Criticize the article Francis Fukuyama "The end of History" - Essay Example

Prior to the release of his article, Francis Fukuyama was an unknown state department official but after the posting of his journal titled “The End of History?” he was regularly mentioned and attracted various responses. His interpretations were heavily borrowed and adapted from G.M.F. Hegel, a German philosopher. Hegel was of the idea that history had reached its end in the year 1806 after Napoleon defeated the Prussian Monarchy. It is along these lines that Fukuyama identifies the main hurdles to liberal democracy, and they are Fascism and communism.

Fukuyama states that these two ideologies have ended with fascism facing its end after the defeat of Italy, Germany and Japan in the Second World War. On the other hand, communism met its end after the recent economic and political concessions in China and the Soviet Union (Herwitz, 2005). After all the ideologies, Fukuyama affirms that Western liberal democracy is the outright winner. The only remaining adversaries are religious fundamentalism and some aspects of nationalism. Fukuyama stated that history was full of struggles meant to realize the freedom idea that is etched on our consciousness.

His thoughts must have been heavily influenced by the end of the Cold War, and this led him to assert that it marked the end of history. The end of the Cold War was an apparent triumph of capitalist and liberal ideologies of western nations. The events of the Cold War had shown a clear win by the United States and her allies. He used this to conclude that it was the universalization of Western liberal ideologies and also marked the end of humankind’s ideological evolution (Herwitz, 2005). By the time when this article appeared in the National Interest, people could not disagree with Fukuyama.

The Soviet Union was about to disintegrate, and so was the Berlin Wall. Everything that was happening at that time suggested that it was only liberal capitalist democracies that