Toward the Second Cold War?

Francis Fukuyama was wrong. The end of the Cold War was not the end of history.

This was his thesis which appeared in the Summer 1989 issue of the National Interest when the world was about to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall as a symbol of Western and Eastern blocs: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” When the wall was brought down in 1989 and the Soviet Union dismembered itself in 1992, Fukuyama’s book was printed the same year as evidence for his prophecy.

The bi-polar world was over and the capitalist system as practiced by Americans had won over the socialist system as practiced by the Russians and the world would live happily ever after. No it was not the case, Fukuyama did not win over Karl Marx or even François Mitterand.

Look at today’s world.

It is true that the USA has supremacy in almost every strategic field. It produces a quarter of the World’s economic output. Its military power is bigger than the sum of the ten next countries; that includes Russia and China.

But China? Did China have any place in Fukuyama wonderland? How about the European Union? How about al-Qaeda then, with its army of terror without a flag, without nations and its authority without borders as if an end result of half of the world’s economy, the unregistered one, the left over people, the unregistered and ignored ones? And how about the ethnic and religious polarization pervading world politics now?

Is it a coincidence that world politics are back to square one at the 38th parallel North in the Korean peninsula after 60 years? Wasn’t that the official start of the Cold War only five years after the official end of the Second World War in 1945, following two terrible atomic bombs dropped by Americans over two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagazaki. Ironically enough, Japan, as one of world’s biggest economic powers, is now siding with the Americans against one of the most terrible, inhuman regimes on earth in North Korea, which is backed by Russia and China.

But Russia? Was that chapter of the book not over already? No sir, Russians are live and kicking after a decade of sobering up, thanks to the well used oil and gas money with inflated prices thanks to the US invasion of Iraq and sustained tension with Iran over its nuclear program. (Iran, nuclear?) Moscow has just announced a US$ 50 billion new space program on the same day that an American commander in Europe declared that Russia is still the main rival.

Yes, but it is not only Russia as the picture shows itself.

The First World War had not been called “the First” up until the second one broke out and the realization that it was really a global one. We can start talking about the Second Cold War already; a multi-polar one. How about that, ultra-liberal Polyannas?