BOOK REVIEW: “Fukuyama’s Pivot: He urged military intervention in Iraq and hailed the country’s liberation, but now this leading public intellectual has second thoughts--and a new plan,” by Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 11-12 March 2006, p. P10.

Ouch!

Stephens deftly chronicles Fukuyama’s participation in groups that vilified--quite rightly--the horrible Saddam, calling openly for his toppling. Then quotes him during the period immediately following the successful war stating that this was a very good thing.

Now, apparently, after realizing how hard state-building is (you remember, of course, that Fukuyama wrote an entire, but rather slim book on the subject that was really quite excellent), and apparently after getting quite scared about just how many pent-up emotions have been released by the Big Bang strategy (anti-Americanism that, quite frankly, will disappear for the most part the second Bush leaves office, and radical Islamism in power, which, quite frankly, beats the alternative and will do much to domesticate it over time).

Most interesting, Stephens points out how many of Bush’s key allies abroad have done just fine in subsequent elections (UK’s Blair, Aussie Howard, Danish Rasmussen and Japan’s Koziumi), while several key allies have put in power new leaders who openly seek similar approaches in supporting American policy (Canada’s Harper and Germany’s Merkel, both of whom campaigned, as Stephens notes, for better ties with the U.S.). Meanwhile, inveterate America-hater Chirac is definitely a lame duck, and his likely successor (Sarkozy) is unabashedly pro-American. So where, Stephens asks, is Fukuyama’s huge tide of anti-Americanism? In the BRIC? Hardly. Lula gets along with Bush, as does Putin. India’s a new strategic ally and Hu and Wen can’t have much trouble with a White House working so hard to tamp down rising American protectionism.

Sure, plenty of rank-and-file citizens are agitated in the Middle East, and there is always the temptation to blame all the unhappiness there on the U.S., but Bush’s real accomplishment is to turn the vast majority of that anger inward--against the decrepit elites that have too longed ruled across the region.

Fukuyama's big conclusion is that states won’t go democratic through outside machinations, but only when the people within demand such change. Hmmm. And what brings that change? Strategic communication? Pretend governments overseeing pretend states?

Or could it be economic connectivity with the outside world that brings in FDI and sends out exports other than raw materials and energy, in turn creating a stakeholder class of wealth that seeks protection in political pluralism?

It’s weird, but in the end, Fukuyama is still trapped in a lot of realism, seeing the cooperation among great powers as the key to global stability rather than simply building good states from the private-sector up.

In the end, a depressing review of a weirdly disavowing sort of volume. Fukuyama comes off as lost right now--all because of Iraq.

Me, I’ve never felt more centered in my understanding of how the world works: bad guys to be removed, but entire populations that need to be reconnected to the outside world in the aftermath. You realize that the awesome power to achieve #1 only creates the awesome responsibility to get better at #2.

Now is not the time to get lobotomized on global economics and return to the empty-headed realism of the 19th century. Please. Let’s leave that bankrupt model where it belongs. No billiard balls for me. See the connectivity, and understand how it creates both vulnerabilities and opportunities. Re-imagine the useful role of the state, a la Clinton. Get back in the business of selling America and keeping it strong in the only way that matters--economics. See and understand the military-market nexus that has returned with a vengeance, from America’s Wild West, and realize that it’s now been projected across the entire Gap as our historical challenge--the manifest destiny of making the world safe for economic connectivity and the individual freedoms it unleashes.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the global economy, the only force on Earth that rivals the U.S. military’s record for generating planet-wide collective goods.