Geopolitics at the end of the Cold War

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Geopolitics at the end of the Cold War
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Aims of lecture

• Outline (neo)liberal approaches to geopolitics at
  the end of the Cold War
• Outline neo-Conservative approaches to
  geopolitics at the end of the Cold War
• Explore the similarities and differences between
  these worldviews

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Fukuyama and the end of history

• Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
  Francis Fukuyama declares the end of history
• In doing so, he is directly following the German
  philosopher Hegel, who had
• made the same claim nearly
• 200 hundred years earlier.

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Hegel 1770-1831

• Hegels understanding of the world can be
  described as dialectical idealism, meaning
• - New ideas are forged through the dialectical
  struggle between two contradictory ways of
  thinking
• - It is these ideas that drive changes
• in the material world
• So, history is the product of a
• series of shifts in popular
• consciousness, not a reflection
• of material processes

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The French Revolution, 1789

• Inspired by Enlightenment ideas of liberty,
  equality and fraternity, a revolution emerges in
  France aimed at overthrowing the monarchy and the
  landed aristocracy
• The Declaration of the Rights
• of Man and Citizen, approved
• by the French National Assembly
• in 1789, asserts that all men are
• born free and equal
• Following Napoleons defeat of the Prussian army
  at Jena in 1806, Hegel declares the end of
  history, ideology has reached its historically
  determined endpoint with liberal democracy

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• In 1989, Fukuyama repeated this claim based on
  what he saw as the final collapse of any
  alternative to liberal democracy
• Fascism had with WWII and the fall of the Third
  Reich, and communism was a discredited and
  decaying system
• Western liberalism would now proceed its march
  across the globe, universally embraced by
• people who had come to be persuaded
• not through force of military threat or
• economic unrest but through the force
• of the ideals of market liberalism

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Globalization the end of Geopolitics?

• For Fukuyama, the globalization of market
  liberalism will be a uneven, halting process and
  the US must continue to provide global leadership
  during this transition

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Iraq and the New World Order

• As Americans we know there are times when we
  must step forward and accept our responsibility
  to lead the world away from the dark chaos of
  dictatorsalmost 50 years ago we began a long
  struggle against aggressive totalitarianism. Now
  we face another defining hour for America and the
  world.
• President George Bush, 1991

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Losing control?

• PNAC founded in 1997 in response to what they saw
  as Clintons weak and incoherent foreign policy
• Stresses the need for a foreign policy that will
  maintain and advance American interests in the
  new century
• 20th century history tells us to embrace the
  cause of US leadership - America must show the
  military strength necessary to promote political
  and economic freedom abroad and challenge regimes
  that our hostile to our interests
• Not everyone agreed

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Clashing Civilizations

• More classical, neo-realist/Conservative
  geopolitical thinking also continued, most
  famously through Samuel Huntingtons Clash of
  Civilizations?
• Huntington critiqued the (neo)liberal claims of
  Fukuyama and others, arguing that the iron
  curtain of ideology was being replaced by the
  velvet curtain of culture (1993)
• As the West attempts to by the forces of
  globalize market liberalism, civilizational
  identities are reinvigorated not transcended in
  places where notions of human rights are at
  odds with traditional, local values

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The West and the Rest

• For Huntington, the major faultlines for conflict
  in the New World Order will be between the
  Islamic and Western world
• Islam has bloody borders (Huntington, 1993)
• The US must instead develop a policy of
  containment and coexistence against the threat of
  Islamic fundamentalism

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Conclusions

• The end of the Cold War appeared to signal an end
  to the ideological struggle between capitalism
  and communism
• Many (neo)liberal thinkers argued that this would
  eventually lead to the globalization of Western
  liberalism
• For Neo-Conservatives however, the US must
  continue a policy of containment against the new
  global threat - Islamic fundamentalism