The events of 9/11 opened a new chapter in global affairs, wherein the ‘war on terror’ became the new buzzword to invade nation-states that were tyrannical in their disposition.

Manish Tewari

DURING a recent dialogue on ‘A Global Order in Churn: Seeking Solutions’ and their implications in the contemporary strategic context, a stray reference to two books written in the early and mid-1990s prompted a think.

These books were The End of History and the Last Man (1992) by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama and The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (1996) by Samuel P Huntington.

Fukuyama’s book was a sequel to a 1989 article that he wrote in a magazine called National Interest a couple of months before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He argued that “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 universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government…”

Essentially, what he argued was that the Western liberal and democratic model would be the default option of the global order in the years and decades ahead.

On the other hand, Huntington argued in his book that the epoch of ideology had reached an inflection point, and thereafter, humankind would regress into an age delineated by cultural conflict all over again. In his hypothesis, he argued that, henceforth, the primary axis of conflict would be along cultural trajectories.

He postulated that the template of diverse civilisations as the pinnacle of cultural distinctiveness would evolve into a progressively efficacious matrix in analysing both the potential for conflict and the genesis of actual conflict. In a 1993 Foreign Affairs article, he prophesised about ‘the clash of civilisations’ by submitting that “This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilisations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what the future may be like.”

Both Fukuyama and Huntington were gazing into the crystal ball, trying to predict the ebb and flow of historical and Westphalian impulses in shaping the post-communist world order that had led to a unique situation of unipolarity in international affairs, with the US emerging as the only hegemon after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the collapse of its Eastern European satellite states that brought about an end to ‘bloc politics’ that had characterised the post-World War II global milieu.

Almost three decades later, how did both these seminal treatises measure up in predicting the train of global events since their publication in the 1990s. This becomes especially relevant at a point in time when, after the end of World War II, humankind is witness to a three-continent conflict playing itself out concurrently. These battles are the Russia-Ukraine War that began in February 2022, the Israel-Hamas conflict that broke out in October last year and the rise of China over the past three decades that has attained portentous overtones in large parts of the world beyond the immediate Chinese realms in North Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Rewinding to September 11, 2001, when semi-state actors put the only omnipresent hyper power in the world, the US, on notice by crashing passenger-filled jet liners into the World Trade Centre, liberal democracy certainly has not emerged as the global choice.

The events of 9/11 opened a new chapter in global affairs, wherein the ‘war on terror’ became the new buzzword to invade nation-states that were tyrannical in their disposition but by no stretch of imagination directly involved in the events that took place on that tragic September morning in New York. The invasion of the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, codenamed Operation Enduring Freedom, on October 7, 2001, was not a clash of civilisations but a tactical attempt to get even with the masterminds of 9/11, namely the Osama bin Laden-led Al-Qaeda that had found sanctuary in Afghanistan.

The events in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021 demonstrate that despite the US spending $2.3 trillion on the war there (almost $300 million a day), the country did not turn into a democratic haven for the Afghans. In fact, Afghanistan was the classical test case for the Fukuyama thesis, courtesy the direct involvement of the US for over 20 years. Neither was it a clash of civilisations, for if that had been the case, the US would not have got into negotiations with the same Taliban it had ousted 20 years ago. The talks resulted in the Doha Agreement of February 29, 2020, paving the way for the handing back of Afghanistan to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, in a rather ignominious manner. It was a classical raison d’état at play.

Similarly, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the subterfuge of finding non-existent weapons of mass destruction did not turn Iraq into a democratic utopia but unleashed such tectonic forces across West Asia that continue to rise like apparitions after staying buried for over a century, after the reordering of the Greater Middle East in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919. Neither was the invasion of Iraq a clash of civilisations, for if that had been the case, the Anglo-Saxon civilisation would not have given up after expending $3 trillion and 3,00,000 dead, the overwhelming bulk of them Iraqi civilians. It was again raison d’état at play.

Similarly, the invasion of Libya in 2011 under the rubric of Right to Protect (R2P) has neither turned Libya into a democratic paradise, nor was it a clash of civilisations by any stretch of imagination. The impulse was to get rid of Col Muammar Gaddafi’s despotic regime, as the Iraq invasion was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Libya, unfortunately, has been a paragon of instability for the past 13 years.

Likewise, after the collapse of communism in the 1990s, China did not become democratic, nor is its ominous rise a civilisational struggle with the other cultures. It is again purely driven by what China perceives as its national interest.

The affairs of people and nations are still governed by two fundamental precepts, both dating back to the 17th century. The first was coined by Cardinal Richelieu, namely raison d’état, that each nation acts in its best national interest and the second — the doctrine of balance of power conceptualised by Hugo Grotius and first put into practice by William of Orange, later King

William III of England.