Compare And Contrast The End Of History And Fukuyama

When the world famous liberal thinker Francis Fukuyama in his masterpiece declared that we were witnessing the end of the history, he was greeting the new political structure and also the new international environment, which is peaceful[1]. However, developments that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union showed us that the dissolution of the Soviets was unexpected. The international society was not ready for peace and Fukuyama’s optimistic assumptions were far from becoming real. Moreover, the international society currently started to realise that the tension and the potential of mass destructive war during the Cold War era had provided a

In Looking Back: The Long Peace, John Lewis Gaddis examines the reasons why peace was maintained during the tense period now known as the Cold War. Gaddis highlights a series of reasons why the Soviet Union and United States never fought a war that could have potentially endangered humanity as we know it. Gaddis shows that an international ideology based more on stability rather than justice contributed to peace, he claims that post World War 2 international relations was built upon a stabile bipolar system, it is argued that the distance and lack of dependence between the USSR and the USA helped cool and prevent tensions, Gaddis also states that domestic policies by both countries thru ought the Cold War didn’t undermine world stability,

Samuel Huntington’s controversial article “The Clash of Civilizations?” was first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and was subsequently turned into a book in 1996 titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. As this paper will show Huntington’s work can be seen as a product of the post-Cold War context it was written in. Huntington’s article takes a new perspective on the new world order and outlines a different way a thinking about how future world conflicts will unfold. Since the initial journal article was published in 1993 there has been a great deal of response from academics and also from Huntington himself. A majority of the responses come in the form of critiques, with the authors offering their own insight into how the post-Cold War World will operate. Although the validity of Huntington’s arguments have been questioned, it did create a great deal of controversy in the academic world. As Huntington explained in the preface of his 1996 book, the original article published in Foreign Affairs created more discussion in three years than any other article published in the journal since the 1940s.

The cold war in the author’s account was both unavoidable and essential at the same time. The Soviet empire and its allies could not be pushed back but they had to be restricted to move any further. The consequential confrontation lasted forty years. A lot of wealth, resources and time were exhausted on nuclear weapons and the watchful new strategic thinking. To a certain extent this was the reason that there were no major wars, although there were a number of intimidating confrontations. Eventually, thanks to greater resources, a better political and economic model, and the initiative of a few good men—the right side was victorious. Since then, new theatres involving a lot of complications have arisen, but we can at least be grateful to have said goodbye to that ever threatening conflict.

The forty-five years from the dropping of the atom bombs to the end of the Soviet Union, can be seen as the era of the new conflict between two major states: United States of America (USA) and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). According to Hobsbawm, ‘cold war’ was the constant confrontation of the two super powers which emerged from the Second World War. At that time the entire generation was under constant fear of global nuclear battles. It was widely believed that it could break out at any moment. (Hobsbawm, 1994) The consequences of the ‘power vacuum’ in central Europe, created by the defeat of Germany, gave rise to these two super powers (Dunbabin, 1994). The world was divided into

In fact, while the distinctive ideologies and religious groups still exist, the clear boundaries of different civilizations characterized by Huntington have blurred. When this dichotomy to recognize the world as direct confrontations between ideology and culture groups becomes no longer valid, the theory of the inevitability of the clash of civilization, thus, are now flawed, because it is realistically unreasonable, ethically wrong, conceptually biased and historically inaccurate. These problems regarding the clash of civilizations embody a misleading western supremacy shown in Bush’s speech as well as the war on terror on a larger

The civilizations, as identified by Huntington are Sinic [Chinese or Confusious], Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox [Russian], Western [Europe, North American, Australia, New Zealand], Latin American and possibly African. And it is among these groups that share a “common interest and common values” and have a “common culture or civilization” that will lead to more interdependence on members of the same civilization and less dependent on the West. Huntington’s theory is that the West has had [at one time or another] a negative impact on every other civilization, and this has led to a decline of power and influence around the world, especially the Islam civilization. Therefore he predicts, “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

The Cold War peaked the interest of the entire globe. Each threat, policy and action that took place had ramifications far more reaching then ever imaginable. The world sat on edge because it feared its own destruction, after the introduction of nuclear warfare at the close of World War II, another World War could result in the Earth’s demise. This fear ran through the hearts and minds of citizens of both the United States and the Soviet Union, but it is the citizens elsewhere that had to pay the consequences for these fears. The “race” to become the premier superpower of the world between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. did not always remain as subsided as many like to believe. Many regions of the world were held accountable

World history is an extremely important subject that all students around the world should learn about. World history is simply a branch of knowledge that welcomes all humanity. It is essential to learn because it symbolizes the question of who we are, prepares us to live in the alluring world and ensures cultural literacy. One of the most fascinating events known in history includes the Cold War. This essay will explore the fierce, overpowering, and chaotic Cold War describing its purpose, summary and analysis of events, and how it came to a complete end.

The orthodox view of the Cold War elucidates its inevitability due to the great ideological differences that existed between the Soviet Union and United States. On the other hand, the revisionists argued that it happened due to the actions that Soviets took and the consequential responses made by the United States as a result of their inflexible, single-sided interpretations of Soviet action. Yet, even with the backdrop of the early Bolshevik conflict in 1918 as well

Samuel Huntington has made famous his thesis "the clash of civilizations", which was developed in his article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and in the book that followed, in which the author expanded his thesis and reaffirmed the validity of his theory after the success and controversy that followed the publication of his article. In fact, the “civilizational” approach of conflicts today is now intrinsically linked to a comprehensive theory of international relations, which Samuel Huntington has developed by giving it an important value and a dominant paradigm

The end of the cold war signified a new era of history that has changed the entire world. The face of Europe and Asia has changed dramatically. Vast changes have been felt socially, politically, and especially economically. Also the effect the cold war had on foreign policy was paramount. The effect of these changes is not only felt across the ocean but can be felt here in America. The goal of this paper is to define what the cold war specifically was, and reflect upon the various choices throughout the world as a result of the end of the cold war.

In the 17th century, French King Louis XIV’s bold statement of "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the state") illustrates his firm belief of his ascribed status as an absolute monarch (Dangeau, 2009). Two hundred years after his proclamation, the term ‘end of history’ was first coined by a French philosopher Antoine Augustin Cournot. Antoine, along with German philosopher Hegel, inspired much of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History and the Last Man’. It is in the light of liberal democracy’s superiority over authoritarian regimes and other forms of governance that leads me to agree with Francis Fukuyama that ‘the end of history’ will culminate with the universal adoption of liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Samuel Huntington, the author of the clash of the civilisations believes that the World will eventually divide in accordance with cultural lines, and not political lines. According to Huntington, “the thriving East Asian and Muslim societies will soon challenge Western dominance, and the United States being the World leader will need to reevaluate its policies on foreign invention and domestic immigration to remain a major player.” During the Cold War, the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Huntington views these ties as insignificant now and states that the remaking of the World order will be based upon cultural similarity. The different thriving civilisations according to him today are the Western civilisation comprising of North America and Western Europe, the Muslim civilisation, the Orthodox Civilisation led by Russia, the Chinese civilisation, the Hindu civilisation, the Japanese civilisation, the Latin American civilisation and the African civilisation. Huntington’s proposition of the division of the World according to cultural lines has been backed by the use of various examples by him; examples of events that have taken place in the past.

In The Clash of civilizations Huntington argued that the future conflict would be different in the Post-Cold war era. In which different ideologies would not be the main reason for world problem but instead it would be because of the differences between cultures. The division of power would be placed in the civilizations that have the similar cultural norms. Huntington states that the “most dangerous enmities occur across fault lines between major civilizations” (20). This argued that foreign affairs cannot be peaceful or accommodating rather that these affairs go onto the basis of the influence of power based on different civilizations societal norms. The major societies that Huntington included were the western, Sinic, Islamic and Orthodox civilizations. The “ fault lines” between these societies