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Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama Summer 1999

The seeds for "The ?" of my book.1 ' offer to were planted in a conversation I had publish a ten-year retrospective did, with Owen Harries on the sunny patio however, seem to be an opportunity of the Beverly Hills Hotel, some time too good to pass up, particularly in in the winter of 1987-88. This was the light of the fact that I had learned first time I had ever met this displaced something in the interim, not so much Australian with great ambitions for a about world politics, but about new and obscure journal called The modern science. Hence the current National Interest; I was impressed by article. his energy and intelligence, and I will state my bottom line at the gratified to be asked to contribute. outset. Nothing that has happened in The only problem was that I had world politics or the global economy in nothing to give him. At that time I was the past ten years challenges, in my working as a researcher in Soviet view, the conclusion that liberal politics at the RAND Corporation; at democracy and a market-oriented some point later in 1988 I read a economic order are the only viable speech by Gorbachev in which he said options for modern societies. The most that the essence of was serious developments in that period competition. I immediately called a have been the economic crisis in Asia political theorist friend and said, "If and the apparent stalling of reform in this is true, we've reached the end of Russia. But while these developments history." He, knowing his Hegel, are rich in lessons for policy, they are understood what I meant immediately. in the end correctable by policy and do This observation became the basis for not constitute systematic challenges to a lecture on the triumph of the West the prevailing liberal world order. that I delivered at the University of On the other hand, the argument the following winter, and then that I used to demonstrate that for the article I submitted to The History is directional, progressive and National Interest. There was, of that it culminates in the modern course, no respectable academic liberal state, is fundamentally flawed. journal that would print an article with Only one of the hundreds of a title like "The End of History?", commentators who discussed "The much less one that would feature it End of History" ever identified its true prominently and invite a variety of weakness: History cannot come to an distinguished to comment end as long as modern natural science on it. Owen did, and the rest was, as has no end; and we are on the brink of they say, history. new developments in science that will, I have been asked to reconsider and in essence, abolish what Alexandre hopefully recant my End of History Kojeve called "mankind as such." hypothesis at regular intervals virtually from the first month that it The Argument was published. I did publish a five- In recapitulating my original year retrospective in a volume edited argument, I refer readers not to the by Timothy Burns that included some of the most thoughtful critiques yet published of the philosophical aspects 1 Burns, ed., After History: Francis Fukuyama and His Critics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994). Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

article that appeared ten years ago in Human beings desire not just material The National Interest2, but to my 1992 well-being; they seek recognition of book The End of History and the Last their dignity and status on the part of Man3, which developed the article's other human beings, and this demand themes in a more systematic way. for recognition is the fundamental Much of the initial debate over "The passion that underlies politics. The End of History" was a silly matter of desire for recognition can take many semantics, with many readers not forms, from recognition of one's gods understanding that I was using or holy places to recognition of one's "History" in its Hegelian-Marxist national identity within the sense of the progressive of community of . Modern politics human political and economic is based on the idea, elaborated most institutions. Not surprisingly, many of fully in the German idealist tradition, the most intelligent and perceptive that the only ultimately rational form early critics were Marxists who didn't of recognition is universal recognition get hung up over my use of the term of all human beings on the basis of History, but challenged only my their equal dignity as moral agents. A conclusion that it culminated in modern is simply a bourgeois liberal democracy rather set of political institutions designed to than socialism4. secure these universal rights, which are today enshrined in documents like The basic argument that History in the American Bill of Rights, the this sense exists and leads ultimately Universal Declaration of Human to liberal democracy and Rights and the basic of most can be stated briefly. There are two contemporary democracies. separate motors driving the historical process. The first is economic. What The Three-Part Syllogism gives History its fundamental directionality and progressive If we move to a more practical character is modern natural science. realm of discourse, these ideas could Scientific knowledge about the world be translated into public policy and the ability to manipulate nature through a set of three interlocking through is cumulative; propositions constituting a steam power and the computer chip "democratic syllogism" underlying cannot be uninvented once they are U.S. foreign policy over the past discovered. The progress of science decade. The first proposition was that and technology in turn creates a liberal democracies tend not to fight frontier of production possibilities and one another, and that existing thus an economic order. Economic democracies could improve their modernization is a coherent process; security by enlarging the so-called all societies, regardless of cultural democratic "zone of peace." The starting points, must accept its basic correlation between democracy and terms of reference. And finally, peace has been debated with particular markets are the most efficient drivers intensity in the past few years5; despite of economic development.

The second motor is what Hegel 5 For some recent books on this topic, see called the "struggle for recognition." Michael E. Brown and Sean M. Lynn- Jones, Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); 2 Fukuyama, "The End of History?", The Miriam Fendius Elman, Paths to Peace: Is National Interest (Summer 1989). Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: 3 Fukuyama, The End of History and the MIT Press, 1997); and Spencer Weart, Last Man (New York: , 1992). Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not 4 The New Left Review devoted an issue Fight One Another (New Haven: Yale to "The End of History?" (May/June 1992). University Press, 1998).

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the arguments that have been raised the sort advocated by against it, I believe that this during the Nixon years. correlation still stands as one of the The second proposition in the few non-trivial assertions that political democratic syllogism was the view that science can make concerning the best means of promoting international politics. democracy was through economic The proposition is most defensible development. The correlation between if we keep in mind, first, that it is level of economic development (as liberalism more than democracy that measured by per capita GDP) and is the true institutional basis for the stable democracy is, after the so-called democratic peace, and democratic peace correlation, the second, that there is merely a second nontrivial generalization that correlation and not an iron-clad can be made about world politics. The relationship between the degree of development-democracy correlation liberal democratic consolidation and has proven to be more robust by the peace (the major counter-examples 1990s than it was when first laid out cited by critics all tend to involve by in the countries with weak or incompletely 1950s6. has shown developed liberal democratic recently that while level of institutions, like the antebellum development does not affect the American South or Wilhelmine likelihood that a country will attempt Germany). Those who doubt this the transition from authoritarian correlation need only look at the fact regime to democracy, it has a critical that the former and its impact on the likelihood that Warsaw Pact allies in effect democracy will be stable: above a level unilaterally disarmed themselves after of $6,000 per capita GDP in 1992 1989 on the basis of an internal change parity purchasing power, there is not a in regime type, rather than a change in single historical instance of a the external balance of power, which democratic country reverting to according to the realist school of authoritarianism7. Spain, Portugal, international politics should drive Greece, Taiwan and South Korea all policy. made their transitions to democracy at or near this magical figure. The democracy-peace correlation implied that democracy promotion The development-democracy would be an integral part of U.S. correlation had a number of policy foreign policy. Even if the correlation implications. The first was that if a did not exist, the United States on political avenue toward democracy ideological grounds would tend toward promotion appeared to be blocked, as a Wilsonian foreign policy, and so was the case for China after indeed the Reagan, Bush and Clinton Tiananmen, economic development in administrations all made use of itself could be expected to prepare the Wilsonian rhetoric and set Wilsonian ground, over time, for greater aims for the United States. The pluralism, liberalization and differences between administrations eventually democracy. While Samuel lay less in whether to promote Huntington's theory of the democracy, than in how to do so: Republicans tended to be a bit more hard-headed than Democrats in 6 Lipset, "Some Social Requisites of assessing where and under what Democracy: Economic Development and conditions democracy might Political Legitimacy", American Political realistically emerge. But few Science Review vol. 53 (March 1959). administrations have been able to 7 Adam Przeworski and Michael Alvarez, cleave to a strictly realpolitik line of "What Makes Democracies Endure?", Journal of Democracy (January 1996).

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authoritarian transition (i.e., that we the economy and international ought to encourage economic relations interacted, and how modernization before political movement in one area was expected to ) was never officially promote movement in another. resurrected by the Clinton Liberalization of economic policy administration, many people had in would lead to rapid economic growth, the back of their minds the possibility which in turn would lead to the that the pattern established by Spain, development of democratic political Korea and Taiwan might be repeated institutions, which would then enlarge in other authoritarian but rapidly the democratic zone of peace and developing societies like China, promote the security of those nations Malaysia and Indonesia. inside it. The third element of the democratic There was, of course - and there syllogism was the view that the best still is - a large part of the world for way to promote economic growth was which this optimistic scenario seems a to integrate a country fully into the distant dream. There are rogue states liberal capitalist trade and investment like and North Korea that are regime. That is, countries would grow actively trying to overturn the the fastest by lowering tariff barriers, democratic international order. Much ending subsidies, privatizing state- of the Islamic world outside of Turkey owned industries, opening up their for cultural reasons seems unable to internal capital markets to external adopt either liberal economic or capital flows, and the like. political institutions; and sub-Saharan Development strategies that had been Africa has so many problems that its popular earlier in the century, like lack of political and economic import substitution or state-led development seems overdetermined. investment, were roundly rejected in On the other hand, in the 1990s, there favor of what came to be labeled, in was a substantial part of the world - the early 1990s, as the "Washington societies in Latin America, Asia and consensus." the former communist world - for which one could imagine the scenario There were, of course, working. disagreements over how best to implement this package of economic The Changing Critique reforms, but the general idea that came to predominate in the early It is hard to believe that there is at 1990s was some version of "shock this point any perspective from which therapy." The political logic behind "The End of History" has not been this non-gradualist approach, criticized, so often and so relentlessly particularly for post-communist has the thesis been attacked. In the societies, was that socialism and other early 1990s there was a great deal of state-centered economic policies had, speculation about alternative trends in for the moment, discredited world politics, trends that many themselves; there would be a observers felt led away from rather momentary window of opportunity than toward liberal democracy. The during which radical (and often most persistent worry concerned painful) economic reforms could be nationalism and ethnic conflict, a enacted; and that it was therefore perspective understandable in view of preferable to undertake them all at the conflicts in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, once rather than piecemeal before the Somalia and other hot spots. But other window slammed shut. types of regime were seen as being potential rivals to liberal democracy in This three-part democratic the contemporary world, including syllogism led to a coherent set of Islamic , Asian soft policies that explained how politics,

4 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

, or even a return to a If one wanted to make this case, the neo-Bolshevism. The most articulate late summer of 1998 was a good time exponent of this point of view was to do it. First and foremost was the Samuel Huntington, whose book The increasing degree of instability in the Clash of Civilizations8 is now regularly global financial system. The 1990s had paired with "The End of History" in opened with the liberalization of countless freshman courses on world capital markets all over the world, and politics as rival interpretations of the a flood of money amounting to post- order. I do not want to hundreds of billions of dollars flowing rehash the criticisms that I and others from the developed world into so- have made of Huntington (who is, in called emerging markets in Asia, Latin any event, a friend and former America and the former communist teacher), except to say that I feel he world. The decade then saw four major seriously underestimates the currency crises in the space of seven integrating forces of economic years: the European crisis of 1992 modernization and technological when sterling came under speculative change that will tend over time to blur attack; the peso crisis of 1994; the the boundaries between civilizations Asian crisis that engulfed Thailand, and promote a homogeneous set of South Korea and Indonesia in 1997; political and economic institutions and the Russian crisis of 1998. (To this among the world's most advanced list we might now add the Brazilian countries. I also do not believe it is crisis of 1999.) Following the Asian possible to have economic crisis, this money reversed course and development without a certain degree headed for safe havens like U.S. of value change in a Western direction. Treasury bills; the flow became a tidal wave after the Russian default in The developments of the second August. This turbulence in short-term half of the 1990s have been in many capital flows was devastating to the ways more threatening to the End of countries involved; Thailand, Korea, History hypothesis than those of the Indonesia and Russia all saw their first. I never argued, after all, that all national incomes cut in half in dollar countries would or could become terms in the space of a few weeks. Not democratic in the short-run, only that only were investors on Wall Street no there was an evolutionary logic to longer enamored of emerging markets, that would lead the there was a backlash against most advanced countries to liberal globalization on the part of people in democracy and markets. The fact that the countries affected by the crisis. In some countries like Serbia or Iran South Korea, the economic setback stood outside of this evolutionary became known as the "IMF Crisis"; process was therefore not a serious Malaysia's Mahathir reimposed capital counterargument. On the other hand, controls and returned to a crude, anti- if the motor driving this evolutionary Western rhetoric; and even free- process was shown to be broken - that market Hong Kong intervened to prop is, if any of the major links in the up its stock market. Countries like three-part syllogism proved to be false China, which did not have a - then the idea that history was convertible currency, appeared to progressive would have to be weather the storm best. rethought. The second important development Anno 1998 that occurred in mid-1998 was the fall of the Kiriyenko government and the apparent end of the reformist period of 8 Huntington, The post-Soviet Russian history. The and the Remaking of World Order (New seriousness of this development York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). should not be underestimated: much

5 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

of the euphoria of 1989 centered ideological shift. In contrast to the around the collapse of communism 1980s, when conservatives came to and the apparent embrace of capitalist power in the major industrial democracy by its heretofore greatest democracies, parties of the Left now enemy. Prior to 1998, it was possible ruled everywhere: the victory of to believe that Russia was on a reform Gerhard Schroder's Social Democratic track, moving more slowly than Party in late 1998 made Germany the Poland, Hungary or the Czech last major developed country to follow Republic, but nonetheless making this trend. In the eastern half of progress in dismantling socialism and Europe, former communists had building the institutions of a working returned to power in Poland, Hungary market economy and democratic and the Baltic states, pushing out the political system. Western new non-communist political actors policymakers could tell themselves that emerged after 1989. Even in the that even if Russian institutions looked world's oldest democracy, the United corrupt and imperfect, there were at States, there was an apparent retreat least powerful forces unleashed that from free-market principles as the U.S. would drive them in a reformist Congress voted down Fast Track direction. Competition from newly authority twice in 1997 and 1998, and privatized businesses and foreign gave in to protectionist pressures from capital would put pressure on the steel industry as the trade deficit inefficient state-owned enterprises to ballooned. become more efficient; if they didn't The collective significance of these do so, there would be a general late-1990s events was greater than economic crisis leading to political ethnic violence in the Balkans or pressure to finally bite the bullet and Somalia earlier in the decade, to accept painful changes. repeat, because they had implications Today, it is hard to be confident for some of the central tenets of the that the simple passage of time will democratic syllogism. They suggested lead to either better democracy or that there was serious instability, not market institutions in Russia. Clifford in some peripheral country, but at the Gaddy and Barry Ickes have in fact core of the global trade and investment suggested that the Russian economy, system, and that the development-via- with all of its unreconstructed, large globalization strategy promoted by state-owned enterprises, is actually in Washington and international a state of equilibrium and could go on financial institutions like the IMF for a long time without any pressure could lead to economic crisis rather for change.9 What this means, in than long-term growth. effect, is that the cultural obstacles to Does this mean, then, that 1998 will reform have proven insuperable: be considered in retrospect as a whatever the wishes of the Russian watershed year, when the headlong people at some level to join Western rush toward globalization, markets Europe, they, unlike the Eastern and democracy was suddenly Europeans, do not have the social reversed? Will it mark the beginning of habits needed to create modern a long secular shift to the Left, or else economic institutions and a market toward some form of economic economy. nationalism? Are we at the end, so to In 1998 there appeared to be other speak, of the End of History? straws in the wind signaling an The answer to these questions is, in my view, no. It still remains possible 9 Gaddy and Ickes, "Russia's Virtual that there is another shoe to drop, the Economy", result perhaps of a Chinese (September/October 1998). devaluation or an unanticipated

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blowup in the derivatives market, that jail, no one is about to advocate will convert the current emerging imitating Japan or trusting economic markets crisis into a global economic bureaucrats to manage growth. depression. If that happens, all bets More importantly, the economic will be off. But barring such a disaster, crisis has demonstrated that, even for it seems much more likely that the culturally distinctive countries in Asia, events of 1997-98 will represent the there is no alternative to democracy as bottom of an economic cycle for the a source of regime legitimacy. During developing world, and that the End of the heyday of the "Asian economic History hypothesis will emerge at the miracle", spokesmen like Singapore's other end not only unscathed, but former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew stronger in many ways. We have, on and Malaysia's Mahathir argued that the other hand, received a wake-up Asian values dictated a soft call to change certain specific policies. authoritarian form of government, in Neither market economies nor well- which freedom in the economic sphere functioning liberal democratic political would be coupled with paternalistic systems simply emerge of their own; dictatorship in the political realm. Lee they have to be built painstakingly, argued that this type of government and it is clear that a good deal of the was more in line with Asia's advice that Washington, the hierarchical Confucian traditions, and international financial institutions and that it reflected the consensus that the West more broadly have been existed in Asian societies favoring giving out needs to be rethought. growth over the kind of rights-based politics typical in the West. The Inevitability of Globalization The economic crisis that hit Asia For all of the hardship and setbacks has demonstrated the hollowness of suffered by Mexico, Thailand, Asian soft authoritarianism. For all of Indonesia, South Korea and Russia as his talk of Asian cultural a result of their integration into the distinctiveness, Lee never really had global economy, globalization is here the courage of his convictions: his to stay. There are three reasons for justification for continued thinking this. authoritarian rule lay not in the fact First, there remains no viable that he held the "mandate of heaven", alternative development model that but that his regime could deliver promises better results than continuing high rates of economic globalization, even after the crisis of growth. The problem with any regime 1997-98. In particular, globalization's that bases its legitimacy on economic chief competitor, the so-called "Asian performance rather than a more basic development model", has been even underlying principle of justice is that it more deeply discredited by events of is vulnerable in bad times. the past decade. At the peak of the The weakness of such regimes Japanese bubble economy in the late becomes glaringly evident if we 1980s, everyone from American contrast Indonesia and South Korea. management consultants to Mahathir All Indonesians understood that the bin Muhammed was singing the Suharto regime was highly corrupt, praises of Japanese state-led and that the Suharto children in development, in which a government particular were making off like planning agency oversees sectoral bandits. But no one was willing to rock transitions through its ability to the boat given the regime's record in allocate credit. Today, with Japan raising living standards continuously mired in its deepest recession since the since the 1960s. But whatever goodwill oil crisis, and with Finance Ministry or tolerance the regime enjoyed as a officials being regularly carted off to result of this performance evaporated

7 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

immediately the moment Indonesia either to upgrade the skills of fell into crisis: who needs a corrupt developed country workers (something dictator, after all, if the greater part of more easily said than done), or to raise the population is being pushed back the wages and improve the working into poverty? The legitimacy of the and environmental conditions of South Korean regime, by contrast, was workers in developing countries. But based not on promises of economic no trade union or socialist party in the performance but on the fact that it had West can mobilize its base around a established viable democratic program dedicated to raising living institutions after 1987; indeed, it standards in foreign countries; managed to elect the veteran protectionism on a national basis opposition candidate and human remains the only valid rallying cry. rights campaigner Kim Dae Jung in And while the Left will (justifiably) the teeth of the most severe economic push for the inclusion of labor crisis the country has faced since the standards and environmental issues Korean War. While there was on the agenda of the World Trade considerable social turmoil in Korea Organization, they face a daunting from the fall of 1997 on, no one challenge: how does the world contested the fundamental legitimacy community force Vietnam, India and of the system. Indeed, the usually particularly China to address seriously combative Korean trade unions pulled any of these issues, particularly when back from confrontation because they these countries are teetering on the faced not an oppressive military brink of economic crisis? regime but a democratically elected The third and final reason why president. globalization is not likely to be The second reason that reversed has to do with technology. globalization is unlikely to be reversed Contemporary globalization is is that the Left has a much bigger underpinned by the information problem dealing with the global technology revolution that has spread economy than does the Right. This is phone, fax, radio, television and the because the political base of any party internet to the most remote corners of of the Left remains an essentially the globe. Some observers have tried national one, while the problems of to argue that today's world economy is economic inequality that the Left seeks no more globalized than that of the to remedy can today be addressed only late nineteenth century, when at an international level, and require international trade and investment as governance mechanisms that are a percentage of world output were at extremely unlikely ever to be created. levels comparable to those of today. But this seriously underestimates the In the contemporary global communications revolution and the economy, capital has become much kinds of cultural changes it has more mobile than labor. This puts brought about. Today, no country can great pressure on the real wages of ever truly cut itself off from the global low-skill workers in developed media or from external sources of countries who have to compete against information; trends that start in one the millions of new low-skill workers corner of the world are rapidly who yearly enter the global labor replicated thousands of miles away. A market. Developed countries can country trying to opt out of the global either let real wages fall, as in the economy by cutting itself off from United States, or increase the social external trade and capital flows will safety net and take the pain in the still have to deal with the fact that the form of persistent high rates of expectations of its population are unemployment, as in Europe. shaped by their awareness of living Ultimately, the only remedy for this is

8 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

standards and cultural products unless it can be run more effectively. emerging from the outside world. There is plenty of blame to go around in the lead-up to the Asian and Thailand and Korea, following the Russian crises, and the primary blame advice of the IMF, have recovered in each case falls on national substantially: interest rates are now governments that made a series of down below pre-crisis levels; current mistakes such as failing to provide for accounts have moved back into adequate banking regulation, surplus and reserves have been permitting high levels of corruption, rebuilt; and in the case of Thailand, a providing implicit credit guarantees to new, far more democratic constitution companies to make non-economic has been written. Throughout Asia, investments, and the like. However, culturally rooted business practices - the United States and the international including the Korean chaebol, lifetime financial institutions that it largely employment in Japan, kin-based controls are also complicit in these business networks in Southeast Asia, mistakes. In retrospect, many of the and state-led economic development - policies originating out of Washington are receiving hard scrutiny. Many will in the decade since 1989 seem likely not survive into the next century, excessively naive and misguided in at but will be replaced with Western-style least three major ways. corporate governance and more transparent economic institutions. If The first mistake that American we have indeed reached the bottom of policymakers made was to defer the current economic cycle in Asia and excessively to the economists, and to other emerging markets, then the forget the priority of politics, democratic syllogism remains intact. governance and institutions. The liberalizing package of economic What Is To Be Done? reforms that constituted the "Washington consensus" of the early Does this mean then that 1990s was in itself unobjectionable. everything in the global political and The advice to deregulate, privatize, economic order is fine, and that there remove barriers to trade and are no lessons to be learned from the investment, and the like was basically experience of the last decade? The sound and constituted economic answer, in my view, is clearly no. policies that transitional or developing One of the criticisms of "The End of countries would have to follow sooner History", raised by among other or later if they expected to achieve people Margaret Thatcher, was that its long-term growth. The problem was prediction of progress toward that these policies presupposed the democracy and markets would make existence of political institutions that people complacent because they would could implement them, and come to believe it was inevitable. This institution-building was a much more was, of course, never my intention: difficult problem that was not human beings have to build effectively addressed from the outside. institutions, and need constantly to Take the case of Russia. One well revise policies in light of events to keep understood problem was that the so- them viable. They can make policy called "democrats" squabbled mistakes, as Western governments did continually among themselves and in the 1930s, that set back the cause of were never able to obtain a solid democratization for generations. We majority in the Duma. The political have in fact received a wake-up call base therefore never existed to push that all is not right in our new, through anything close to the radical globalized world: even if the system economic reform that was successfully still has no real competitors, it will not carried out in Poland. But the remain legitimate over the long run

9 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

governance problem went well beyond establishing a court system, banking this. Certain basic state institutions regulation and the like. The problem either never existed under the Soviet was that none of these state-building regime (such as a commercial court efforts was remotely adequate to the system that could adequately protect task, and when the decision time came property rights), or else were on whether to proceed with something dismantled as part of the transition like privatization, the advice was from communism (such as tax and always to push ahead. Private capital regulatory authorities with police markets also share a good deal of powers). blame: after Yeltsin's re-election in 1996, the Russian government, with As in the case of Sicily, the absence the help of Western investment of an enforceable system of property bankers, was marketing state debt - rights led to private agents getting into the infamous GKOs - to cover the business of property-rights government deficits that went to protection; much of what Russians subsidize loss-creating state label as "mafia" activity is actually a enterprises. This flood of foreign quasi-legitimate effort to sell private short-term capital from Western protection of property rights in a financial institutions prolonged the society where the state does not supply final day of reckoning and made the this as a public good. Privatization is a meltdown worse than it would state activity that takes a great deal of otherwise have been when the Russian institutional competence to carry off: it government finally defaulted in 1998. is difficult for even experienced governments to sequence the sale of The second mistake that American assets properly, to value them fairly, policymakers made was to and to set up a bidding system that is underestimate the cultural obstacles to transparent and free of corrupt development. As I argued in Trust: influence. Even the most apparently The Social Virtues and the Creation of successful privatizations, like the one Prosperity10, there are many societies carried out in the Czech Republic, that suffer from a crisis of trust. In were subject to the "tunneling" out of virtually all Latin American countries, assets by majority shareholders for example, there is a group of twenty, because the newly written securities thirty or forty prominent families did not provide adequate whose businesses will control a large protection for minority shareholder part of the country's GDP. These rights. In retrospect, it should have businesses are often linked in been clear that the Russian state did networks that bring together firms not come close to having the with no obvious synergies and whose institutional competence necessary to interrelationships are obscure to carry out a clean privatization of its outsiders; their raison d'etre is that gas and oil or other commodity they are controlled by extended kin industries; it should be no surprise groups. But while trust relations then that politically connected insiders within kinships are strong, the ability were able to scoop up assets, not to of people to work together as strangers operate them efficiently, but to loot is limited, producing a two-tier moral them. system in which family and friends are treated much better than everyone Many of the economic policy else, and in which public service is officials involved with Russia would seen as an opportunity to steal on say, in their own defense, that they did behalf of the family. This leads to in fact stress the importance of institutions, and that the United States and the international community more 10 Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues broadly gave Russia considerable help and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1995).

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nepotism and pervasive corruption, interest rate policy is best suited for and constitutes one of the major achieving either goal. obstacles to development for a wide It has been fairly clear to most of range of countries. the participants in this debate that one International financial institutions of the dysfunctions of the new global have, of course, long recognized that economy is the sheer volume of short- corruption represented a serious term capital sloshing around in it. problem. Given how deeply corruption Private capital markets, it would was embedded in many political appear, have not been terribly efficient systems and cultures, however, most over the past decade; they international agencies felt that there substantially mispriced risk by sending was relatively little they could do about hundreds of billions of dollars to Asia it other than restrict the degree of and Russia under the assumption that discretion open to local politicians in exchange rates would hold steady. The economic decision making. It is not receiving countries contributed to this clear, however, that this will continue problem by the incorrect sequencing of to be a tenable position, given the capital market sheer volume of aid and now foreign liberalization: both Thailand and direct investment dollars that has South Korea, for example, liberalized ended up in the pockets of corrupt the short end of their capital markets officials from Pakistan to Indonesia to in the early 1990s without having in Russia in the past decade. The World place adequate regulatory systems, Bank has started to address this issue and without dismantling a politicized systematically, as well as other internal system of credit allocation. elements of good democratic There was, in the early and mid-1990s, governance. The OECD has passed an a great deal of developed-country anti-corruption protocol that tries to capital seeking long-term investment harmonize the policies of its member opportunities in Asia; being barred in states and eliminate the advantage a country like Korea from foreign that German and Japanese firms have direct investment or even substantial had over their American counterparts equity market participation, it went in being able to deduct bribes as instead into short-term bank loans. business expenses. While the receiving countries made The final set of lessons concerns mistakes, they were abetted in crucial capital markets and the general project ways by policy from Washington. of liberalizing the economies of There was a common belief among transitional and developing countries. policymakers in the early 1990s that if A complex debate has opened up a country could liberalize only 20 among the economists concerning the percent of its capital markets, that causes of the Asian economic crisis would be a better outcome than zero and the complicity of Western percent liberalization. In retrospect, institutions like the IMF in it, one that this was a terrible error: in the absence pits Jeffrey Sachs and Martin of transparency and strong regulatory Feldstein on one side against Larry institutions, 20 percent liberalization Summers and Paul Krugman on the can lead to a much worse situation other. Among other issues, the debate than no liberalization at all. Countries concerns whether the crisis was driven like Chile that maintained controls on by short-term liquidity problems, or short-term capital were less whether there were deeper structural vulnerable. The IMF and U.S. Treasury problems involved; whether the IMF Department compounded the problem ought to be involved in trying to fix the by creating moral hazard: much of the latter; and whether the IMF's high senseless Western private investment in Russian GKOs was driven by the

11 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

belief that Russia was "too nuclear" to The United States has tragically be allowed to fail. mishandled Kosovo, but the idea that it and its NATO allies represent will In the end, all of these problems outlast the incompetence of any one taken together do not constitute, as administration. George Soros has suggested, a "global crisis of capitalism." A simple policy Why "The End of History" Was intervention like the Federal Reserve's Essentially Wrong three emergency cuts in interest rates in the fall of 1998 increased the supply If we shift our perspective from of dollars to the world economy and contemporary politics and economics prevented the emerging market panic to the more philosophical issues from broadening into a 1930s-style underlying the End of History, there financial collapse. This doesn't mean are developments in plain sight just that there are not deeper problems in over the horizon of the twentieth the global economy: John Makin of the century that will definitely end human American Enterprise Institute has History, but not in the manner I suggested that underlying the financial suggested. crisis is a crisis of global In The End of History and the Last overproduction in the real economy. Man, I argued that the directionality But to the extent that this is true, it and progressive character of human reflects not a structural weakness of history was driven by the unfolding of contemporary capitalism, but rather modern natural science. Steam power, state-driven overinvestment by Asian railroads and machine production countries seeking to replicate the created the Industrial Era and made Japanese development model. possible Weber's centralized, The outbreak of war between NATO bureaucratic, rational state, of which and Serbia in March 1999 - after the the Soviet Union was one extreme first draft of this article was written - example. On the other hand, the shift may be taken by some as evidence that from an industrial to a postindustrial History is alive and well. And so it is, society established a very different set in the Balkans. But cruel as it may be of economic conditions, in which to say in light of the sufferings of the manufacturing gives way to services, Albanians and others who live there, where educational requirements rise the conflict in Kosovo does not rise to substantially, where intelligence the level of world history because it is replaces material product at the very unlikely to have any lasting margin, technology and technological impact outside the Balkans. In my innovation become pervasive, and the original article, I said that after the complexity of economic life rises End of History, exponentially. There would still be a high and Socialism, at least in the form of the perhaps rising level of ethnic and centralized planning that was nationalist violence, since those are practiced in former communist impulses incompletely played out, countries, cannot survive under even in parts of the post-historical postindustrial conditions. The reasons world. . . . This implies that terrorism for this were outlined fifty years ago in and wars of national liberation will a classic article by Friedrich von continue to be an important item on Hayek.11 In a modern economy, the the international agenda. But large- vast bulk of the information generated scale conflict must involve large states in it is local in character, and also still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing 11 Friedrich A. Hayek, "The Use of from the scene. Knowledge in Society", American Economic Review (September 1945).

12 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

requires an increasingly high degree of hierarchies of various sorts, from technical knowledge to master. It is governments to corporations to the riveter on the factory floor bolting unions, to use their control over on a door panel who knows that the information to manipulate those over panel is defective, and not the whom they have authority. It is no manager sitting in corporate accident, then, that authoritarian headquarters; similarly, it is the Red regimes began to collapse all over the Director with a degree in engineering world just as the global economy rather than the party boss who started to shift into the information understands the requirements for age. building a factory. Economic systems Economics, however, is not the only that funnel decision making through force driving a progressive human centralized agencies saddle themselves history. Operating in parallel is the with crippling bottlenecks. The growth struggle for recognition; that is, the in economic and technological desire of all human beings to have complexity, and the kinds of local and their fundamental human dignity tacit knowledge required to manage recognized by those around them. The this complexity, almost inevitably End of History and the Last Man dictate a high degree of argued that Kant and Hegel were decentralization in economic decision essentially right in their view that the making, which inevitably means a only rational form of recognition was greater reliance on markets. universal recognition, and that The shift from centralized, universal recognition was best realized hierarchical, bureaucratic authority in a modern liberal state that structures to more participatory ones guaranteed a set of fundamental in which power and authority are more human rights. Ultimately, this broadly distributed has characterized argument was underpinned by not only politics but individual firms reference to : human in the economy. Just as the beings in Hegel's view do not simply overcentralization of decision making seek economic ends and are not in East Germany or the former USSR satisfied with simple material stifled innovation, so too did the prosperity; their satisfaction depends overcentralization and in critical ways on what Plato called overbureaucratization of large firms thymos, the spirited part of the soul like IBM and AT&T cripple their that sought recognition of their ability to compete against smaller and dignity. Socialism's failing went far nimbler competitors. beyond its inability to produce factories that could manufacture In this respect, the ongoing semiconductors: by creating a information revolution has had a dictatorship that trampled over the major impact on global politics and dignity of individual citizens, it failed has hastened the arrival of the End of to create that equality of recognition History. While the major that is necessarily the basis of a just of the late nineteenth and early society. twentieth centuries - from petrochemicals to automobiles to The possibility that we are at the nuclear energy and weapons - End of History can arise only under encouraged scale and centralization, two conditions. The first is that such a the technologies of the late twentieth thing as human nature exists. If century seem to encourage flexibility human beings are infinitely malleable, and decentralization. The arrival of if culture can overwhelm nature in cheap and ubiquitous information has shaping basic human drives and had a profoundly democratizing preferences, if our entire cultural impact; it is much less easy for horizon is socially constructed, then

13 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

clearly no particular set of political and physics, whose prototypical products economic institutions, and certainly were the atomic bomb and the not liberal democratic ones, can ever transistor, the twenty-first century be said to be, in Kojeve's phrase, promises to be the century of biology. "completely satisfying." Marxism In some sense, it is possible to assumed a high degree of plasticity: if regard the biotechnology revolution as human beings seemed selfish, merely a continuation of the ongoing materialistic and overly concerned revolution that has taken place in the with family, friends and their own life sciences over the past century and property, it was only because a half, a revolution that has brought us bourgeois society had made them that vaccines against smallpox and polio, way. According to Marx, man was a dramatically increasing life "species being", with unlimited expectancies; the green revolution in reservoirs of altruism toward mankind agriculture; and countless other as such. Part of the Marxist project in benefits. But the discovery of the existing socialist societies was to structure of DNA by Watson and Crick create a "new Soviet man." Socialism opened up a much more distant foundered because it ran into the brick frontier in the human conquest of wall of human nature: human beings nature, and the kinds of developments could not be forced to be different likely to be forthcoming in the next from what they were, and all of the couple of generations will make earlier characteristics that were supposed to advances pale in comparison. To take have disappeared under socialism, like just one small example, it is no longer ethnicity and national identity, clear that there is any upper limit on reappeared after 1989 with a human life expectancy. Recent vengeance. research on stem cells - cells that exist The second condition for the End of in embryos that have not yet History, as I noted at the beginning of differentiated into the various organs this article, is an end of science. of a baby - suggests that aging and cell Americans are in the habit of thinking degeneration are genetically controlled that technological innovation is a good processes that can be deliberately thing, and that those who question it turned on or off. Some researchers are Luddites standing in the way of now think that it may be possible for progress.12 And indeed, the human beings routinely to live two or technologies that have emerged as the three hundred years, perhaps even dominant ones at the end of the longer, at a high level of health and twentieth century, particularly those activity. related to information, appear to be The most radical outcome of relatively benign and supportive of a ongoing research in biotechnology is more democratic world order. If we its potential for changing human could somehow be assured that future nature itself. If we define human technological innovation would move nature as a statistical distribution of along similar lines, then we might say genetically controlled characteristics of that we have the right set of political a population, then the so-called and economic institutions. But we "germline" research of the future will cannot, and indeed, we are on the cusp differ from medical technology of the of a new explosion in technological past in its potential to alter human innovation that will force us to rethink nature by affecting not just the first principles. For just as the individual to whom it is applied, but twentieth century was the century of all subsequent descendants of that individual. The ultimate implication of 12 For an example of this line of thinking, this is that biotechnology will be able see Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its to accomplish what the radical Enemies (New York: Free Press, 1998).

14 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

of the past, with their that much. There is a growing body of unbelievably crude techniques, were evidence to suggest that propensities unable to accomplish: to bring about a for violence and aggression are new type of human being. genetically inherited, and are much more characteristic of males than Many of the proponents of females. This comes from a wide biotechnology will argue that this kind variety of sources, from the fact that of observation is unduly dramatic and the vast majority of crimes in any alarmist. The purpose of research in culture are committed by young males, biotechnology is therapeutic: it aims at to recent primatological research that uncovering what are now clearly suggests a continuity in male-bonded understood to be the genetic group aggression from man's primate underpinnings of diseases like breast ancestors through early humans to cancer, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia, modern man.13 But if the propensity and to provide cures for them. for violence is genetically controlled, Germline research, it can be argued, then why not intervene to correct that? simply takes this form of therapy to its For even if the propensity for violence logical conclusion: if the propensity for could be said to be natural, there are a disease lies in a genetically heritable few people willing to defend instinctive characteristic, what is wrong in violence as a healthy condition. There principle with a genetic intervention is already a growing body of designed to eliminate that propensity criminological research, a lot of it from present and all future coming from twin studies in generations that might suffer from it? behavioral genetics, that suggests that The fact that there is no clear propensities for crime can be inherited answer to the last question suggests, as and possibly, in the future, located in bioethicist Leon Kass has pointed out, specific genes carried by specific why biotechnology will be so hard to individuals. Research in this area has resist in the future: any potential gotten caught up in a huge fight over negative consequences of genetic political correctness, since many manipulation will be intimately people suspect and fear that research connected with positive benefits that will also try to correlate the propensity will be obvious and measurable. Many for crime to race as well. But the time people argue that we can draw a line will come when it will be possible to between therapy and enhancement, separate the issue of violence from the and that we can reserve genetic issue of race, when we will have to engineering for the former. But confront directly the question of what drawing boundaries in gray areas will constitutes health in this regard. For be much easier said than done. There we will be in possession of a is general consensus that some technology that will allow us to breed conditions like schizophrenia are less violent people, or people cured of pathological; the problem is that there their propensity for criminal behavior. is no consensus as to what constitutes Those who think that this sounds health. If one can administer growth like science fiction have simply not hormone to a child suffering from been paying attention to what has dwarfism, why not to one who is in the been going on in the life sciences fifth percentile for height? And if it is recently. What one day may be legitimate to give it to a child in the accomplished through gene therapy is fifth percentile, then why not to a child already being brought about by in the fiftieth, who wants to receive the neuropharmacology. Drug therapy is clear-cut benefits of tallness?

Or to take another example, 13 See my article, "Women and the supposing we decide that we really Evolution of World Politics", in Foreign don't like the median young male all Affairs (September/October 1998).

15 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

different from gene therapy insofar as because of their behavior-altering its effects are not heritable, but its potential. Ritalin's critics, including impact affects the same fundamental many doctors, do not believe that ADD level of human behavior. Take two of and ADHD are diseases at all; while the best known and controversial some cases of hyperactivity are clearly drugs that act directly on the pathological, in many others the neurological system, methylphenidate behavior in question would, in a (sold under the brand name of different age, be characterized simply Ritalin)14 and fluoxetine (better known as high spirits.16 Indeed, since Ritalin as Prozac).15 Ritalin is used to treat is much more often prescribed for what has come to be called attention boys than for girls, some critics go so deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), far as to charge that the drug is used to most commonly associated with young prevent boys from being boys, i.e., that boys who are unable to sit still in class. it is being used to treat not Prozac and its relatives are pathological but normal behavior that antidepressants. Ritalin works by harried parents and teachers find inhibiting the brain's reuptake of a key inconvenient or stressful. Ritalin's neurotransmitter, dopamine, while effect on the brain is similar to that of Prozac works by inhibiting the a number of illegal amphetamines, reuptake of another important indeed, to cocaine.17 Stories of Ritalin's neurotransmitter, serotonin. effects often make it seem like the drug soma administered to the citizens of Ritalin and Prozac have both been Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to described as wonder drugs, and have make them passive and conformist. earned enormous profits for their manufacturers, Novartis and Eli Lilly. Prozac and its relatives are There are any number of cases where potentially even more consequential severely disruptive, violent or because they affect levels of serotonin aggressive children have been in the brain. Serotonin is intimately effectively sedated with Ritalin and linked to feelings of self-esteem and integrated back into classrooms. dignity, and in primates plays a role in Similarly, Prozac and its relatives have competition in status hierarchies. been in large measure responsible for Chimpanzees feel a "serotonin high" the demise of psychoanalysis, so when they achieve alpha male status; effective are they at treating severely by regulating the levels of serotonin in depressed patients. Ritalin is now used their brains, scientists can reorder the by three million children in the United dominance hierarchies in chimp States today; school nurses dispensing colonies. Because more women tend to daily Ritalin doses have become a be depressed than men, Prozac is common feature of many schools. widely used by women and has been Similarly, Prozac and its relatives are celebrated in books like Elizabeth prescribed for more than 35 million Wurtzel's Prozac . Like Ritalin, patients nationwide, and like Ritalin the drug has uses that are they have developed an enormous cult unquestionably therapeutic; but an following and fierce partisans who unknown number of its millions of testify to their therapeutic effects. These drugs have, however, also been the subject of violent controversy 16 The controversy over Ritalin is such that the National Institutes of Mental Health were forced to convene a symposium in 14 Related drugs include early 1999 to discuss ADHD and the dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) and growing use of the drug. pemoline (Cylert). 17 For a discussion, see Mary Eberstadt, 15 Related drugs include Pfizer's Zoloft "Why Ritalin Rules", Policy Review and Smithkline Beecham's Paxil. (April/May 1999).

16 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

users are pursuing what Peter Kramer our current situation, which have been calls "cosmetic pharmacology." the ground for History as such, suddenly vanish, not as a result of Perceptive readers will have noticed liberal democracy, but because we the words "self-esteem" and "dignity" have suddenly discovered how to alter in the preceding paragraph. In the that bit of brain chemistry that was the Hegelian-Kojevian interpretation of source of the problem in the first world History, the struggle for place. recognition of human dignity or worth is not just incidental to human affairs; There is a pleasing symmetry to the it is the very motor that drives the effects of Ritalin and Prozac: the first historical process. According to Hegel, makes boys less boy-like; the second human History starts when two overcomes the downsides of being human beings engage in a battle to the female. Together they move us death for recognition. That is, they imperceptibly toward the kind of show that they are willing to risk their androgynous human being that has lives, not over material gain, but over been the egalitarian goal of the intersubjective recognition of their contemporary sexual politics. As dignity by another consciousness. The Nietzsche's Zarathustra said of the unfulfilled longing for recognition Last Man, "everyone wants to be the creates the various forms of political same, everyone is the same." One order that have existed in human wonders what the careers of history: lordship and bondage, the tormented geniuses like Blaise Pascal unhappy consciousness, and finally the or Nietzsche himself would have universal homogeneous state in which looked like had they been born to all citizens finally receive rational, and American parents and had Ritalin and therefore equal, recognition of their Prozac available to them at an early dignity. age. There are a number of problems These developments in with the Hegelian account of History, neuropharmacology give us only a beginning with the fact that non- foretaste of what is to come in the next human primates apparently struggle century. It seems all but inevitable that for recognition as well, and ending we will develop the ability to with the fact that the equal recognition manipulate the germline itself, and provided by a modern liberal therefore change once and for all the democracy is perhaps not as set of genetically controlled behaviors "completely satisfying" as Kojeve that have characterized the human claims. And yet, it is hard to observe race since the so-called Era of political life and not understand that it Evolutionary Adaptation, when human indeed has always centered on beings lived in hunter-gatherer recognition struggles. But all of a societies. No one should sudden, the global pharmaceutical underestimate the potential industry in its enormous inventiveness consequences of this for either politics has provided us with a shortcut: or morality. For today, any instead of striving for recognition by understanding we may have of just the painful building of a just social political arrangements or a universal order, instead of seeking to overcome moral order is ultimately based on an the self with all its anxieties and understanding of human nature. To limitations, as every previous the extent that that nature is generation of human beings has done, something given to us not by God or by we can now just pop a pill! We are, in a our evolutionary inheritance, but by sense, confronted with Nietzsche's human artifice, then we enter into Last Man in a bottle: the disrespect God's own realm with all of the that we face, the dissatisfaction with

17 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

frightening powers for good and evil second, that even if we wanted limits, that such an entry implies. they could not be implemented. The normative view that we should Global Governance and Twin not seek to control science has a Revolutions number of sources, including an There are currently two revolutions unquestioning acceptance by many going on in parallel, one in scientists of the Baconian-Cartesian information technology (IT) and the project of modern natural science, the other in biology. Of the two, the first is libertarian outlook that has become more visible, but the latter, a dominant in the last generation, and revolution in basic science rather than the natural tendency of Americans to technology, is in the end likely to prove hold an optimistic view of the future. much more fundamental. These twin This view has been strongly reinforced revolutions are likely to interact in by the perceived success of IT in ways that have implications for global supporting political values like governance. individualism and democracy. Attempts to control the use of IT, for As we have seen, the IT revolution example by banning pornography on has had beneficial effects in bringing the internet, as the Communications about the End of History by Decency Act of 1996 tried to do, have undermining authoritarian hierarchies been ridiculed as puritanical and out and distributing power more broadly. of date. In popular imagination, IT is seen as good for democracy, good for the There are of course some uses of IT economy, and (if one is American) that even its most libertarian good for the United States as well, advocates won't try to defend, like since it is we who dominate the global child pornography and the passing IT industry. Biotech, on the other around of bomb-making information. hand, while having unquestionably At this point the second argument beneficial effects, is regarded by many comes into play, that even if one non-scientists with much greater wanted to control the uses of suspicion. In Europe generally and technology, it would not be possible to Germany in particular, the Nazi legacy do so. Again, IT has been particularly has made people wary of genetic susceptible to this line of argument research and manipulation. The because it, in contrast to nuclear Germans have banned activities like weapons technology, does not reward germline research, and have gotten economies of scale. The decentralized into disputes with American biotech nature of information technology and companies like Monsanto over the inherently borderless nature of genetically altered foods. As I modern communications promotes suggested above, much more radical globalization and creates a situation and therefore scarier developments lie where it is virtually impossible for any in our future. single nation-state to control the uses of IT within its borders. States like Supposing that we will decide some Singapore or the People's Republic of time in the future that we will want to China that have tried to control stop, ban or even slow down the political dissent on the internet have development of certain new biological faced an uphill fight; French attempts technologies - say, human cloning. to mandate the use of the French Will we be able to do this? The language on web sites within its orthodoxy that prevails in the world of borders have been more ludicrous information technology is that it is, than effective. Any real effort to first, illegitimate to seek political limits impose controls over IT use today on scientific research or the would require a level of global development of technology, and

18 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

governance that does not now exist, its intent. Biotechnology may not and is politically very unlikely to exist prove to be as powerful as I have at any time in the future. suggested, or it may be that people's moral revulsion to genetic engineering The same problems will exist for will prove so strong that movement in any attempt to control biotechnology. this direction will be stopped dead in The benefits of biotechnology will be its tracks (no one, after all, is pushing so great and so evident to many people for building personal nuclear weapons, that moral concerns about its even though this is technologically downsides - which in my view are feasible). much more serious than for IT - will tend to be brushed aside as Those who attempted to find the uninformed prejudice. The examples key flaw of "The End of History" in of Ritalin and Prozac are instructive in political and economic events of the this regard: a major revolution in the past decade were barking up the control of social behavior has been wrong tree. There is nothing, as I have launched in the past decade without said, that has occurred in world fanfare or significant debate, propelled politics since the summer of 1989 that by the self-interest of private in any way invalidates the original pharmaceutical companies. argument: liberal democracy and markets today remain the only Furthermore, efforts to control realistic alternatives for any society biotechnology will run into the same hoping to be part of the modern world. practical hurdles as attempts to control IT. Globalization means that The key defect of "The End of any sovereign state seeking to impose History" lies at a completely different limits to, say, cloning or the creation of level. The possibility of such an end designer babies will not be able to do depends on the existence of a human so; couples facing a ban imposed by anthropology that is grounded in the U.S. Congress, for example, may be nature. The period since the French able to slip into the Cayman Islands or Revolution has seen the rise of Mexico to have their cloned child. different doctrines that hoped to Moreover, international competition overcome the limits of human nature may induce nations to cast aside their through the creation of a new kind of qualms: if one country or region of the human being, one that would not be world appears to be producing subject to the prejudices and genetically superior individuals limitations of the past. The collapse of through its relaxed rules on these experiments by the end of the biotechnology, there will be pressure twentieth century showed us the limits for other countries to catch up. The of social constructivism, and endorsed libertarian mindset and the absence of a liberal, market-based order international governance mechanisms, grounded in self-evident truths about which seemed appropriate for the "Nature and Nature's God." But it largely benevolent IT revolution, may could be that the tools twentieth- be less appropriate for a more sinister century social constructionists used, biotech revolution. But at that point, from early childhood socialization and efforts to close the gate may be psychoanalysis to agitprop and labor unavailing. camps, were simply too crude to alter effectively the natural substratum of Conclusions human behavior. The open-ended character of modern natural science It is of course impossible to predict suggests that within the next couple of the future course of technological generations we will have knowledge development; much as "The End of and technologies that will allow us to History" was attacked for being an accomplish what social engineers of exercise in futurology, that was never

19 Second thoughts: the last man in a bottle Francis Fukuyama The National Interest, Summer 1999

the past failed to do.18 At that point, we will have definitively finished human History because we will have abolished human beings as such. And then, a new, posthuman history will begin.

! "

Francis Fukuyama is Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy and director of the International Commerce and Policy Program at . His most recent book, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, was published by Free Press.

18 These social engineers may not work for the state, but rather for a drug company or for a parents' advocacy group.

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