What is the greatest challenge to the Obama administration at this point in time? Is the wave of political upheavals sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East good or bad for the United States? Francis Fukuyama, who is best-known for his book The End of History and the Last Man, has some interesting perspectives on these and some other questions. According to him, the biggest foreign policy challenge to the present US administration is Pakistan-a problem that has no solution.
"Oh, there's no question that the biggest foreign policy challenge is Pakistan right now. You know we have been preoccupied with Afghanistan, but Pakistan is a much scarier country because they've got nuclear weapons already, it's probably the most anti-American country and yet it's supposedly an ally of ours. And all of the trends in that country in the last few years have been bad degree of religious extremism, and intolerance is increasing. It's not a little tucked away country like Afghanistan, but a really big, central one. And so Pakistan goes south, you know, I think we are all in a big trouble. This [Pakistan] is a problem that I don't know has a solution. I am not sure if I were the Obama administration, you know, what I do about that country because in a way it's really beyond our power to control. In a certain sense that might be an excuse for, you know, withdrawing from Afghanistan because it's the Afghan involvement that's really created this huge tension between us and Pakistan. But even if we pulled out, you know, things could still go very wrong in that country," Fukuyama says at Charlie's Green Room.
But his reply to the question whether the current developments in North Africa and the Middle East are good or bad for the US comes at an interview at Charlie Rose Show. Fukuyama argues: "It could be either. I have never seen a period where you could have such divergent outcomes. I think it's scary for the United States in many ways because even if two or three cases really turn out really good-Egypt and Tunisia develop into real democracies--Yemen could sink into a Somalia-like state of chaos. It has already got al Qaeda there, and it may be that this becomes another breeding ground for further terrorism and radicalism in the region." According to Fukuyama, it will be extremely difficult for the US Secretary of State to pay attention to six or seven "simultaneous crises".
Answering a question whether Samuel Huntington's judgement of his argument-the clash of civilisations- has been confirmed or rejected, or it is misunderstood, Fukuyama says: "Well, I didn't like that argument as much as some of his other earlier arguments....I sort of think that the Arab Spring in a way is evidence in other direction, you know, because he said something about Muslim culture that would really make it different in its development from the things going on in the West or Asia. And I think and what I perceive in places like Egypt and Tunisia is that people don't like living under authoritarian governments anymore than any one does in the world. They are joining the party a little bit late, but they are going to participate."
Answering a related question, he says: "Well, in 1968, Huntington's first book, I think, it's still his greatest, was a book called Political Order in Changing Societies...that precisely what he argued because there was a whole of instability then in the developing world--coups and civil wars. And he was saying, `well, actually they are not staged by the poorest of the poor: they are staged by middle class people; they have got education and then they are not allowed to participate; they don't have job opportunities; and they are the ones who are dangerous in a society'."
Answering a question whether the judgement of history by his own book (The End of History and the Last Man) has been confirmed, rebutted or misunderstood, Fukuyama claims: "Well, I think the argument looks better today because a lot of my critics said `look you're forgetting about September 2001 and the fact that there's a whole part of the world that isn't going to participate in this global democratic revolution'. Now we are not out of the woods yet, and we don't have good democracies in the Arab world at the moment. But I think in a lot of ways the impulse is there that has shown this argument about their being a cultural exception in either Muslim countries or Arab countries is really not true."
Fukuyama articulates his response to his own argument `it was a triumph of liberal democracy' that he advanced after the fall of the Berlin Wall, etc, in words: "I think, actually that despite this initial impulse towards democracy. We've actually been disappointed in lot of places. Like a good example is Ukraine. In 2004, you had the Orange Revolution that looked a lot like these demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia. They got rid of an old communist apparatchik that had stolen an election. But they could not deliver on good government. They squabbled. The democratic leaders squabbled among themselves. And the very guy that stole the election in 2004 just got elected....A little bit. He had moderated a little bit. But, he's basically the same, you know, guy, I think, with basically authoritarian instincts. So in a way it was a huge disappointment because the democratic forces really couldn't create durable institutions."
Responding to host's remarks that there's some gap between the instincts for liberal democracies and the capacity to create those, to maintain them and sustain them, he says: "the gap is called an institution; and an institution is something durable; it lasts beyond the personality of a particular leader or, you know, organiser. And it means that you can have a democracy that, you know, can deliver on what people want, which is, you know, education, healthcare and a responsive government and all these things."
What impact does the Arab Spring have on Islamic radicalism/extremism? According to Fukuyama, it could be a great scenario and it could be a terrible one. "Right now in Egypt, for example, the polling data seems to show that the majority of Egyptians have relatively moderate views. They don't want to turn their country into another Iran. But they are not well-organised. The two forces in the country that are organised are the army and the Muslim Brothers....We don't know [about the direction]. The army, I am sure, doesn't [want to turn Egypt into another Iran]. The Muslim Brothers, I think, is a mixed picture. Some of them do want to have a strict Islamist society and others may want to be more like Turkey".