History: It's all over, except perhaps for the shooting. Courtesy peopledaily.com
Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. Did it not exemplify hope, freedom, change, peace, those values our President extols? Apparently not enough to merit a visit from Obama or appropriate recognition of “the end of history,” laments Ross Douthat in an op-ed piece today. His important criticism evokes issues transcending the political vicissitudes a jab at the President might imply – but misses the point. Where is Obama going? East.
Bluntly: History is not over. To predict anything about the future is a logical leap. Assuming – from merely two decades of liberal primacy – Western liberal ideals will enjoy privileged status, let alone universal acceptance, in perpetuity, is nevertheless leaping further than assuming primacy will end, ideas will change, and humans will disagree – often violently – on ideal government. If we do assume that history settled these questions in Western favor, and events need only catch up, it might make sense to criticize Obama prioritizing a trip to Japan, China, and Korea over celebrating Western liberal triumph.
But if we do not assume inevitability, prudence and memory suggest the President has the right priorities today. In 1989, China shot down its liberal idealists in Tiananmen. Despite “Tank Man’s” efforts, authoritarianism reigns in China. Decisive geopolitical questions about the balance of power and the “pivot of history” are now closer to East Asia than Eastern Europe. Today, China redoubles its industrial and military might, bellicose North Korea boasts nuclear weapons, Japan reconsiders its regional role, and from South Asia to the South China Sea, Western interests are increasingly entangled in Asian affairs. The future of Western ideals is inextricable from Western power, so if liberalism is to retain primacy, prudent liberal powers should be concerned with balancing revisionist or illiberal regimes.
Therese Delpech noted in Savage Century that Europeans have little conception of Asian grand strategy. Their local problems mostly resolved (conveniently ignoring renewed enmity along Russia’s borders), they rely on American power projection and clout to settle Western interests in Asia, and happily divorce their relations, even weapons exports, from power politics. Given the fall of America’s superpower competitor, the possibility of strategic competition to or even a decline of Western liberalism and its two shining successes – the United States and the European Union – has never seemed more remote. Douthat implores us to recognize that “enduring , existential threat” to Western liberalism is over. Presumably, in time economic and ideological pressures will force China (or Russia, or any other authoritarian power) to democratize and accept Pax Americana (or perhaps Pax Occidentia, or Pax Fukuyama).
However, not every country deals with such pressures the same way. Imperial Germany faced democratizing pressures as it rose, but responded with nationalism and militarism due to its geopolitical and internal circumstances. There will always be competition over power and its foundations – territory, resources, honor – and Fukuyama’s disciples acknowledge Western power underpins liberal triumph. Twenty years of the present distribution of power do not evince its persistence for 2,000 more. As Lee Yuan Kew warned America, “If you do not hold your ground in the Pacific, you cannot be a world leader.” The complaisance of Asian politics to Western liberal interests now is impermanent. Asian diplomacy rightfully requires more Presidential attention than celebrating “the end of history” in Berlin.
History is not over, certainly not because it seems over for Europe. History ended Greek democracy and it could have ended European democracy. Today, we might not know existential threats to the liberal order at its present boundaries, but there are boundaries. The rise of countries outside the liberal world will challenge liberalism’s universal claims and privileged status. Contra Douthat, American history is rife with liberal triumphalism, from J.Q. Adams to Wilson to Clinton; few miss the possibility of destruction and prefer to see America and its ideals on the right side of history. Fear of decline is pervades history because decline pervades history, even among those powers who espoused and practiced universal doctrines. Liberal triumphalists’ exhortations against “old” policies such as power balancing and precluding strategic competition belie their confidence in the “end” – were liberalism’s triumph truly inevitable, what have we to fear from being cautious?
Kissinger and Zabok at IERES would claim that the Wall was already irrelevant when it fell in ’89.
Kissinger in his forward to “The Berlin Wall: 20 Years After”speaks in the most literal sense, pointing to Hungary and Czechloslovakia’s passage of East Germans West.
Zabok argued yesterday at IERES that from Moscow, Gorbachev was too consumed by the fear of a second Russian Revolution breaking out in the South Caucuses to care much about what happened in Eastern Europe.
The Fall of The Berlin Wall has never had anything but symbolic importance. And that symbolism is meaningful mostly to the Western narrative. The real question is to what extent Obama’s job eastward is public diplomacy and to what extent it is back-room brokering of power.
That was an interesting article. A lot of people talk about the economic war with China, but you don’t usually see much discussion about the philosphical struggle we’re in.
“Bluntly: History is not over. To predict anything about the future is a logical leap.”
That’s an excellent point that a lot of people fail to grasp.
“Douthat implores us to recognize that “enduring , existential threat” to Western liberalism is over. Presumably, in time economic and ideological pressures will force China (or Russia, or any other authoritarian power) to democratize and accept Pax Americana”
My God, China’s never been more of a threat than they are now. We’re in a state of reverse mercantilism with them. We export our natural resources to them, and they sell us manufactured products. As a result, our industry is sinking, we’re quickly losing our technological lead, and we’re turning into a country of middle men. Intel manufactures the Pentium in your computer in China, and China will most likely get to the moon before Nasa!
At the same time the Chinese have devalued are currency by illegally manipulating our massive trade deficit. For the first time since the 1930′s the dollar is no longer the standard of stable currency. It’s only worth something until the day Beijing calls in the debt.
They are embracing an American perspective. But at the same time we’re losing an economic war to them. I don’t see how this Douthat guy can possibly think we’re ‘secure’ from China. We’re not levelling economic pressure at them; they’re pressuring us.
You make a valid point that we definitely can’t ignore Asia. We are going to have to deal with the “industrial and military might” of China.
Thanks for the comments.
I’m not sure what Douthat’s specific views on China are, other than that it is clearly not a threat, but Fukuyama and other democracy proponents generall argue that while China is growing in power, it does not present a true alternative to democracy (the way fascism and Soviet-style communism did), it will eventually fail due to the inherent ideological consistency of Communist Party rule and free market policy, and China’s people will eventually reject authoritarian controls or economic pressures from a large middle class will pressure the regime into democracy or force a revolution for democracy.
So it is possible for China to pose a problem in the short term under this viewpoint, but dismiss it as a regime that is ‘on its way out,’ the way we in hindsight dismiss the USSR of the ’80s.
I think this view is partially correct. China’s party-state will have trouble holding on to legitimacy in the future, but for this to result in democracy would be a matter of historical accident, not historical design. Communist countries dealt with crises of legitimacy in different ways. Economically modernizing ones will probably do the same thing. Russia and Germany before WWI faced similar domestic pressure to liberalize economically and domestically, Germany ended up militantly nationalist* and Russia ended up with a few failed experiments at economic modernization and constitutional monarchy, and then communist revolution.
I will say that while the economic situation is troubling, the US has to be very careful about how it rectifies it. Ultimately there will need to be as much cleaning house in the US – dealing with our fiscal negligence and economic woes – as pressure on China. Maintaining high expectations of trade with China is good for the global economy and ultimately ours. That considered, economic interdependence didn’t stop WWI… It certainly won’t stop hard feelings.
A real economic competitive concern for the Chinese isn’t necessarily trying to undermine the US industrial-technological base, but securing access to resources all industrialized countries need to sustain economic growth (raw materials, etc). If an economic war ever becomes an existential threat to either party, it will be determined by the degree to which it involves access to oil, metals, etc – at least this view informs Chinese policy. But that’s getting off track…