Political scientist and author Professor Francis Fukuyama, best known for his controversial 1989 essay “The End of History”, warns that America is stuck in a “democratic recession”.
Far from basking in the victory of liberal democracy as the natural conclusion of mankind’s political evolution, Fukuyama says the United States is suffering a crisis of national identity, causing it to retreat into self-interest, and to abandon the geopolitical playing field to its rivals.
Meanwhile its president, Donald Trump, is busy undermining democratic institutions, the judicial process, and media organisations designed to hold them to account.
The rise of Trumpism, Fukuyama argues, is the result of a loss of “dignity” – whereby Americans and Europeans feel neglected by their elites and as though the old certainties that underpinned their national identity have vanished. The result has been a worrying return to the populism of the 1930s.
Speaking to Rudaw after addressing an American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) conference alongside former KRG prime minister Barham Salih on August 30, Fukuyama lamented America’s record in the Middle East, particularly its handling of Iraq since the 2003 invasion – a war he initially called for.
He says it is easy to sympathise with the Kurds in Iraq and the wider region, who have developed a healthy sense of national identity without recourse to the kind of ethnic and religious repression seen elsewhere in the Middle East.
The Stanford University scholar, whose ideas have left their mark on successive US administrations, raises many of these themes and more in his forthcoming book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, published September 11.
Rudaw: I wanted to start with ‘the end’ - ‘the End of History’ - your thesis. Does this still apply in the Trump era?
The overall direction has not been very positive for the past few years 
In this Trump-populist move, what kind of influence is that going to have on America’s place in the world?
I think [Trump] will last his first four years but the crucial question will be whether he actually lasts for eight The rise of Trump and his survival I think later on depends on this ability to exploit that populism and this sense of alienation I think a lot people in American society have felt – this loss of dignity and so on that you talk about. Do you think that is a problem that is going to maintain? Is that a problem that is prevalent in other countries?
Everybody has a sense of resentment at not being recognised, at being seen as invisible by elites You talk about a healthy sense of national identity. You say that peoples need a national identity. In the context of the Kurds you say this is quite a healthy national identity.
I think it is very hard not to be sympathetic to the Kurds And they slot into the national context of Iraq, which is somewhere which has struggled with ethnic nationalism, religious nationalism, and so on. You were in favour of the war to remove Saddam initially, but you then turned against the unilateralism and the militarism that came with that. Was the strategy all wrong from the start from the US point of view?
The United States did not remotely plan adequately to actually do something to create Iraq as a viable country – much less a democracy Is there a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Middle East works? And are we in danger of making these same mistakes again with sanctions on Iran and trade war on Turkey? Is the US still not learning from past mistakes?
We really are strangers in this region and we should tread carefully You’re quite a proponent of Wilsonian Liberalism, of benign intervention in the world, of working through international organisations. What would you like to see the United States do from here post-Trump or even Trump turning in the right direction?
The United States used to be a model democracy for other aspiring democracies around the world. Now it’s a kind of negative example 
