2023 Marked the Second ‘End of the End of History, Savvin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 31 – Many viewed Francis Fukuyama’s prediction that the world was approaching “the end of history” as both unique and prescient. In fact, Dimitry Savvin says, it was neither: An earlier faith in the end of history infected Europe before 1914, and both that view and its revival nearly a century later ended in the same way with a major war.

            At the end of the 19^th century, many leaders believed that there would never be another war in Europe because the countries were too interconnected economically and would lose too much if they were to fight each other. But “the guns of August” 1914 put paid to that naivete, the editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian Harbin portal says (harbin.lv/novyy-staryy-mir).

            Then, again, with the collapse of communism and the Soviet empire, many leaders were again ready to believe that the end of history had arrived. The war in Ukraine should have  served as a wakeup call, but many are still acting as if that notion is true and that the current war is an anomaly that can be easily overcome.

            All too many Western leaders believe that they can easily and quickly restore the status quo ante and fail to see that the struggle ahead is going to be as hard or harder just to get back to the 20^th century lest the world careen even further back and destroy the progress that had been made earlier.