September 11: A clash of civilizations?

Abstract

The sudden collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s surprised many theorists and political scientists. Not only was it unsuspected, but it changed the way in which future political affairs would be conducted. For more than forty years, world affairs were dominated by a bipolar system that divided states into two ideological camps. Conflict, diplomacy and economic interaction were conducted in the context of the rivalry between the liberal democratic West against the communist East. After the dismantling of the Berlin wall (as a direct result of the fall of communism) the West suddenly lost its main ideological rival. New theories had to be de developed to explain the unexpected changes in world affairs to identify possible new developments in the post-Cold War era. One of the new theories that were developed focused on the idea that liberal democracy was the only system of government that survived the Cold War era. Old rivals such as communism, socialism and Marxism all seemed to be on their last legs (except in countries such as China and Cuba). This idea was strongly emphasized by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama (1989:3-18) in a controversial article entitled The end of history in which he argued that liberal democracy is the final stage in the ideological evolution of mankind. According to him democracy defeated all its rivals and would eventually become the preferred system of government. This idea was complimented by an unprecedented wave of democratization that swept across the world after the collapse of communism. Many states in Eastern Europe as well as the newly found independent states of the former Soviet Union (all previously under communist rule) decided to follow the democratic route.