FOOTNOTES AT THE END OF HISTORY :

What's the big idea? : PoliSci 101: Carving a grand theory about the war on terror (Eric Alterman, MSNBC)

The most durable political theories about war and peace are undoubtedly those of the so-called "Realists." Part of their appeal might be in the name they've taken. After all, who wants to make policy on the basis of "unreality?" The Realists founding texts are Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, Machiavelli's Prince and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. While the works themselves are quite distinct from one another in subject, structure and tone, they are similar in their deliberately instructive intentions. Thucydides, for instance, was writing a relatively straightforward history, but he expected it would be useful "to those who wish to have a clear understanding both of events in the past and of those in the future which will, in all human likelihood, happen again the same or similar way." The best characterization of each would be the simple message that the world is wicked, and nations had better grab whatever they can, when they can, the niceties of morality be damned. The lessons of these works were codified and enlarged in what many political scientists would concur are the three most influential works of international relations theory of the 20th century. These are E.H. Carr's "The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939," (1939); Hans Morgenthau's "Politics Among Nations" (1948) and Kenneth Waltz's "Theory of International Politics" (1979). While each argument is nuanced to its own author's world view and, to some degree, particular to the moment it was written and published, each also insists upon taking the world as it is rather than as most of us would wish it to be. Reformers, democrats, idealists are considered to be dangerous fools, whose na•ve plans to better mankind inevitably make things worse. Life is nasty, brutish and short, goes the Realist critique. Deal with it. [...]

Historically, the primary challenge to Realism in Anglo-American political science has been Liberalism. Liberals have argued that the kinds of unpleasant power calculations that Realists insist upon are not necessary because life need not be as nasty and brutish as it may appear. The reasons offered have varied historically. Norman Angell offered the original version of interdependence theory in his exquisitely poorly timed 1912 best-seller, "The Great Illusion," which argued that war had now become impossible owing to the growing economic interconnectedness. Woodrow Wilson sought to impose a made-in-America morality on the rest of the world. To Wilson, as the planet's "only idealistic nation," the United States must "redeem the world by giving it peace and justice." At the same time, he noted, "We need foreign markets." Such admittances may have inspired E.H. Carr's observation that the English-speaking peoples were "masters in the art of concealing their selfish national interests in the guise of the general good."

Liberal theories of national behavior have, like Realist ones, changed and grown with the times. Some have argued that peace can be maintained by the spread of democracy, as they are unlikely to go to war with one another. Others have argued that the strengthening of disinterested international institutions like the United Nations to maintain peace and enforce international norms. The interdependence argument has also remained powerful as some political scientists have sought to combine it with elements of
Realism, and the need for a single, all-powerful "hegemon" like the United States in today's world, to use its power to maintain peace and build prosperity - and democracy - for all. [...]

During the Cold War, Americans tended to speak in Liberal terms but act in Realist - if not always rational - ones. The era's official ideology was coined by George Kennan in his famous "X" article calling for the "containment" of the Soviet Union. Kennan later argued that he meant to contain the Soviets in all kinds of peaceful, non-military ways, but his
argument became the basis of the most cynical proxy wars and costly, dangerous arms race the world has ever seen. In the last decade of the 20th century, some theorists have sought to break out of these categories by reinterpreting the movement of history in new ways. The most prominent of these are Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" and Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" arguments.

The former seeks to argue that democratic capitalism has already vanquished its significant adversaries. Challenges like the one we received on Sept. 11 should therefore be seen, as Secretary of State Powell recently proposed, as mere "footnotes" to history. They may require some unpleasant measures to be taken for a while, but we all know where this battle is going in the end. Meanwhile, Huntington's theory would appear to point in the opposite direction. We are being challenged not by a historically anomalous bandit, but by an entire civilization. Again, the remedies are opposite. One requires a police action of sorts; the other, a global crusade. Does the Bush administration have a grand political theory under girding its new war? It's hard to discern one, but perhaps the question misunderstands the nature of theory and practice. As most politicians will tell you, nations act first, and theorize about it later. The next great notion is almost certainly still awaiting its author.

Since 9-11 a number of authors whose works offer metaphorical understandings of the world have either had to defend their views or have gotten to do a victory lap. Tom Friedman (Lexus and the Olive Tree) and Benjamin Barber (Jihad vs. McWorld) sort of played both ends against the middle, so they've gotten off easy. Samuel P. Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) has benefitted from the fact that Islam and the West are obviously clashing. But poor Francis Fukuyama's choice of terms, The End of History, looks dubious on its face in the midst of this war. Perhaps though a more careful reading of these authors allows us to integrate them and come up with a worldview that helps explain what is going on.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of America's victory in the Cold War, Mr. Fukuyama sought to place the stunning defeat of communism in some historical perspective and to explain how a struggle that had seemed so evenly matched for so long could end in such a one-sided triumph. Since the rise of the British Empire, one form of liberal democratic power or another has dominated the world (first Britain, then America) for over two hundred years. The military domination has been impressive enough, but even more spectacular has been the economic success our two nations have enjoyed. During these centuries we have separately or together faced and defeated a variety of different enemies who used political/economic systems ranging from kingship to dictatorship to tribalism until finally we faced off against fascism/communism, which seemed to offer a competing system that might be capable of sustaining a long term challenge to liberal capitalist democracy. As late as the early 1980s, politicians and political scientists were still saying that the USSR was a viable and coequal nation and that it would be necessary for the US to come to some form of accommodation with communism, because it could not be defeated. Ronald Reagan came to power saying not only that this view was false but that communism was inherently unstable and all it needed was a good shove and it would collapse under its own weight. When this proved spectacularly true, it left the American Republic as the world's only a superpower, in military terms, and the simultaneous revival of the American economy demonstrated the strength of capitalism. As Mr. Fukuyama wrote, human history ended at least in the sense that it was no longer possible for reasonable people to argue about what political/economic system was superior. Liberal democratic capitalism bestrode the globe, unchallenged.

This unleashed the forces of globalization--which Mr. Friedman and Mr. Barber both wrote about--the process by which other nations have been forced to accept greater Western-style economic and political freedoms in order to compete in the increasingly integrated world economy. Mr. Friedman is more sanguine than Mr. Barber about the effects of this globalization, but both note the difficulties that must accompany it as societies are transformed.

Mr. Huntington went further and predicted that the transformative nature of this process would produce actual conflict between the West and a variety of cultures (Islam, Africa, etc.) that would resist this kind of cultural hegemony. Though his separation of cultures seems too extensive--for instance not including the Orthodox Christian world and Catholic
South America in the West seems like a mistake--the current widening conflict between the West (mainly the US and Israel) and Islam does tend to partially confirm his thesis. As is the nature of such things, the media has basically declared him the winner and Mr. Fukuyama the loser in the contest of visions. But perhaps on further review we can reconcile these various views.

As a starting point, it is worth noting that no serious observer has offered any scenario whereby Islam can actually win an all-out war with the West. None of the states of the Middle East have significant military might, as compared to virtually any Western nation, and only Pakistan has nuclear weapons (though it is not clear that even they could deliver them to their targets). Nor has anyone suggested that states organized along Islamic principles can possibly compete in the global economy. To some extent, oil revenues prevent us from seeing what a basket case Islamic economies truly are, but no one thinks that they are doing well. Even those who refuse to examine whether Islam itself is causing the problems of the Middle East place the blame on the poverty that is endemic there. It's a short step to the realization that the poverty is a function of how these societies are organized and governed. In sum, the Islamic world, as it is currently constituted is doomed.

Islam is essentially totalitarian, in that it requires that all of society be governed by Islamic laws, laws that were written some fourteen hundred years ago no less. This makes Islamic states far too inflexible to function effectively in the modern world. Looked at from this perspective, we can begin to see that we are not currently engaged in a clash of evenly matched civilizations but rather we are witnessing the death throes of a civilization that can not satisfy the economic and political demands of its own people. Mr. Fukuyama is right that the best form of governance has been determined. Mr. Friedman and Mr. Barber are right that globalization is forcing that form of government and economics on the entire world. And Mr. Huntington is right that the process will be messy. But, at the end of the day, this conflict seems more of a police action than a crusade. The forces of globalism themselves will effect the crusade, it will only be necessary for the West to clean up the messiest situations that globalism creates as it forces unwilling societies to undergo fundamental change.

History then is over, in so far as the dispute over what political system will prevail is concerned, but it should come as no surprise that not everyone has gotten the message yet. Until everyone processes this truth, what we face are more like skirmishes than clashes. Mr. Alterman quotes Colin Powell as referring to them as "footnotes"; that seems about right--they are the footnotes at the end of history.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 22, 2002 1:34 PM