In the Summer of 1989, near the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama published his infamous thesis titled “The End of History?”. Fukuyama’s argument was clearly an adaptation of Hegel’s philosophy of history, albeit in a modern guise and converted into the language of political science. He argued that, with the end of the Cold War, history in the Hegelian sense – that is, history as a dialectical process of sociopolitical forces clashing and negating one another, and subsequently reconciling and synthesising – had come to an end. The end of the Hegelian dialectic, which to the Hegelians was viewed as a concept revealing the mechanism of history, meant that the Western-European-American political and economic forms were the logical conclusions of history – the peak of what mankind could produce if history was to be viewed as a linear, progressive development of human affairs. This argument raises two specific problems: firstly, it imposes a form of cultural universalism on other non-Western societies, denying their existence in the ontological present and future. This form of universalism leads to an analysis of geopolitics that is shaped by an inherent Eurocentrism and Western exceptionalism when dealing with the sociopolitical and economic realities beyond the West. Secondly, it is guided by a naïve optimism that assumes history is teleological, that as historical time moves, the sociopolitical and economic realities of humankind would indefinitely progress towards the better. Almost four decades after the publication of his thesis, the geopolitical, economic, ecological, and technological realities of our own contemporary time have shattered Fukuyama’s naïve optimism. History has not only returned, it has returned with fervour. Fukayama’s “End of History?” was not an end to the historical process, but rather a pause of history, a limbo phase of historylessness induced by Pax Americana, as the end of the bipolar Cold War order transitioned into a unipolar order.
The return of history can be felt in Russia’s recent revival of a unique civilisational position that is distinct from Europe and the West, and additionally separated from Asian civilisations – what the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin calls the “special Russian truth”. The materialisation of this Russian-Slavic truth is today a reality after Russia’s clash with Western truths expressed by NATO’s position on Ukraine and the subsequent military vicissitudes. Fukuyama’s former teacher at Harvard, Samuel Huntington, had refuted his student’s “End of History?” thesis, and viewed it as utopian in overlooking the potential for geopolitical instability beyond the Cold War. In 1993, Huntington published his alternative to Fukuyama's vision of the future, in an article titled “The Clash of Civilizations?”, where he proposed that the age of ideology had ended with the Cold War and would be eventually replaced by an age of clashing civilisations – an age shaped by cultural rather than ideological conflict. Like Fukuyama, Huntington’s thesis was also an adaptation of previous philosophies of history, however, instead of Hegel’s universalist scheme, Huntington’s argument was influenced by the relativism of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, and Carroll Quigley. Thus, Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” thesis was a relativistic one when dealing with sociopolitical phenomena – it acknowledged the existence of other civilisations beyond the West, all with their own unique truths and political forms. However, this piece is not a vindication of Huntington, who despite using a relativistic model, still approached US foreign policy with an evidently universalist perspective attempting to impose one truth upon others where possible. That being said, Huntington’s use of Spengler and Toynbee’s model in his own geopolitical projections and analysis resulted in a more pessimistic, yet accurate, approach to said phenomena. Huntington for instance had successfully predicted the current conflict in Ukraine which he claimed was geographically situated at the border between two civilisations, the Western and Orthodox-Russian, thus designating Ukraine as a “cleft state”. Cleft states, as Huntington called them, will continue to experience geopolitical tremors and shocks due to the nature of global politics across the 21st century, which will primarily be shaped by cultural concerns.
The non-Western civilisations are currently emerging from their unipolar slumber, expressed in international politics by the emergence of BRICS, and finding a deeper expression in the emergence of political and social movements attempting to revive the primordial forms of these diverse worlds. As these civilisations awaken, the subsequent clash, convergence, and alliance of these worlds would trigger crises at the boundaries. If we were to view the civilisations as tectonic plates, the boundaries between them would essentially be the nation-states bordering them. Sudan, also considered a cleft state, already experienced a geopolitical tremor that led to the secession of South Sudan after a referendum in 2011, a development which perhaps reflects a geopolitical seismic zone that is not quite as turbulent as others. Unfortunately, the same could not be said about the Balkans, situated between three civilisations, namely the Western, Islamic, and Orthodox; the end of the Cold War and dissolution of Yugoslavia triggered one of the most catastrophic wars lasting beyond the turn of the century. Ukraine, as Huntington predicted, is another case in point, and the current demarcations following the war are eerily reminiscent of the civilisational lines that Huntington proposed as part of the “clash of civilizations”.
History, therefore, has not ended, but rather the collective consciousness has slumbered through the unipolar order of Pax Americana following the collapse of the bipolar Cold War order. Periods of peace are ones of amnesia and forgetfulness of man’s warlike nature, of the severe optimism typical of golden ages. The lack of stress induces a sort of laziness, a lack of readiness. More importantly, such periods detach the collective psyche from the past to such a degree that they forget the cyclical reality of history, and life as a whole. Thus, history’s return usually comes as a shock to those who least expect it, and as a blessing to those who have been unconsciously readying themselves for it. The philosophy of history, the field where Huntington and Fukuyama both drew their main insights, is perhaps a suitable starting point to mend our disconnection with the ontological past. The historical past connects itself with the present, and projects itself unto the future, what we feel and perceive as time, and not what we spatially present as time. This task, at this point, is one of existential relevance, especially considering the geopolitical, technological, ecological, and economic developments that triggered the return of history.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Regina Kühne (Universitätsarchiv St.Gallen (HSG))
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