Two World Views

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall two American academics wrote essays describing very different views of the sort of world that was emerging from the Cold War. If you haven’t read them you should. They make powerful arguments and provide rational frameworks for understanding on one hand the phenomenal emergence of political freedom and economic prosperity in the former communist bloc and elsewhere, and on the other the horrific violence that has so shaken the Muslim world. The title of one has been so over used as to become a cliché, the other dismissed as premature at best. It’s a pity. They deserve more careful consideration. The two essays are Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man and Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations? Fukuyama observed, correctly in my view that Liberal Democracy had triumphed over all competing political ideals. The age old search for a political system which would allow man to realize his material and emotional ambition was over. The first man bettered himself by dominating or killing his fellow. He could win only if his opponent lost. The last could work with his fellow, if not in harmony at least in mutual self interest. Each could benefit from the success of the other. Huntington saw a different order emerging, one of cultural fault lines based largely on religion. He saw an era of renewed conflict with various ethnic groups unable or unwilling to come to terms with each other. For a time Huntington seemed to be right and he is now regularly lauded as one of the more prescient sages of our day. The 1990s were a period of one religiously tinged conflict after another. Orthodox Christians went to war with Catholics in the former Yugoslavia. They both went to war with Muslims and Muslims nowhere in the world seemed able to live in peace with their neighbors. But Huntington didn’t foresee that his Clash would be reduced to a two way struggle of Muslims against the world. His was a view of each of the world’s major religious groups aligned against all the others. According to Clash we should be seeing China in violent conflict with Japan and Catholic South America with the Protestant North. Huntington did not account for major breakdown of order persisting only among Muslims. For all the derision he has endured, Fukuyama’s analysis has been the most telling. His essential tenets are rock solid. Monarchy is dead. So are Empire, Fascism, Communism and all the forms of totalitarianism. Where they persist their days are numbered. Even dictators hide behind sham elections. Extremist Muslim calls for a return to the Caliphate are nostalgic appeals for a system that failed centuries ago. A new Caliphate has limited appeal among Muslims and no appeal at all among non-Muslims. It is not in competition with Liberal Democracy for global political organizing principles. End of History predicted a continuing and accelerating move toward elected representative government and the rule of law. That is exactly what has happened, with astonishing speed in the case of Eastern Europe. The evident economic progress has been a powerful model for the emergence of China and India as well. To prosper they must reform and so they do. Russia too wants to join the World Trade Organization and must adopt its rules for enforceable contracts, Turkey has to respect human rights in order to enter the European Union, and so it goes. Huntington was right about one thing. He was careful to say that the major obstacles to peaceful global integration are cultural, not religious. We often have trouble distinguishing the two but the difference is critical. As emotional as culture’s draw can be it can be changed. It is adaptable in ways that religion is not. Religion, as God’s revealed truth is not for man to question or tamper with. Culture when properly understood offers room for compromise. Both essays suffer from their choice of titles. End of History sounds like doomsday prophecy. It isn’t. Fukuyama was saying the future is evident, not that the world will end tomorrow. He doesn’t suggest that Liberal Democracy has been universally adopted, or that it will be any time soon. He is saying the competing ideologies are clearly on their way out, but unless one is paying close attention the concept is easy to discard in a sound bite. The trouble with Clash is that it obscures a fundamental struggle inside the Muslim world. It makes it appear that the rest of us face a unified enemy across an unbridgeable chasm. But in many important respects the primary conflict is among Muslims themselves. The rest of are caught in the crossfire. We are in the middle of somebody else’s civil war. That is certainly true in Iraq, though it wasn’t in the beginning and we do have a vested interest in the outcome. The calls for a new Caliphate are made by those who would see themselves in charge, those who would impose their view of what is or is not Islamic on other Muslims who want no part of it. The good news is that Fukuyama was right. Liberal Democracy has provided the last man with a way to win not at his fellow man’s expense. His success is not necessarily dependent on his rival’s failure. For the first time in history we have a system that makes it in our best interest to have prosperous neighbors. It is an enlightened way to look at everything from immigration along the southern border of Texas to an ultimate resolution to the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. It is a hopeful view. Even the shortcomings of the two essays are well worth thinking about. It has been difficult for many of us to make sense of what’s been happening around the world. Fukuyama and Huntington provided thoughtful context for a lot of it. Both pieces are readily available on the internet. Just google them. I recommend it.