by the close of the decade that populism, characterized by skepticism or outright opposition to a free-market economy, the primacy of civil and political rights, and an embrace of international institutions and globalization, was beginning to show cracks in its façade, propelled by both right wing and left wing forces. It was at this juncture that Francis Fukuyama’s thesis found itself on the ropes, anticipating a final blow in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
