Lunch with the FT: The clash of conservatives By Edward Luce
Published: July 14 2006 10:42 | Last updated: July 14 2006 10:42
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There was a time after the collapse of the Soviet Union when people who rarely pick up serious non-fiction were spotted carrying Fukuyama’s
The End of History and the Last Man. Then came September 11, and they switched to Samuel P. Huntington’s
The Clash of Civilizations. It has been fashionable since then to say Fukuyama’s bestseller - which, in a nutshell, argued that liberal democracy would prevail universally - is discredited.
Unfair as that may be, Fukuyama remains as prominent as ever - most recently for his new book,
America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (published in the UK as
After the Neocons),
in which he dissociates himself from the neoconservatives. In the late 1990s, Fukuyama joined Paul Wolfowitz (then dean of the School of Advanced International Studies where Fukuyama is tenured) and others in calling for regime change in Iraq. But Fukuyama chose not to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He is now considered a turncoat among the dwindling band of those who still defend it.
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“I didn’t vote for Bush,” he said. “But I think there is an unfair caricature of him in Europe. Bush is broad-minded on a lot of issues, such as trade and immigration. Even in foreign policy his presentation was in many cases worse than the policy. My complaint is that he is good at campaigning, but no good at governing.
Governing means bringing in people who have a lot of knowledge and listening to them. On that measure Bush has been just awful.”
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“I don’t think Bush’s level of competence or intelligence is any worse than the average senator.” I countered with the names of a couple of very impressive senators. “I said `average senator’,” Fukuyama shot back.
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Politically, Fukuyama has in the past been considered neoconservative. He was active in the Project for the New American Century (P.N.A.C.) think tank starting in 1997, and signed the organization's letter recommending that U.S. President Bill Clinton overthrow the then-President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein
[1]. He also signed a second, similar letter to President George W. Bush after the 09/11/01 attacks that called for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack"
[2].
Thereafter, however, he drifted from the neoconservative agenda, which he felt had become overly militaristic and based on muscular, unilateral armed intervention to further democratization within authoritarian regimes (particularly in the Middle East). By late 2003, Fukuyama withdrew his support for the Iraq War
[3] and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as U.S. Secretary of Defense
[4]. He said that he would vote against Bush in the 2004 presidential election
[5] and said Bush made three major mistakes:
The threat of radical Islam to the U.S. was overestimated.
The Bush administration did not foresee the fierce negative reaction to its "benevolent hegemony". From the very beginning it showed a negative attitude towards the U.N. and other international organizations and did not see that this would increase anti-Americanism in other countries.
The Bush administration misjudged what was needed to bring peace in Iraq and was overly optimistic about the success with which social engineering of ern values could be applied to Iraq and the Middle East in general.
Fukuyama's current beliefs include the following: the U.S. should use its power to promote democracy in the world, but more along the lines of what he calls "realistic Wilsonianism", with military intervention only as a last resort and only in addition to other measures. A latent military force is more likely to have an effect than actual deployment. The U.S. spends more on its military than the rest of the world put together, but Iraq shows there are limits to its effectiveness. The U.S. should instead stimulate political and economic development and gain a better understanding of what happens in other countries. The best instruments are setting a good example and providing education and, in many cases, money. The secret of development, be it political or economic, is that it never comes from outsiders, but always from people in the country itself. One thing the U.S. is good at is the formation of international institutions. These would combine power with legitimacy. But such measures require a lot of patience. This is the central thesis of his most recent work, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (2006).
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