More than twenty-five years ago, in the victorious aftermath of the Cold War, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history.” Liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had proven superior to authoritarian communism, and the United States stood triumphant as the world’s sole – and presumably last – superpower. The world economy was about to boom, when Bill Clinton’s America would enjoy the greatest prosperity since Eisenhower in the 1950s. These were good times on the brink of a new century and a “new world order,” as the first President Bush put it in 1990.
But the victory was not as complete as most thought it to be. The end of the Cold War would not usher in a golden age of the pax Americana, nor would it be the end of history as Fukuyama had meant it. Rather, those honeyed years of self-congratulation in the democratic, capitalist world were just the end of a long, twentieth-century conflict that had begun with a gunshot in the streets of Sarajevo in 1914. The self-adulation of the 90s was the delirious after-party to the hard-fought struggle against totalitarianism and collectivism. What we now know, obviously, is that it would not last. Instead, the end of the Cold War unleashed antagonistic forces – some old, some new – that we overlooked or could not entirely foresee at the time. Ancient ethnic nationalisms and genocide quickly made a return with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The lawlessness of Somalia inspired a new concept of the “failed state.” Globalization, for all its wealth-creation, accelerated the dislocation of industries, workers, and migrants. In Afghanistan, the last hot battleground of the Cold War, the emergent Taliban took radical Islam to new levels of intolerance, cruelty, and absurdity. While “the free West” fêted and planned the global future, the warning signs of trouble passed it by.
Until the morning of September 11, 2001. The planes that slammed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon exploded the notion of a peaceful, democratic new age. That some people, somewhere still might not readily accept the supposed liberal democratic, capitalistic dream was not such a surprise; this, after all, had been the core state-of-affairs throughout the Cold War. What was shocking was that there were again those ready to commit horrors against innocents and suffer self-immolation for an altogether more terrible, apocalyptic vision of the future, a dystopian scenario reminiscent of the totalitarian, make-man-anew movements of the early last-century. It was also the first time that the mainland United States – after two world-wars and a nuclear showdown – had suffered a devastating attack on its mainland. We all know how the plot unfolds from there: two costly wars in the Middle East, torture in Guantanamo Bay, the false hopes of the Arab Spring, and the mass, desperate migrations from the Syrian civil war and the nightmares of ISIS. Fifteen years later, “9/11” still resonates with every terrorist attack and desperate refugee, now on our own doorsteps.
Meanwhile, although the threat of Islamic terrorism is especially insidious, it is only one of many threats to the security of free-market liberal democracy in the twenty-first century. The capitalist project remains on life-support after the nearly fatal banking crisis of some years ago, with a widening gap between rich and poor. China and an expansionist Russia have innovated new forms of illiberal democracy and state-controlled capitalism. An alarming xenophobia and resurgent nationalism have taken hold across Europe and America, seen in the rise of nativist, far-right political movements, while Brexit poses a uniquely existential threat to the raison d'être of the European Union.
With a decade-and-a-half of hindsight, it is now perfectly clear that “9/11” was more than a human tragedy and a vicious attack; as a geo-political event, it was a turning point in world history, consigning Fukuyama’s epoch to the past, not the future. Such exuberant, post-Cold War optimism seems naïve from our contemporary vantage point, beset as we are on all sides by conflicts, uncertainties, and (maybe most dangerous of all) fearful pessimism. The confidence of “The West” was shaken that September day, only to decline ever since. After this century’s avalanche of troubles, one can fairly wonder when, or if, we will ever get it back. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to worry about the solidity of liberal democracy itself in the face of constant state surveillance, sinking voter-turnout, and the rise of fringe political parties with doubtful commitments to either social inclusivity or human rights. These circumstances were unimaginable to both Americans and Europeans on September 10, 2001. On that evening, the winning of the Cold War had already made the twenty-first century “safe for democracy.” By next morning, the fall of the Twin Towers would un-make it.
Ours, then, is a century of conflict. It is dark, it is bleak. Many millennials will have little or no memory of the end-of-history euphoria. For those of us who do, however, it is our responsibility to nurse it, share it, and celebrate it. We must do this not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity. Young people must know that there once were better times, fueled by a pervasive confidence that we can shape a good world and that great adversaries can be overcome by righteous commitments to achieving peace, democracy, and human rights. These are attitudes and ideals that are not constrained by events, but rise above them. Of course, re-making the twenty-first century will not be easy and it will not come very soon. The answers are hard to come by. But fifteen years of post-9/11 fear and self-doubt are enough. The new century is still fresh and can yet belong to us, if we are confident enough to take control of history once again.