The End of History and the Last Man

You ever hear of this guy, Francis Fukuyama? If you haven't, you should. He wrote this book about the end of history. He's a very well respected historian.

Out of the title of Fukuyama's book, The End of History and the Last Man, probably we parted with the idea of the end of history.

Fukuyama did not expect Soviet Union to collapse. For him, the end of history was that it was communist leaders that stopped believing in communism.

the title of Fukuyama's book, The End of History and the Last Man, probably we parted with the idea of the end of history.

the famous uh slogan that sums it up uh is the end of history written by francis fukey armor

I had to go and interview Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History.

his whole thesis is that the end of history means that England has won.

So you could tell quite a bleak story about the 90s and you could also tell us I mean that going back to the hubris point you could argue that a defining book of the 90s in some ways is Francis Fukuyama's The End of History

It was only, you know, maybe 25 years ago that Francis Fukuyama wrote the end of, you know, what was it? The, the, the end of history, the end of history.

In 1992, Fukuyama wrote a book that became a sensation. It was called The End of History and the Last Man.

In the late 1980s, as I was following events in the Soviet Union, I said, well, to the extent that there's an end of history, it's going to look like liberal democracy tied to a market economy.

It's not surprising that Francis Fukuyama book, The End of History, was a bestseller.

He, in 1992, published this book called The End of History and the Last Man. What he famously argued in that text is that the final form of human government is liberal democracy.

He, in 1992, published this book called The End of History and the Last Man. What he famously argued in that text is that the final form of human government is liberal democracy.

not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such that is the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such that is the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such that is the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist and author, wrote an essay titled The End of History.

Now he turned his essay into a book in 1992 after the fall of the USSR... In The End of History, he wrote that humanity was witnessing the end of history as such, that is the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such that is the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Fukuyama took an oversimplification of Hegel, his concept of absolute knowledge, the dialectical change of Hegel, and applied it to the political climate of the early 1990s.

Fukuyama in 1992 made the claim that if you look at the history of human ideas for a long time we've been in this battle that's been going on between different ideologies that say what the best way is to organize people in a society.

And Fukuyama in 1992 says maybe we've arrived at that ultimate system. And that system is liberal democratic capitalism or the combination of classical liberalism democracy and capitalism.

He said they thought we were living in a post ideological age.

Tijijek Fukuyama was wrong.

I'm like halfway through the Fukuyama book right now. I started reading it about two weeks ago. Setting aside whether it's right or wrong, it's a very interesting book.

It's evident that deterrence didn't work for Putin invading Ukraine. It's evident that deterrence didn't work for Hamas and then perhaps what's going on with Hezbollah against Israel, big question mark, whether deterrence is enough for maintaining the status quo with Taiwan. These are all questions that you have to ask yourself. The end of the end of history, for me, means, do we have to have a completely different security architecture in the immediate aftermath of the in the Cold War period?

In the post-World War Two period, we had NSC-68, which said we need to develop the H-bomb, we need to be able to fight two and a half wars and we ended up not doing deterrence, we ended up fighting multiple wars in order to enforce the liberal democratic order. I worry that we're moving back into an era where the end of the end of history means that we can't just, as my friend Neil Ferguson says, talk softly and carry a big stick, that we'll have to actually use the use the stick.

I think this cohort of policymakers in the mainstream, certainly of US policymakers, believes that the post-Cold War architecture either doesn't really demand the US to do that much or deterrence is enough, but it's evident that deterrence didn't work for Putin invading Ukraine.

In Fukuyama's telling, liberal democracy is like the logical endpoint for society, that's the ultimate sort of the expression of society with the least internal contradictions and so what you're saying now is like actually there is competition, there are people and there are countries, etc., maybe there is a different way. Listen, surveys of the global south and if you don't trust the surveys, just look at what the leadership does, whether it's Brazil or India, they're not taking sides, they're seeing the dialectic between liberal democracy and illiberal tendencies and they are not so sure about signing up with the post-Cold War liberal order, just by revealed preference. So you're seeing this play out in real time in a very important way, even with allies who we've hugged closer in certain spheres, like like India. So I think this is a real you're seeing the manifestation of it right in front of your right in front of our eyes.