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| Volume XIV, Summer 2007, Number 1 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy, by Francis Fukuyama. Library of Congress, 2006. 226 pages. $16.50, hardcover.
Zerougui Abdelkader
Adjunct professor at the American University, Washington D.C.
In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, a former State Department employee and now the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, argued in his famous The End of History and the Last Man that the war of ideologies has ended; liberalism has triumphed. However, Fukuyama is not satisfied with revealing the meaning of history; he wants to give history a nudge. Accordingly, for the past 15 years, he has been a crusader for war and coercive regime change around the world, but particularly in the Middle East. Indeed, he is one of the founders, along with fellow neoconservatives Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz , Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Norman Podhoretz, Elliott Abrams and Jeb Bush, of the Project for the New American Century, which provided the George Bush government with the doctrine of preventive war. Shortly thereafter, he was among the 18 prominent intellectuals and politicians who signed a petition on January 26, 1998, urging the Clinton administration to consider military action to overthrow President Saddam Hussein. Worst, a little more than a week after the 9/11 attack — on September 20, 2001, to be exact — Fukuyama signed a letter arguing, “Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Fukuyama is also a staunch apologist for the most reactionary and xenophobic movements around the world, especially when Muslims are the targets of hatred. He is a friend of French interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy and a supporter of the French Le Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen. In his new book, America at the Crossroads, Fukuyama seems to have had a change of heart. But has he really?
The objective of America at the Crossroads is threefold: 1) to sketch a history of neoconservatism, 2) to assess the Bush administration foreign policy and show how it deviated from the principles of neoconservatism, and 3) to defend a new foreign policy that combines ideals and interests, a Realistic Wilsonianism that “takes international institutions seriously [and calls for] political and economic development” (p.11).
The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath are the main reasons Fukuyama insists on distinguishing between neoconservatism and the Bush administration. Fukuyama argues that neoconservatives are not to blame for the invasion of Iraq and the debacle that ensued. According to him, even though neoconservatives hold that all the peoples of the world have the right to be free and that the American government is endowed with a divine mission to hasten the transformation of tyrannical regimes and free the masses from totalitarian cultures, they do not share the doctrine of preemption either to safeguard the “free world” or to advance the cause of democracy. Indeed, Fukuyama sees in the Bush doctrine a setback for the neoconservative agenda. Bush and his advisers, according to Fukuyama, have deviated from the ideals of neoconservatism.
Fukuyama further argues that the Bush government used force as a means towards achieving qualitative change in the Middle East as a result of the euphoria that followed the collapse of the USSR and the events that shook Eastern Europe. He explains that it is “[t]he rapid, unexpected, and… peaceful collapse of communism” that “validated the concept of regime change” (p. 52). However, Fukuyama cautions that what happened in the USSR and in Eastern Europe may not happen again. He further contends that the ideas he developed in The End of History and the Last Man are not a recipe for non-democratic societies to catch up with the modern world or, for that matter, an excuse for the American government to use force to topple foreign governments. In brief, Fukuyama disagrees with mainstream conservatives not about what ought to be the goals of American foreign policy, but only about its means. He thinks that American foreign policy is overly militarized. Instead of using force, he claims, American policy makers should try to win hearts and minds.
Fukuyama does a good job of introducing his readers to American foreign-policy debates. He also provides them with a good picture of the intellectual foundations of neoconservatism. However, I think the most important insight of the book is his analysis of the relationship between Islam and Jihadism.
Fukuyama explains Jihadism in the “context of a modern, global and multicultural world” (p. 72). Unlike most commentators on the subject, who tend either to oversimplify the issue or engage in demagoguery, Fukuyama argues that Jihadism is a “product of modernity”and all the problems that go with it, including alienation, exclusion, and anomie. It is, he says, the failure of Western countries to integrate their large Muslim populations rather than Islamic doctrine and culture that is the cause of their radicalization. The danger, he says, comes not from “pious Muslims in the Middle East but alienated and uprooted young people in Hamburg, London or Amsterdam” (p. 74). Yet, some criticisms of Fukuyama’s book are in order.
Fukuyama’s new Realistic Wilsonianism adds little to the foreign-policy debate. Fukuyama’s belief that better international organizations and social and economic development will help spread democracy are not original ideas. The socioeconomic policies advocated by Fukuyama have been a staple of the international-relations debate for decades, and they have not worked. More important, Fukuyama fails to acknowledge that powerful countries often have hidden agendas when they claim to be benevolent. More often than not, foreign economic aid and the intervention of international financial institutions benefit donor nations more than the poor ones. Furthermore, aid perpetuates the poor nations’ dependency and strengthens the unequal power relations between rich and poor.
Finally, it may be true that at least some neoconservatives genuinely believe that the goals of American foreign policy are to spread democracy and the American way of life around the globe, and create an appropriate environment for the emancipation of mankind. However, in reality, force and interests rule the world. The events of the past 60 years show that American foreign policy is driven by the desire to maintain the status quo in the Arab world and convert unfriendly states into satellites to preserve American control over energy resources and open new markets for arms and American products. The rest is mere rhetoric. This is clearly indicated by the American reaction to the 9/11 events. Even though Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were the main backers of the Taliban, most of the 9/11 conspirators were Saudis. In addition, although the money that financed the operation came directly from the oil monarchies, Iraq and Syria were blamed. Furthermore, it does not seem to bother American foreign-policy makers that, in the 1980s and early 1990s, Saudi-backed Wahhabists infiltrated mosques and Islamic organizations all over the world and created a generation of radical preachers and armies of thugs that it will take generations to dismantle. Finally, it is significant that successive American administrations call the monarchs of the most retrograde and backward Arabic-speaking countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco, “friendly,” “enlightened” and “moderate” leaders.
On balance, Fukuyama may have changed some of his ideas about how to conduct foreign policy. But he still thinks that liberalism is the pinnacle of history and obligatory for all nations. In fact, it is just one ideology among others. This kind of outmoded thinking — which is at the core of colonialism and imperialism — is the real danger for the world.
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