Trump’s victory serves to support Welsh’s analysis
Book review
The Return of History is the ideal book if you are struggling to understand these turbulent times.
In 1991, in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay entitled The End of History.
Fukuyama’s thesis was that liberal democracy had triumphed and that history had progressed to the point where conflict and power politics would no longer be dominant in international relations. It seemed that sunny days had arrived for the entire world.
Sadly, this prediction was premature and The Return of History, which is also the 2016 Massey lecture, sets out to document how and why.
The author of The End of History is Canadian professor Jennifer Welsh, an expert in international relations and Canadian foreign policy and co-founder of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.
The Massey Lectures were started in 1961 and are regarded as the most important public lectures in Canada. Past Massey lecturers have included Martin Luther King, Northrop Frye, Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing. In addition to being published in book form, the lectures are broadcast on CBC radio.
The overarching theme of The Return of History is that by becoming complacent and thinking that “everyone else in the world wants what we want” and that our model is best, liberal democracies have left themselves unprepared and vulnerable to political and economic turmoil.
The book is divided into five chapters, each one dealing with a specific international issue that range from conflict in the Middle East to Russia under Vladimir Putin and the return of the Cold War.
While the first chapter examines why Fukuyama thought that he was right in his prediction, Welsh uses the subsequent chapters to explain what went wrong. She examines the roots of the rise of ISIS, described by the former British Prime Minister David Cameron as “medieval monsters” and the breakdown of the international conventions of war which has led to the horrific atrocities currently being committed in Syria.
Welsh also devotes a chapter to one of the most troubling consequences of ISIS and the civil war in Syria, which is mass flight and the refugee issue. In Welsh’s words, “our political systems are failing to meet the challenge, and narratives of fear are crowding out humanitarian obligations”. The recent vote on Brexit and the election of Donald Trump would seem to support this view.
In the book’s final chapter, Welsh turns her attention to what she describes as the “corrosive affects” of inequality and the threat that it poses to liberal democracy.
Written before the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump’s recent victory serves to support Welsh’s analysis of the current situation in the United States.
She points to the “hollowing out” of the middle class and declining living standards and underemployment of the working class and the serious challenge this poses to a healthy democracy.
Read this and weep.
Basil Guinane is a recently retired associate dean of the School of Media Studies at Humber college, a former librarian and an avid reader. The Return of History, published by House of Anasi Press, is 347 pages.
Listen to the Massey Lectures.
