The Post-World War II Order Is Under Assault From the Powers That Built It

Peter S. Goodman, New York Times

image from

Excerpt:

In the early 1990s, shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and the West claimed victory in the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama [see], a Stanford University political scientist, famously suggested that the global arrangement of power had reached its conclusion.

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history,” Mr. Fukuyama wrote in a book that took that provocative phrase as its title. “That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Thinkers across the ideological spectrum excoriated Mr. Fukuyama for penning history’s premature obituary. Some accused him of evangelizing for American power. Others would say he was blind to the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, the resurgence of Russia, and the ascendance of China.

Last year, with Mr. Trump assuming office, Britain leaving Europe, and nationalists on the march, Mr. Fukuyama suggested a new obituary might be required — for the “liberal world order.”

More than a year into the Trump era, Mr. Fukuyama has only grown more alarmed.

“What you’re seeing now is really insidious, because it’s coming from within democracies,” he said in an interview. “It’s not just the U.S., but Hungary, Turkey, Poland and Russia, where you have a democratically elected leader who is trying to dismantle the liberal parts of liberal democracy. We are seeing a new type of threat that I don’t really think we’ve seen in my lifetime.”

History is still running. New leaders may be capable of delivering policies that could restore faith in internationalism. Yet for now, the globalists who have long dominated are losing ground to a thriving nationalist insurgency. ...