The End of the World (Order)
Art by Tanzanian Wojak
Let’s face it, the whole “The West has fallen, Countrillions must die, total (group or entity) death” spiel has been repeated ad nauseam in the circles of those who read Countere Magazine, but I will try to prove with this article that nothing and everything has changed. Depending on who you are, you will see either perspective.
Most people believe in history as a series of textile strips, as in when one era ends, another is stitched right before or after it. Generally, the public views ancient history beginning right at the invention of writing and ending right after the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed; the Middle Ages beginning right after the last Roman emperor was gone and ending right after Constantinople’s walls came crashing down, and so on and so forth, until this age of democracy, which began right after the Bastille was stormed and...
The problem is that history isn’t a ribbon, it is more liquid; it mixes together at the ends. The last generations of Rome, living anywhere between 476-1453 AD, did not see themselves in immediate medieval times—they identified as a continuation of Rome—yet they were there. The last generations of capitalist, neoliberal “citizens of the free world,” do not see themselves in the burning world—they identify as citizens of the Enlightenment age—yet they are there.
As stated in another article on this site, “Return to the Monroe Doctrine,” the Pax Americana (“American Peace”) came, saw, and conquered, and now we are seeing how it is all winding out. The stagnation of the 2000s and 2010s that was labeled by American political analyst Francis Fukuyama as the “End of History,” and parroted so hard by those who thought themselves rational individuals, was in fact the hard work of the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
“...Of course Western elites wanted history to end, so that they could preserve their special interests for all eternity.”
The Wolfowitz Doctrine is the name for a 1992 secret foreign policy document created by then-US Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. It was so blatantly imperialist, so nakedly ambitious, that it had to be publicly edited after being leaked to the media. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left the United States as the world’s sole superpower, the doctrine encouraged unilateral preemptive “first-strike” action towards any threat to American hegemony. It stated:
The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests…We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
This of course caused great outcry both domestically and internationally after the document was leaked to the New York Times. This passage was substantially re-written for public release:
One of the primary tasks we face today in shaping the future is carrying long standing alliances into the new era, and turning old enmities into new cooperative relationships. If we and other leading democracies continue to build a democratic security community, a much safer world is likely to emerge. If we act separately, many other problems could result.
The Wolfowitz Doctrine helps explain why Fukuyama posited the collapse of the Soviet Union as the End of History. It was less of a diagnosis and more of a wish: of course Western elites wanted history to end, so that they could preserve their special interests for all eternity. In the eyes of the Wolfowitz doctrine, the American empire stood upon the smoldering corpse of its enemy in the same way Rome did to Carthage in the Third Punic War—and now that it was comfortable at the top, it wanted no movement below it.
But it wasn’t as easy as that. Other civilizations did not accept the End of History. After so hard of an effort to have no competitors, crises of all types are now rising across the globe. All of what the hegemonic world order fought for—no competition—has turned into smoke.
Russia-Ukraine taught us how we cannot take for granted the stagnancy of the early 21st century. Israel-Hamas is teaching us (could also be read as US) how we cannot take for granted that people are willing to die for their beliefs.
It is all so over. At the same time, nothing ever happens.
You already know nothing ever happens. You have seen the news: soon another tragedy will enter the news cycle and wash the previous one over like a sandcastle at the beach. Riots. Insurrection. Russia. Ukraine. Hamas. Israel. Mass shootings.
“Regardless of how the media portrays it, collapse is not a bang but a disappointingly slow decrease in civility. ”
In reality, the situation in Gaza has been the same since 2007. Ukraine has been attacked since 2014. Terrorist attacks and mass shootings have occurred for the last 50 years. Multiple genocides have happened in Africa in the last 20 years and no one knows anything about them, except for a brief moment in 2012 when someone made a video about Joseph Kony.
Regardless of how the media portrays it, collapse is not a bang but a disappointingly slow decrease in civility. You will keep working. Your children will go to school. The grocery store will have food—but the prices will continue to rise, slowly.
We could call this age by any name whatsoever and pinpoint the time the ribbon changes anywhere, so I will decide. The End of History is over. Starting in the 2020s with the advent of über-fast Wi-Fi—which for the first time made publicly accessible both artificial intelligence and visceral first-person coverage of war—and now with the advent of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the current age begins.
An apocalypse isn’t the end of the world, but the end of a world order. I will leave you with those words.
Follow José María Gálves Caballero on Instagram.
