The History at the End of History

Fifteen years ago in my book The End of History and the Last Man I argued that, if a society wanted to be modern, there was no alternative to a market economy and a democratic political system. Not everyone wanted to be modern, of course, and not everyone could put in place the institutions and policies necessary to make democracy and capitalism work, but no alternative system would yield better results.

While the “ End of History ” thus was essentially an argument about modernization, some people have linked my thesis about the end of history to the foreign policy of President George W. Bush and American strategic hegemony. But anyone who thinks that my ideas constitute the intellectual foundation for the Bush administration’s policies has not been paying attention to what I have been saying since 1992 about democracy and development.

President Bush initially justified intervention in Iraq on the grounds of Saddam’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, the regime’s alleged links to al-Qaida, as well as Iraq’s violation of human rights and lack of democracy. As the first two justifications crumbled in the wake of the 2003 invasion, the administration increasingly emphasized the importance of democracy, both in Iraq and in the broader Middle East, as a rationale for what it was doing.

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