The End of History and the Last Man

Fukuyama wrote and published The End of History and the Last Man at a time of a major transition in the world: the end of the Cold War. His analysis of what he believes to be inexorable historic progress could be described as the initial reaction from the standpoint of Liberal ideology to this paradigm shift. For this reason, it is important to examine the Cold War period and its end in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, both the Soviet Union and the United States rose to superpower status. During that war, the two countries were part of the Grand Alliance, along with Britain. The alliance had significant ideological differences: Britain was an old colonial power, the U.S. subscribed to liberal-democratic capitalism, and the Soviet Union was socialist (Communist). On an ideological level, the Second World War could also be described as a war between an alliance of Liberalism and Communism against Fascism.  Despite these differences, the Allies were victorious in Europe in May 1945 and in the Asia-Pacific theater in August of that year.

This victory, however, exacerbated the ideological rift between the Allies. Fascism ceased to be a force with global ideological aspirations, though it remained in pockets elsewhere. Now the battleground for the optimal ideological version of the Modern period was between Liberalism and Communism. In practice, the Cold War lasted between 1945 and 1991, effectively dividing the world into two blocs. One bloc was aligned with the U.S., the other with the Soviet Union. In Europe, the split occurred in Berlin.

The Truman administration launched the Truman Doctrine (1947) and the related policy of containment, the goal of which was to challenge Communism, real or perceived, all around the world. The U.S. and the Soviet Union did not engage in direct military confrontation, hence the reference to a cold war. However, many conflicts, including those during the period of decolonization in Asia and Africa, featured their involvement. Some examples include the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (1955-1975).

One of the greatest dangers of this period was the development of nuclear weapons. The United States used these weapons for the first time against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Some historians believe that one of the goals was to show them off to the Soviet Union, a budding rival of the U.S. The weapons had not been used during the Cold War. However, there were some instances when the two countries came close to a nuclear disaster, such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States placed Jupiter nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey on the Soviet borders. In response, the Soviet Union sought to place nuclear arms in Cuba on America’s borders. The two sides deescalated this crisis through diplomacy and ramped up their efforts at partial nuclear disarmament through bilateral SALT and START conferences in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the realm of society and culture, the two sides were not completely isolated by the metaphorical Iron Curtain. However, the interactions between them were limited, and they developed along two different trajectories. For example, Fukuyama examines this parallel development of a market economy and central planning in the American and Soviet blocs, respectively. He argues that the USSR grew rapidly roughly in the first half of the Cold War but stagnated in the second half. Ultimately, China was able to carry out economic reforms and transition to state capitalism, whereas the Soviet Union failed to do so and dissolved. There were other reasons for its dissolution such as weak leadership, foreign pressure, and the Soviet nationalities policy that encouraged local and regional nationalisms, which also led to its demise.

The transformation that Francis Fukuyama witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s was dramatic. The Soviet Union embraced glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rearrangement). The physical representation of the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, came down in 1989. The Soviet Union officially dissolved in 1991, and its former constituents embraced neo-liberalism and capitalism. The American side, and the official West at large, perceived this period as a triumph and proof of its own superiority. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration focused on economic diplomacy spearheading the spread of capitalism.

Fukuyama rode this wave of Western optimism when he wrote The End of History and the Last Man. He perceived the end of the Cold War and the supposed triumph of Liberal ideology as an “end of history,” in the sense that Liberalism came to embody the logical conclusion Again, Hegel believed that what is present is just and right. Since Liberalism conquered Communism and remained the only major ideology of the Modern period, Liberalism was right in the author’s view.