#711 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Friday July 21)
Good morning,
THE END OF HISTORY
In 1992, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book entitled “The End of History and the Last Man.” It posited that, with the emancipation of Eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union, the battle of various ideologies of political and social organization was over. Fascism was vanquished after World War II and the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union consummated the victory of Western liberal democracy over other alternatives. It was a flawed thesis and the hubris accompanying that thesis has not been healthy.
It is easy to embrace the notion that liberal democracy, with its attendant appreciation of the value of the individual, the codification of human rights, a robust legal system, and a free market subject to reasonable regulation, remains the best system of political organization yet devised. While there are those who would choose to focus on its shortcomings and failures, and while the inequities of the current distribution of wealth are concerning, it has offered innumerable advances in scientific, industrial, inventive, artistic and other areas.
Dr. Fukuyama’s premise may have been correct, but his conclusion that we had reached the end of the battle among forms of government was, perhaps, a “Mission Accomplished” moment. The gleefulness over the various “color revolutions” of Eastern Europe, while western elites grave-danced over the remnants of the U.S.S.R. in many ways sowed the seeds of what would become the rise of Putin, Orban and others. Together they frame the now all-too-familiar battle between liberal democracy, on the one hand, and authoritarian, planned economies and state control, on the other.
The jubilation of having defeated fascism and communism was premature. Sure, the fascism of Hitler, Stalin and others were defeated after World War II, but let’s remember that this defeat was on the battlefield and not in some sort of debate society. Fukuyama would like us to believe that the battle between fascism and democracy was one of reasonable people examining the facts, engaging in a detailed analysis and making a rational decision about what is the preferred method of organizing human affairs. What Fukuyama fails to understand is that history is far messier than a simple battle of ideas. Embedded in any conflict are loyalties to countries, religions, and self-interest. I doubt there are many people who would affirmatively accept the idea that fascism (or totalitarianism) is a desired form of government. Nobody is lobbying for fascism as a desired state of affairs. Fascism is just what happens when times are tough and extremism is embraced by a people looking for a “strong leader” to lead them out of an economic or other panic (NOTE: Reason enough to worry about our fellow Americans and the very real possibility authoritarianism, if not fascism, may yet be embraced). Sure fascism, in its mid-20th century incarnation, was defeated. But it is no guarantee that other strongmen won’t rise to prominence.
As for the defeat of the Soviet Union, it was a corrupt institution that died of its own weight, assisted by leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, wiling to yield to the inevitability before them, rather than resort to even greater oppression than was practiced in the USSR at the time. Had Putin been in charge, rather than Gorbachev, there is reason to believe things might have ended differently. We were just lucky.
PUNISHMENT VERSUS MAGNANIMITY
Whereas the post-World War II period was followed by the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Europe, I can’t help but think that our behavior subsequent to the fall of the USSR can find greater parallels in the post-World War I order, rather than post-World War II behavior.
Whereas the post-World War II period was followed by the Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Europe, I can’t help but think that our behavior subsequent to the fall of the USSR can find greater parallels in the post-World War I order, rather than post-World War II behavior.
World War I ended with the end of long-standing polyglot empires—most notably the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians (the House of Hapsburg ruled over a changing, yet relatively consistent, geography for nearly 800 years before that). Nation states, many new and without established institutions and defenses, filled the void. The main antagonists to the allies were France’s perennial enemies, the Germans. Upon defeating the Germans after a bloody war, largely fought in the trenches, the allies followed the French lead, exacting payment from the defeated Germans. The Treaty of Versailles imposed back-breaking and humiliating reparations and limits on the ability of the German state to revive and thrive. The void was filled by a weak central government that was exploited by nationalistic fervor and the rise of a “populist” movement, the apotheosis of which was the Nazi genocidal regime. Before the Nazis claimed the upper hand, Communism, which would dominate much of Eastern Europe after the defeat of the Nazis, was another populist alternative.
The end of World War II was a different story, with the formation of NATO, the massive mobilization of efforts to feed war-torn Europe, and the creations of institutions like NATO, the EEC, and international banking institutions designed to bring Europe out from the scourge of war. Germany and Austria were taken on as partners in rebuilding, rather than as nations to be punished.
As the USSR declined, Reagan and Bush, together with Brent Scowcroft and others, navigated complex waters, working with Mikhail Gorbachev and others to ensure a “soft landing” of the Soviet Union. Without their diplomatic prowess, humility, and equanimity, the dismemberment of the Soviet Union might have ended quite differently and with considerable loss of life. But then it seemed we veered from being a partner in the reemergence of a new Russian state, paralleling the end of World War II. Instead, we misinterpreted the emerging new nation’s plans and didn’t fully account for its failing economy. The result was a resentful defeated nation and, while reparations were not exacted, the treatment of benign neglect has not worked out well. While this certainly doesn’t justify the emergence of Putin, we certainly didn’t do all we might have done to bring Russia into the community of democratic nations.
The embrace of Eastern European countries by the West and their admission into NATO and the European Union, while healthy for both the existing western powers and the newly free Eastern European nations, fed into the historic insecurity of Russia, which has seen itself as under constant onslaught from the west. This is something that Mr. Putin capitalized upon—namely, that the West was encroaching eastward, gobbling up the “buffer states” (as Soviet doctrine saw the Eastern European bloc of Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and exposing Russia to isolation and the threat of invasion. Forget if this ever was a realistic risk or worry—Putin was able to use it as justification for mischief, diverting attention away from Russia’s miserable economy, corruption, inequality, and limited industrial capacity. While the isolation of Russia wasn’t a planned strategy, we wanted to believe that democracy had triumphed and nothing else was required of us to keep Russia on a progressive trajectory.
I suspect Mr. Putin’s days may be numbered. If so, and if a new Russian leadership emerges from the current hot mess, we should be prepared to embrace and support them in a manner more like the magnanimity of the Marshall Plan and less like our failures since 1991.
THE END OF HISTORY’S LESSONS
What has happened since the fall of the Communist stranglehold on Eastern Europe is not so much that history (in the sense of the battle among ideologies) has ended. The battle of ideologies never really was held. It was a battle of geopolitical powers—one democratic and the other not.
The lesson of history is that it offers not a grand, inevitable arc, but that it offers examples from which we should learn. Our ability to learn the lessons of history effectively is wanting. History as a college major has been declining for decades. Civics is hardly taught in secondary schools. In the meantime, the very study of history has become a political football and a battlefield among ideologies. How we look at our own history and how we interpret the lessons to be derived from history are viewed through a modern lens and with the purpose of furthering a current political agenda. To those longing for “America as it was,” they neglect to appreciate the need to study our failings along with our successes. Meanwhile, to those who see American history as a colonial enterprise hell-bent on oppression of minorities cannot see clear to the unique experiment in self-government, the pursuit of the sanctity of the individual, and the many triumphs of American ideology
History, as messy as it actually is, continues to exist, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. We fail to learn it at our own peril. The empires that once straddled the globe have an effect on the here and now. Much like ripples in the water, the reverberations of past events can continue into the present day. In order to understand Ukraine, for instance, one must understand its geography, its growth and expansion over the years, and its history as a neighbor and sometimes vassal state of other empires. The Bosnian-Serbian war had its foundational “justification” with the Hapsburgs and later with Yugoslavia. What is happening in Israel/Palestine is the current incarnation of a centuries-old struggle between Arabs and Jews who occupy the same land—as well as British mis-management of the region. History may not repeat itself, but it offers hints as to why things are as they are, and how generations of people interpret their own history and struggles, both allied with neighbors or at war with, or exploited by, neighbors.
The idea of history, and the recounting of events, have been warped and misinterpreted. As professor Tim Snyder, points out, the idea of history and the interpretation of history is being manipulated by Putin’s words and assumptions for his own aim. When Putin suggests that Ukraine “historically” is part of Russia, he is making the mistaken assertion that what might have been somehow is destined always to be. Even in that, of course, he misreads the history (or chooses simply to “write” his own. In any event, regardless of Mr. Putin’s protestations, there is no “eternal” anything in history. History, Snyder notes, is about the study of change. History evolves. More on this in future Musings—I’m still musing about it!
Have a good day,
Glenn
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