The End of History makes way for new American vision

LONDON - Francis Fukuyama is a much misunderstood man. Every political commentator knows his phrase, The End of History, the title of the powerful essay he published months before the Berlin Wall fell, and a book soon after.

It contained a hugely influential idea, that the trend towards liberal democracy is unstoppable, because it is - ultimately - what all people want, all over the world.

It helped embolden the hawks in the Bush Administration, making them feel the wind of historical inevitability at their backs when they went into Iraq three years ago.

But Fukuyama insists that is not what he said at all. Hence his latest book, in which he tries to put the record straight.

"The basic argument of The End of History was that people want to live in a modern society - not a democratic society necessarily. The desire to live in a political democracy is something that develops over time, particularly as societies get richer. I have never said you have this instant desire for democracy everywhere."

If he was misunderstood by the Iraq-war hawks, he feels equally taken in vain by the anti-war movement today. Because he was a neo-con who now regards the Iraq invasion as a tragic mistake, his new book has been greeted with glee in some quarters.

He was one of the five "right-wing intellectuals" whose mugshots were paraded on the front of the Herald's world section earlier this month. Over the headline, "Neo-con dream of new world order in tatters" this newspaper said the five were part of a clan that had "envisioned hegemony through military might and regime change".

No, they didn't, Fukuyama says. He never advocated the invasion of Iraq. Yes, he was a neo-conservative. For many opponents of the war, that makes him part of a right-wing plot to hijack US foreign policy, using 9/11 as a pretext for an imperial ambition.

"Everybody points to these letters that I signed, the Project for a New American Century, which is basically just Bill Kristol and a fax machine," he says. Kristol, as editor of the US conservative Weekly Standard, promoted what Fukuyama now regards as an unduly militaristic neo-conservatism.

"Part of the reason for writing the book is to rescue the reputation of neo-conservatism," he says.

"The United States needs to reconnect to the world. One of my biggest concerns is the backlash that the war is going to generate. That's what people ought to focus on."

A salient fact about the neo-conservatives is that they were outsiders. Some of Fukuyama's musings on the neo-con legacy ought to be compulsory reading for every Bush-hater, lucidly explaining how the movement arose among left-wing intellectuals at City College of New York.

From working-class immigrant backgrounds, many were excluded from elite universities and many were Jewish. Fukuyama shared the neo-con disillusion with the left and got a job as a policy wonk in the Reagan Administration, working for Paul Wolfowitz.

By the time of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz was Deputy Secretary of Defence and arch hate figure of those who saw a neo-con conspiracy. But it was through him that Fukuyama crystallised his opposition to the war. Fukuyama was commissioned in the summer of 2002 to produce a study for the Pentagon of long-term strategy for the war on terrorism. But, by the time he briefed Wolfowitz in January 2003, and warned him that the invasion of Iraq "was a very, very big risk" and that "they were rolling dice" loaded against them, it was too late.

The troops were already in the Gulf and no one had time to focus on a strategy for post-war "nation-building".

Fukuyama, 53, teaches international development in Washington.

"People that have been around the development business tend to be fairly pessimistic about how easy it is for outsiders to influence the development of institutions or deal with corruption.

"One of my complaints about a lot of neo-cons is that ... they seemed to think it was a matter of force and regime change and that institutions would take care of themselves."

So how does he react to being co-opted by the anti-war press? "Well, you know, I think it's too bad, because you don't need further nails in the coffin of the first-term Bush doctrine."

Which is why the new book is called After the Neocons, a word that he thinks is no longer useful.

"My purpose in writing the book is actually looking beyond Bush. We are in for a tough patch. This should have been one of the lessons of Vietnam.

"It's fine to say we are going to use our military power, but if you use it imprudently, apart from generating external opposition, you undercut the basis for using it subsequently."

He despairs of US politicians. "As Iraq becomes seen as more and more of a failure", it will push the Republican base back towards isolationism.

Fukuyama extols President Clinton's foreign policy - to use force for humanitarian ends, but reluctantly.

"It's not bad for American foreign policy to say: if we can't get the majority of Nato members to go along with something, we probably shouldn't do it. That would have produced Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan - but not Iraq."

He voted for Democrat candidate John Kerry in 2004 but he was "happy in the end" that Bush was re-elected, "because I think Iraq would have deteriorated regardless."

And, he adds: "It's appropriate that Bush has to deal with the consequences."

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