THEORY OF THE END - Part 9: The Bureaucratic Authoritarian State

The ninth part of a series exploring various theories on the end of human civilization.

[Note: This is the ninth entry in an ongoing essay series. If you enjoy this, I highly suggest reading the other entries as well, as they will provide more context for the discussions at hand.]

Before we move on to possible explanations for the weaknesses in Francis Fukuyama’s narrative around Liberal Democracy as the “end of history,” I want to briefly cover two more problems with it that are more self-explanatory than the previous ones. The first is a fairly weak argument against Fukuyama, but is still worth noting in that it may prove to be a bigger problem in the future, while the second is a more immediate issue.

VI. The “War” Problem

Fukuyama characterizes Liberal Democracies as “fundamentally un-warlike” in his book on “The End of History,” and claims that this feature “is evident in the extraordinarily peaceful relations they maintain among one another.” As such, the worldwide adoption of his supposed ultimate societal configuration could eventually end the practice of war altogether. General Ishiwara Kanji made a somewhat similar prediction, although in his case it was destructive power that would lock the globe into a stalemate.

In truth, both of these men are partially correct. Since the end of the second world war, there have been no wars which have achieved the same scale and level of devastation, an outcome that can be largely attributed to the rise in stakes associated with the invention of the atomic bomb. However, it appears that America’s appetite for war has not been entirely satiated.

Subsequent to the publishing of “The End of History and The Last Man” at the dawn of the 90s, America launched invasions of two Middle Eastern countries. Afghanistan was invaded in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and occupied by US forces until their disastrous withdrawal in 2021 (a fiasco that I believe will go down in history as one of America’s most embarrassing moments). US forces invaded Iraq over a year later under what appear to be fraudulent claims that the Iraqi government had been stockpiling “weapons of mass destruction.” The actual reasons for this military intervention have never been sufficiently clarified.

However, since the end of WW2, America has far preferred covert methods of geopolitical manipulation, perfecting techniques for fomenting unrest among the populations of other countries and arming their rebels in order to enact regime change. The alphabet agencies have often been accused of spurring on the “color revolutions” which overtook Eastern European post-soviet countries after the turn of the millenia, but the extent of their involvement is disputed. Regardless, there are instances of meddling which have been generally accepted by historians. For example, the Ronald Reagan administration had been funding Nicaraguan anti-Communist rebels known as the “Contras” while Fukuyama was in the midst of writing his book.

This last detail should come as no surprise to American Leftists who see the intelligence agencies as “reactionary” entities looking to snuff out all Leftists efforts across the globe. Unfortunately for them, it appears that the United States is not too picky with who it supports financially as long as they suspect it may serve their own long-term interests, with its list of beneficiaries allegedly including Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (via the CIA) and, in just the past decade, self-proclaimed Communist revolutionaries in a Kurdish militia in Northeastern Syria. Rolling Stone writes in an article entitled “The Untold Story Of Syria’s Antifa Platoon”:

Though mostly ignored by the mainstream media, Rojava became a celebrated cause to the millennial hard left, the sort of black-clad protesters you might have found at Occupy Wall Street or setting limousines on fire at Trump’s inauguration. At the same time, the YPG became the U.S. military’s closest ally on the ground in Syria; no other faction showed as much willingness and ability to take on the Islamic State and win.

The reason I believe all of this to be a weak argument against Fukuyama’s thesis is that he claims Liberal Democracies engage peacefully with other Liberal Democracies. For Islamic regimes or other flavors of Authoritarianism, he states that war is still very much on the table, writing:

There is by now a substantial body of literature noting the fact that there have been few, if any, instances of one liberal democracy going to war with another. The political scientist Michael Doyle, for example, maintains that in the two hundred or so years that modern liberal democracies have existed, not one single such instance has occurred. Liberal democracies can, of course, fight states that are not liberal democracies, just as the United States fought in the two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, and most recently the Persian Gulf. The gusto with which they fight such wars may even exceed that of traditional monarchies or despotisms. But among each other, liberal democracies manifest little distrust or interest in mutual domination.

The crack in this narrative, however, comes into focus when we look at the predicaments involving Ukraine and Israel. Ukraine, ostensibly a Liberal Democratic country, experienced a revolution in 2014 which resulted in the ousting of the president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych. The fact that the US seems to have been involved in this matter should not be a shock at this point. In fact, in their assessment of these events, the Cato Institute wrote that “the extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking.” They continue:

Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post-Yanukovych government. The U.S‑favored candidates included Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the man who became prime minister once Yanukovych was ousted from power. During the telephone call, Nuland stated enthusiastically that “Yats is the guy” who would do the best job.

Nuland and Pyatt were engaged in such planning at a time when Yanukovych was still Ukraine’s lawful president. It was startling to have diplomatic representatives of a foreign country — and a country that routinely touts the need to respect democratic processes and the sovereignty of other nations — to be scheming about removing an elected government and replacing it with officials meriting U.S. approval.

This shakeup was one of the catalysts leading to the current war between Russia and Ukraine, with Vladamir Putin expressing concern in interviews regarding the involvement of the United States with Russia’s neighbors. The American government, no fans of the Russian state, have been all too happy to supply Ukraine with a seemingly endless supply of weapons and other forms of aid, turning the situation into an apparent proxy war. While it is difficult to label Russia a true “Liberal Democratic state,” this deviation from war in Middle Eastern Islamic countries and encroachment into Europe has made the possibility of war among the “Liberal Democracies” look a little more “real,” so to speak.

Moreover, the constant stream of United States aid to Israel in their war with the militaristic Palestinian organization Hamas, which was initiated following attacks launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on October 7th, 2023, has deeply divided Americans. This has hit the American left wing particularly hard, splitting them into factions concerned either about anti-Semitism or about the plight of the Palestinians for the foreseeable future. More importantly, Israel has been characterized by countless American political figures as a Liberal Democratic state, thus their actions in this ethnically-charged war have shaken American trust in the labels of “Liberal” and “Democratic.”

What happens next in the sphere of war is not entirely clear, but as the wheel of time continues turning onward, the ground underneath the “end of history” only appears less stable, crumbling apart bit by bit. Let us hope, in this case, that it does not collapse.

VII. The “China” Problem

China underwent a Communist revolution under Mao Zedong’s People's Liberation Army in 1947, but by 1990 had become “just another Asian authoritarian state” according to Francis Fukuyama, who writes in “The End of History and The Last Man”:

It lacks internal legitimacy for a broad sector of its own elite, particularly among the young who will someday inherit the country, and is not guided by a coherent ideology.

Yet it appears that ideology does not have to be particularly “coherent” for an authoritarian state to operate under it, as China has been neither liberalized nor democratized since the publication of Fukuyama’s book. If anything, the opposite has been the case, with the Chinese communist Party increasing its surveillance efforts, doubling down on censorship (with the limitation of the Chinese internet and relegation of Chinese citizens to their country’s proprietary social media sites, collectively termed “The Great Firewall of China” by people in the West, being a well known example), and strictly controlling travel into and out of the country.

In fact, the primary area where China seems to be “liberal” is in its manufacturing, which is infamous for terrible quality control (often prioritizing quantity over quality) and hideous working conditions. This liberalization, however, has led to the country making up an estimated 29% of all global manufacturing as of 2023, dwarfing the output of The United States. This has bestowed upon the (ironically) Communist nation a great deal of leverage to wield in the international political arena. Global Culture as well has not remained untouched by Chinese influence, as many of our consumer trends these days are centered around goods produced in Chinese factories.

Indeed, China’s rise to superpower status has shown us that a country which rejects many of the fundamental values of Liberal Democracy can still succeed at this stage of history, throwing a wrench into Fukuyama’s theory. But alas, I cannot claim total credit for this revelation, as it was a possibility predicted by Fukuyama in his own work:

For if a country's goal is economic growth above all other considerations, the truly winning combination would appear to be neither liberal democracy nor socialism of either a Leninist or democratic variety, but the combination of liberal economics and authoritarian politics that some observers have labeled the “bureaucratic authoritarian state,” or what we might term a “market-oriented authoritarianism.”

Not only does it seem to be the case that this “bureaucratic authoritarian” style of government can excel in our economically competitive age, it also appears that countries like America and its European brothers are converging on this configuration, as evidenced by the events of 2020 and the ever-increasing amount of public surveillance initiatives and restrictions imposed on speech. It brings me no pleasure to point out that the techniques honed through decades of foreign manipulation are being deployed on the citizens of Liberal Democracies at this very moment.

But the question still remains: If the situation is as I have described and we are indeed en route to an even more authoritarian market-oriented form of governance, what exactly are the reasons for this collective divergence from the values of Liberal Democracy? Is it pure greed? Communist subterfuge? A devious plot on the part of a Globalist Illuminati? Have we all simply gone mad?

Well, dear reader, it is here that I must issue an apology, as I have been withholding certain information up until now; information which may hold significant explanatory power in regards to all that we have discussed so far. But I assure you that it was not without reason, for we must understand in full the nature of the problems at hand before we can attempt to diagnose the cause. After all, a doctor would not diagnose a man who complains of leg cramps with a broken nose. And while I cannot state with absolute certainty that I have discovered the source of our ills, I believe that I am at least close to the mark.

To fully expound this diagnosis, however, we must go all the way back to the beginning and figure out when and how the switch occurred: when the rules all changed and no one noticed.

Thank you all very much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next part.

To be continued…