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March 26, 2006
In this review by John Gray of Francis Fukuyama's After the Neo-Cons: America at the Crossroads, which was based on lectures given at Yale University last year, highlights that Fukuyama's thesis of the end of history does not mean that history had ended. It means that only one type of government would be legitimate. This is because American-style "democratic capitalism" embodies the only viable model of modern society, which the rest of the world must adopt.
Note the 'must. ' It's questionable in the Middle East or in China, even though one can accept "the use of American power to achieve moral purposes".
Gray points out that despite his criticism of the Bush Administration-- on the grounds that its foreign policy has retarded the process of Americanisation, as it has triggered a global blowback against US power-- Fukuyama remains:
...wedded to some of the most dubious features of neo-con ideology. He continues to hold to a view of history as leading to the universal triumph of an American model, and seems still to share the neo-conservative view that democracy is bound to promote peace.
So the Fukuyama's general triumphalism that followed the end of the cold war is stilll there in a more muted form---it is now shaped by the conservative values of scepticism, stewardship and prudence.
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Gary, Fukuyama is and always has been full of crapp. He betrays whatever useful insights he sometimes makes (as in Trust for example) by hanging out with extremely BAD company. The usual right wing think tanks that are propaganda factories for the Pentagon death machine.
As John Gray points out he is still a booster of the bogus notion of American exceptionalism and/or America as being the light on the hill. He is a scholar at the New America Foundation.