Posted on 03/21/2006 2:24:51 PM PST by Crackingham
That's some feud between the White House and Francis Fukuyama, the Johns Hopkins professor and author of "The End of History and the Last Man." Here's Mr. Fukuyama writing in or quoted in the New York Times sniping at the Bush administration, and there's the White House firing back by e-mail quoting Mr. Fukuyama's past statements in contrast to his current ones.
This is, of course, painful for those of us who have been friendly with both sides. I don't think, at this point, reconciliation is possible. It would probably ease tensions to some degree if Mr. Fukuyama presented his current critique as a major revision in his thinking about the prospects for the spread of democratic capitalism around the world, especially in the Arab Middle East, rather than as an outgrowth of his previous work. That's because this administration has been more influenced by Mr. Fukuyama's work than by that of any other living thinker.
Mr. Fukuyama, in "The End of History and the Last Man," posited classically liberal, democratic capitalism as the final answer to the question of how the world's political economy would be organized, a system beyond the reach of serious challenge by any ideological competitor. Going forward, how the challenge of radical Islam fits into this scheme is an unsettled question. But the more important element of Mr. Fukuyama's analysis was his twofold explanation of why democraticcapitalism prevails.
The first element was simply its success: The command economies of the Soviet era were failures, and the productive capacity of the West (broadly construed) outstrips that of all other economic "models."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Add in the fact that one of hte contributing factors to World War 1 was that average European citizens wanted to have a war and the fact that Hitler was popularly elected and I find little reason to believe his central idea. Plus, I personally don't discount a possible future conflict with Japan.
You want to explain your reasonong on that?
I don't think it will happen in the near future, and I don't think it is inevitable nor even likely. Just that it is possible. Culturally, Japan is still very different from us and to a large degree is still in denial about World War 2. Currently they vote similiarly to America on many international issues, but their logic is a bit doggy -- they aren't voting that way because they have independently decided we have the best policy, and they aren't voting that way because they feel friendship. In a lot of ways, they have the attitude "The US beat us in WW2, so they are stronger than we are; therefore we should obey them". The problem is that if the US becomes too stretched or has a crises, Japan can easily decide that we are no longer stronger and they can start bullying their neighbors again.
Their new model of warfare is economic, and while they might have problems in that area right now, I think they enjoy the warfare of business over the other kind.
Now they darn well know that we can't police the whole world, and that their continued survival in light of Chinese and N.Korean sabre rattling will require more effort and commitment from them militarily. A fact bourne out by their recents actions of expanding military roles and budgets, and even offering troops in the middle east. I beieve they are also working, or at least talking about, ammending their post war constitution to allow it.
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