福山：“历史终结论”或将终结
2022-04-02 21:32阅读：
最近几周，西方国家的“宣传机器”可谓马力全开，在限制俄罗斯发声的同时，又在网络上塑造乌克兰的“英雄”形象，大力传播乌总统泽连斯基的讲话视频。福山在称赞西方宣传效果之余，却也把矛头对准了印度、南非等保持中立立场的“民主国家”。
对此福山倒也承认，在许多国家，西方当年犯下的罪行仍让人记忆犹新，苏联大力支持反种族隔离斗争的历史记忆则依旧印象深刻，“在某些方面，‘自由民主国家’之间也不存在必然的团结。这不奇怪，每个国家的历史是不同的，所以他们会有不同的倾向，特别是在外交政策方面。”
但福山随即话锋一转，又声称这些分歧显现出“某些多边机构的功能障碍”。他提到，联合国安理会在2月25日拒绝了美国提出的乌克兰问题决议草案，身为常任理事国的俄罗斯投出反对票否决了草案，而中国、印度和阿联酋均投出弃权票。
美国及西方的政治立场无法在安理会取得一致共识，到了福山嘴里，似乎就成了证明安理会“没有用处”的“有力证据”。他甚至据此变本加厉地鼓吹西方与所谓“非民主国家”的斗争，声称“如果美国和西方不能阻止中俄等国家主导世界，将意味着‘历史终结论’的终结。”
Francis Fukuyama: We could be facing the end of “the end
of history”
The American political theorist discusses what the Ukraine war
means for the future of liberal democracy.
By Megan Gibson
Spare a thought for Francis Fukuyama’s Twitter mentions. In the
weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, the American
political theorist has been routinely told by gleeful critics that
his career-defining thesis about liberal democracy being “the final
form of
human government” is obsolete.
“It usually comes up two or three times a day on my Twitter
account,” Fukuyama said over Earl Grey tea at a central London
hotel in late March. But the frequency has increased recently.
While he described the jibes as “annoying” he didn’t seem overly
bothered by them. “I actually have a policy of not reading the
comments and not responding to it.”
Fukuyama admits that he’s used to the accusation. It has been a
constant since his landmark book, The End of History and the Last
Man, was published three decades ago. In the text, adapted and
expanded from a 1989 journal article titled “The End of History?”,
he outlined his theory that liberal democracy is greatly preferable
to any other form of government and, crucially, that no liberal
democracy could progress to a better alternative.
He’s quick to point out how most people claiming his theory is
incorrect have misinterpreted the original premise. Fukuyama didn’t
envision the end of history to be a utopian state or predict that
“the whole world is going to be democratic” with a
“straightforward, linear movement in that direction”. He also
didn’t suggest that “nothing would happen from now on”. Indeed,
Fukuyama has long maintained that events – another way of saying
more history – would continue to take place.
Yet at 69, Fukuyama is willing to admit mistakes. He said that when
he wrote his thesis he perhaps didn’t fully appreciate the concept
of “political decay: the idea that once you became a modern
democracy, you could also go backwards”. It’s a subject he wrestles
with in his latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents. Fukuyama
explores the ways in which both the left and the right have worked
to undermine liberalism (the right by embracing free-market
principles, which have widened economic inequality; the left by
prioritising identity politics over individual autonomy). While the
book was written prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the
war doesn’t invalidate his arguments. Instead, it explains how the
fight to preserve liberalism is about more than a battle between
autocracies and democracies.
This is something that Fukuyama, as an American, has observed
closely in recent years. He watched with alarm the divisions deepen
between the right and the left throughout Donald Trump’s presidency
and during its aftermath. “I’ve never seen the situation as
serious, really, since the American Civil War,” he said of the US’s
current political polarisation. “There’s a significant chance we’re
going to be in a major constitutional crisis at the time of the
next presidential election.” Though he emphasised that much is
likely to change before the 2024 contest, Fukuyama struggles to
imagine how Trump could win the White House again following Putin’s
invasion. “Trump is really out of line with the major part of his
party” in his public admiration of Russia’s leader, Fukuyama
argued. “I just don’t see how that’s not going to hurt him.”
Fukuyama has also been willing to, as he put it in a recent essay,
“stick [his] neck out” over the likely geopolitical consequences of
the war in Ukraine. Chief among his predictions: Russia will lose
the war, perhaps spectacularly, and this defeat will help the West
get out of “our funk about the declining state of global democracy.
The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave
Ukrainians.” For those interested in the stability of the
international order, it’s an optimistic, even reassuring, vision of
the war’s potential outcome.
Fukuyama knows Ukraine well, having visited the country many times
as part of the Leadership Academy for Development, a programme he
runs through Stanford University, where he’s a senior fellow at the
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The programme
develops leadership training in various emerging democracies.
His impression of Ukraine has evolved over subsequent visits.
“Beginning in 2014, it really did seem to me that this was the
front line of a broader struggle for democracy,” he said, pointing
to the rife corruption and the significant power oligarchs
continued to hold. But after working with a younger generation of
Ukrainians who were pro-European, he found “it was actually quite
inspiring, because a lot of these people were very dedicated to
trying to stop corruption and make the country’s institutions work
better”.
In recent weeks, being inspired by Ukrainians has almost become a
sport in the West, as speeches made by President Volodymyr Zelensky
go viral and photos of ordinary Ukrainians preparing to join the
fight are widely shared online. Fukuyama sympathises with and even
shares this urge to support the Ukrainian plight, but warns that
it’s hardly a universal phenomenon, even among ostensibly
democratic countries. He cites India and South Africa as two
countries that have so far refused to condemn Russia’s
invasion.
“I think there are many places where the memory of injustices
committed by Western countries is very vivid,” he said. In
contrast, the Soviet Union’s support of the ANC’s fight against
apartheid still looms in many South Africans’ recollections of that
era. “There’s no inevitable solidarity among countries that would
qualify in some ways [as] being a liberal democracy. You know,
that’s OK; a country’s historical experience is different. So
they’re going to have different preferences, particularly
[regarding] foreign policy.”
Yet while different opinions might be tolerable, they have also
once again highlighted the dysfunction of certain multilateral
bodies. Namely, the United Nations Security Council, which rejected
a draft resolution on 25 February on ending Russia’s war on
Ukraine; the Russian Federation, a permanent member, vetoed the
draft, while China, India and the UAE abstained.
“It doesn’t work now,” Fukuyama said bluntly of the Security
Council. “I think that you can’t put all your eggs in the basket of
one global organisation, because there just isn’t enough consensus
among countries the world over, especially when you get to
political issues.” Did the body ever work? “The only period where
it looked like it might be useful was in the early 1990s, after the
collapse of the former Soviet Union, when it appeared that you
actually could get all five permanent members to actually agree on
something.” But now, he warned: “Don’t have any expectations about
what it can do.”
He may be tired of being incorrectly accused of being wrong, but
does Fukuyama ever worry about being proved wrong? Of course, he
said, but not out of interest for his work. Instead, because of
what the implications would be for the world. His “ultimate
nightmare”, he said, is a world in which China and Russia work in
harness with one another, perhaps with China bolstering Russia’s
war and Beijing launching its own invasion – of Taiwan. If that
were to happen, and be successful, Fukuyama said, “then you would
really be living in a world that was being dominated by these
non-democratic powers. If the United States and the rest of the
West couldn’t stop that from happening, then that really is the end
of the end of history.”
