Fukuyama 's The End Of History?

In The Death of History is Bunk, Patrick Watson argues that the decrease of historical content in the curriculum does not indicate that history, as a subject, is declining. While many complain about the decreasing prominence of history classes in Canadian schools, the content of those classes is excessively dull as it consists of memorizing lists of facts. Despite this, there are still protests that knowledge of “defining events” is required to contribute to “the National Conversation”. However, history is not so simple as a list of events—it is the sum of the small happenings in society around the events. A whole variety of factors influence history, which is created by the common people. Unlike Americans, who turn to their constitution for

In his book, Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and professor at California State University, reasons that the west and its armies have been the most lethal and effective force in the world because of the inseparability between armies and their cultures. He illustrates the cultural superiority of the west by explaining the tenets of western society (freedom, citizenship, right to property, capitalism, and individualism) and applies them to nine landmark battles in which the west take part. Hanson uses “the term ‘Western’ to refer to the culture of classical antiquity that arose in Greece and Rome; survived the collapse of the Roman Empire; spread to western and northern Europe; then during the great periods of exploration and colonization of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries expanded to the

Huntington’s initial article argued that in the post-Cold War era the fundamental source of conflict would not be ideological or economic, but cultural. He continues by arguing that nation states will continue to be the most powerful actors in global affairs, but the conflicts of global politics that are to occur in the future will happen between

Huntington, Sameul. "The Clash of Civilizations." The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. 5th ed. Eds. Timothy Crusius and Carolyn Channell. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

Through separate publications, Geoffrey Parker and Victor Hanson describe principal foundations (Parker) and a prominent element (Hanson) that serve as the basis for their argument in defining a Western Way of War. However, both men fall short in clearly describing what is a true Western Way of War. Both the principal foundations by Parker and the prominent element by Hanson, while insightful, only delineate a single type of warfare that was used by the armies of Europe and the United States, however they fail to capitalize on the basis of their argument because neither man legitimately compares that type of warfare to any other method of fighting that was used, or is currently used, by other nations around the world. Hence, there is no

Francis Fukuyama; political scientist, economist, and author, in his article “The End of History?” discusses he rise and fall of major ideologies such as absolutism, fascism and communism, and suggests that human history should be viewed in terms of a battle of ideologies which has reached its end in the universalization of Western liberal democracy. Fukuyama concludes that the idea of Western liberal democracy has triumphed in the world through a variety of different ways and is a thriving piece of world order today. However, there are certain flaws to his argument including a US- centric view on the events of the twentieth century.

More so than that, Huntington was writing during a time when the United States was the world’s only military superpower which lead to the idea that America should take the lead in establishing the “new world order”, one which would be dominated by the United States and their allies. Because of this, American diplomats and officials were faced with regional, religious and ethnic conflicts that, as Huntington argues, could not be easily solved. During this time the United States were making major decisions about the layout and status of the new world order. It becomes clear that Huntington would believe future conflicts would arise from cultural differences due to previous cultural clashes and that the most powerful country in the world, the United States, was also unable to create solutions for conflicts fueled by cultural differences.

Samuel P. Huntington was a brilliant student and political scientist who wrote numerous articles and is most notably recognized for his novel “The Clash of Civilizations.” He attended college at Yale University and went on to get his PhD in political science. Moreover he was a Harvard professor

While liberalism believes war to be avoidable through education, reformation of social institutions, and shared interests with other nations, realism finds war to be an unavoidable consequence of the self-preservation of the state. Liberalism sees the potential for and desires change, while realism finds change unlikely. Both theories agree on the principle that the international system is anarchic in nature. However, whereas realism relies on a balance of power to keep the system in check, liberalism does so through cooperation of international institutions and mutual interest of various states.

Reacting to the theory of Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington resumed the expression "Clash of civilizations" in 1993 and speculates that it is mainly cultural and religious identities

Compare and contrast Realism and Liberalism as theories used in the study of International Relations

To begin with Francis Fukuyama's, provocative thesis, that after the fall of communism in Europe and the withering of the grand ideological contests, history too has ended. In his "end of history" theory, he maintained that the western liberal democracy had become the `final form of human government'. The fact is that though not all theorists have this kind of a faith in liberal democracy, and believe that it's not the only feasible form of democracy, they are in a minority. The theoretical circles and the popular discourse have been dominated by "liberal democracy."

In conclusion, however, I find that it is not a meaningful argument to examine if ‘the end of history’ has indeed taken place, simply because Francis Fukuyama has set the basis of his theory too wide. People will naturally gravitate towards having more options in their lives, be it socially, economically or in this case, politically. This tendency would thus make Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ irrefutable. The more pertinent question to explore would be how the end goal of liberal democracy can be properly managed, with it being based on the twin principles of liberty and equality. At this end point of history as we know it, trade-offs have to be made between the two- equality cannot be achieved without the actions of a state controlling liberty, while liberty cannot be attained fully without social inequality. The end of history has dawned, where there would be no further meaningful challenge to liberal democracy, but a new battle awaits with the conundrum of balance between liberty and equality in liberal

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