Francis Fukuyama

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama
Born	(1952-10-27) October 27, 1952 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	American philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Developing nations Governance International political economy Nation-building and democratization Strategic and security issues
Notable ideas	End of history
Website	http://fukuyama.stanford.edu/

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American philosopher, political economist, and author.

Early life

Francis Fukuyama was born in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. His father, Yoshio Fukuyama, a second-generation Japanese-American, was trained as a minister in the Congregational Church, received a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, and taught religious studies.His mother, Toshiko Kawata Fukuyama, was born in Kyoto, Japan, and was the daughter of Shiro Kawata, founder of the Economics Department of Kyoto University and first president of Osaka City University. Francis grew up in Manhattan as an only child, had little contact with Japanese culture, and did not learn Japanese. His family moved to State College, Pennsylvania in 1967.

Education

Fukuyama received his Bachelor of Arts degree in classics from Cornell University, where he studied political philosophy under Allan Bloom. He initially pursued graduate studies in comparative literature at Yale University, going to Paris for six months to study under Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, but became disillusioned and switched to political science at Harvard University. There, he studied with Samuel P. Huntington and Harvey Mansfield, among others. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard for his thesis on Soviet threats to intervene in the Middle East. In 1979, he joined the global policy think tank RAND Corporation.

Fukuyama has been affiliated with the Telluride Association since his undergraduate years at Cornell, an education enterprise that was home to other significant leaders and intellectuals, including Steven Weinberg, Paul Wolfowitz and Kathleen Sullivan.

Fukuyama was the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University from 1996 to 2000. Until July 10, 2010, he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, located in Washington, D.C. He is now Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow and resident in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Writings

Fukuyama is best known as the author of The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama predicted the eventual global triumph of political and economic liberalism:

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

He has written a number of other books, among them Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity and Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. In the latter, he qualified his original 'end of history' thesis, arguing that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their own evolution, it may allow humans to alter human nature, thereby putting liberal democracy at risk. One possible outcome could be that an altered human nature could end in radical inequality. He is a fierce enemy of transhumanism, an intellectual movement asserting that posthumanity is a desirable goal.

In another work The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order, he explores the origins of social norms, and analyses the current disruptions in the fabric of our moral traditions, which he considers as arising from a shift from the manufacturing to the information age. This shift is, he thinks, normal and will prove self-correcting, given the intrinsic human need for social norms and rules.

In 2008 he published the book Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States, which resulted from research and a conference funded by Grupo Mayan to gain understanding on why Latin America, once far wealthier than North America, fell behind in terms of development in only a matter of centuries. Discussing this book at a 2009 conference, Fukuyama outlined his belief that inequality within Latin American nations is a key impediment to growth. An unequal distribution of wealth, he stated, leads to social upheaval which in turn results in stunted growth.

Neoconservatism

As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism. He was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank starting in 1997, and as a member co-signed the organization's letter recommending that President Bill Clinton support Iraqi insurgencies in the overthrow of then-President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. He was also among forty co-signers of William Kristol's September 20, 2001 letter to President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks that suggested the U.S. not only "capture or kill Osama bin Laden", but also embark upon "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq".

In a New York Times article of February 2006, Fukuyama, in considering the ongoing Iraq War, stated: "What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a 'realistic Wilsonianism' that better matches means to ends." In regard to neoconservatism he went on to say: "What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about."

Fukuyama's current views

Beginning in 2002 however, he began to distance himself from the neoconservative agenda of the Bush Administration, citing its overly militaristic basis and embrace of unilateral armed intervention, particularly in the Middle East. By late 2003, Fukuyama had voiced his growing opposition to the Iraq War and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense. He said that he would vote against Bush in the 2004 election, and that the Bush administration had made three major mistakes:

• They had overestimated the threat of radical Islam to the US.
• They hadn't foreseen the fierce negative reaction to its benevolent hegemony. From the very beginning they had shown a negative attitude toward the United Nations and other international organizations and hadn't seen that this would increase anti-Americanism in other countries.
• They had misjudged what was needed to bring peace in Iraq and had been overly optimistic about the success with which social engineering of western values could be applied to Iraq and the Middle East in general.

Fukuyama believes the US has a right to promote its own values in the world, but more along the lines of what he calls "realistic Wilsonianism", with military intervention only as a last resort and only in addition to other measures. A latent military force is more likely to have an effect than actual deployment. The US spends more on its military than the rest of the world put together, but Iraq shows there are limits to its effectiveness. The US should instead stimulate political and economic development and gain a better understanding of what happens in other countries. The best instruments are setting a good example and providing education and, in many cases, money. The secret of development, be it political or economic, is that it never comes from outsiders, but always from people in the country itself. One thing the US proved to have excelled in during the aftermath of World War II was the formation of international institutions. A return to support for these structures would combine American power with international legitimacy. But such measures require a lot of patience. This is the central thesis of his most recent work America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (2006).

In an essay in the New York Times Magazine in 2006 that was strongly critical of the invasion, he identified neoconservatism with Leninism. He wrote that neoconservatives:

believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

Fukuyama has announced the end of the neoconservative moment and argued for the demilitarization of the War on Terrorism:

[W]ar is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world.

Fukuyama endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election. He states:

"I’m voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush. It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined the standing of the United States throughout the world in his first term. But in the waning days of his administration, he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don’t work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would be a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale."

Affiliations

• Between 2006 and 2008, Fukuyama consulted Muammar Gaddafi as part of the Monitor Group, a consultancy firm based in Cambridge, MA.
• In August 2005, Fukuyama co-foundedThe American Interest, a quarterly magazine devoted to the broad theme of "America in the World". He is currently chairman of the editorial board.
• He was a member of the RAND Corporation's Political Science Department from 1979 to 1980, 1983 to 1989, and 1995 to 1996. He is now a member of the corporations' Board of Trustees.
• Fukuyama was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2004.
• Fukuyama is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS).
• Fukuyama is on the steering committee for the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust. Fukuyama is a long-time friend of Libby. They served together in the State Department in the 1980s.
• During the 2008 Presidential Election, Fukuyama endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama who went on to win the Presidential Election.
• Fukuyama is a member of the Board of Counselors for the Pyle Center of Northeast Asian Studies at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
• Fukuyama is on the board of Global Financial Integrity.
• Fukuyama is on the executive board of the Inter-American Dialogue.

Personal life

Fukuyama is also a part-time photographer and has a keen interest in early-American furniture, which he makes by hand.

Fukuyama is married to Laura Holmgren, whom he met when she was a UCLA graduate student after he started working for the RAND Corporation. He dedicated his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity to her. They live in suburban Washington, D.C., with their three children, Julia, David, and John.

Selected bibliography

Books

• The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press, 1992. ISBN 0-02-910975-2
• Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. Free Press, 1995. ISBN 0-02-910976-0
• The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. Free Press, 1999. ISBN 0-684-84530-X
• Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN 0-374-23643-7
• State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Cornell University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8014-4292-3
• America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (Yale University Press, 2006). ISBN 0-300-11399-4
• After the Neo Cons: Where the Right went Wrong. Profile Books, 2006. ISBN 1-86197-922-3 (N.B. Published in the US as America at the Crossroads see above)
• Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780195368826
• The Origins of Political Order (forthcoming April 2011)

Essays

• Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order
• Women and the Evolution of World Politics, Foreign Affairs October 1998
• Immigrants and Family Values, The Immigration Reader 1998. ISBN 1-557-86916-2
• Social capital and civil society, paper prepared for delivery at the IMF Conference on Second Generation Reforms, 1 October 1999
• The neoconservative moment, The National Interest, Summer 2004
• After neoconservatism, The New York Times Magazine, 19 February 2006
• Supporter's voice now turns on Bush, The New York Times Magazine, 14 March 2006
• Why shouldn't I change my mind?, Los Angeles Times, 9 April 2006
• The Fall of America, Inc. Newsweek, 13 October 2008
• Pursuing Security in a Dynamic Northeast Asia Asia Policy January 2007
• Left Out, The American Interest, January 2011

See also

• Brave New World argument
• Biopolitics
• Obama Republican

External links

• Francis Fukuyama's home page at Johns Hopkins University
• Template:Worldcat id
• Islam and America... Friends or Foes?
• C-SPAN In Depth Three-hour video interview. March 5, 2006
• Booknotes interview with Fukuyama on The End of History and the Last Man, February 9, 1992
• ANU Public Lecture Series MP3 of a public lecture by Fukuyama titled The Missing Dimension of Stateness delivered at The Australian National University, December 15, 2006
• RAND Corporation - Information and Biological Revolutions: Global Governance Challenges - Summary of a Study Group by Francis Fukuyama and Caroline S. Wagner
• Nick Bostrom's rebuttal of Fukuyama's views on biotechnology
• Biography from Francis Fukuyama's website
• Danny Postel. Fukuyama’s moment: a neocon schism opens
• Audio interview with National Review Online
• RightWeb profile of Francis Fukuyama
• Against war in Iraq
• Interview on ABC Radio Late Night Live Fukuyama discusses After the Neo-Cons: America at the Crossroads Broadcast April 12, 2006
• Robert Wright interviews Francis Fukuyama (meaningoflife.tv)
• Sabancı University School of Languages Podcasts: The End of History? Lecture by Ayhan Akman, The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
• Video interviews and conversations with Fukuyama on BloggingHeads.tv
• Audio: Francis Fukuyama in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum
• Francis Fukuyama'sopinion editorial commentaries for Project Syndicate