The End of History? o longer able to use the familiar compass points of East-West conflict, scholars and IN political analysts at the end of the Cold War struggled to find ways to describe the "new world order" and to anticipate its future direction. One of to unilaterally assert its power across the globe in the defense of American interests, including the promotion of American values of political freedom and economicenterprise. After the neoconservatives achieved great political influence under the admin- istration of George W. Bush, however, Fukuyama broke with them over the issue of the Iraq War (see Chapter 32). the most discussed contributions to this literature in the early 1990s was Francis Fukuyama's essay "The End of History." Fukuyama, a Japanese American, was employed by the U.S. state department when he wrote this article. At that time, in 1989, he was associated with neoconservatism, a movement that stressed the right and responsibility of the United States Source: Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," The National Interest, Summer, 1989. Copyright O 1989, Francis Fukuyama. Reprinted by permission of the author. In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avold the feeling that something very fundamental has hap- pened in world history. The past year has seen a flood of articles commemorating the end of the Cold War, and the fact that "peace" seems to be breaking out in many reglons of the world.... [T]he century that began full of self- confidence in the ultimate triumph of West- ern liberal democracy seems at its close to be returning full crcle to where it started... to an unabashed victory of economic and politi- cal liberalism.... What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War... but the end of history as such: that is, the end polnt of man- kind's ideological evolution and the univer- salization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.... [T]he victory of líberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ldeal that will goverm the mate- rial world in the long run.... The state that emerges at the end of his- tory is líberal insofar as it recognizes and protects through a system of law man's uni- versal right to freedom; and democratic inso- far as it exists only with the consent of the governed.... [H]istory ended... in the ideals of the French or American Revolutions: while particular regimes in the real world might not implement these ideals fully, their theoretical truth is absolute and could not be improved upon.... In the past century, there have been two major challenges to liberalism, those of fas- cism and of communism. The former saw the political weakness, materialism, anomie, and lack of community of the West as fun- damental contradictions in liberal societies that could only be resolved by a strong state that forged a new "people" on the basis of na- tional exclusiveness. Fascism was destroyed as a living ideology by World War IL. This was a defeat, of course, on a very materlal level, but it amounted to a defeat of the idea as well... The ideological challenge mounted by the other great alternative to líberalism, communism, was far more serious. Marx... asserted that liberal society contalned a fun- damental contradiction that could not be resolved within its context, that between capital and labor, and this contradiction has constituted the chief accusation against lib- eralism ever since. But surely, the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West.... [T]he egalitarianism of modern America represents the essential achlevement of the classless society envisioned by Marx. This is not to say that there are not rich peo- ple and poor people in the United States, or that the gap between them has not grown in recent years. But the root causes of economic Inequality do not have to do with the under- lying legal and social structure of our society, which remains fundamentally egalitarian and moderately redistributionist.... [T]he power of the liberal idea would seem much less impressive if it had not infected the largest and oldest culture in Asla, China. ... China could not now be described in any way as a liberal democracy. ... But anyone per se but whose only connecting thread is liberalism.... [A]re there any other ideological competi- tors left? ... The rise of religious fundamen- talism in recent years within the Christlan, Jewish, and Muslim traditions has been widely noted. ... In the contemporary world. only Islam has offered a theocratic state as a political alternative to both liberalism and communism. But the doctrine has little ap- peal for non-Muslims, and it is hard to believe that the movement will take on any untversal significance.... This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se.... There would still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethnic and nationalist violence. ... This implies that terrorism and wars of national liberation will continue to be an important Item on the international agenda. But large- scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene. The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide Ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and ideal- ism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, en- vironmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.... Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again. famíliar with the outlook and behavlor of the new technocratic elite now governing China knows that Marxism and ideological principle have become virtually irrelevant as guides to policy. ... The student demonstrations in Beljing that broke out... recently ... were only the beginning of what will inevitably be mounting pressure for change in the politi- cal system as well... The central issue is the fact that the People's Republic of China can no longer act as a beacon for illiberal forces around the world. ... Maoism, rather than belng the pattern for Asla's future, became an anachronism. ... Important as these changes in China have been, however, it is developments in the So- vlet Union... that have put the final nail in the coffin of the Marxist-Leninist alternative to liberal democracy.... What has happened in the four years since Gorbachev's coming to power is a revolutionary assault on the most fundamental institutions and principles of Stalinism, and their replacement by other principles which do not amount to liberalism