Column, welcome to Chengwei International Observation.
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 was definitely a big event for the whole world, an epoch-making event. At that time, the Western world, led by the United States, was actually surprised and happy about this matter. Nor could they have imagined that an old rival who had been facing them for more than 40 years would suddenly fall apart from within. In those years, although the Berlin Wall fell, Germany was reunified, many Eastern European countries left the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union's strength was disintegrating day by day, but the Americans did not expect that victory would come so quickly.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US political circles naturally celebrated each other, and even many people proposed that Russia's territory is still too large, Russia still has 17 million square kilometers of territory, or it is necessary to continue to dismember it. There are many people in the academic community who interpret this matter, the most famous of whom is a Japanese-American Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama made a point in 1992, the end of history. What do you mean?
Since World War II, there has been a confrontation between the two camps, but it is also the competition between two social systems. The Western world, led by the United States, believes that their economic system is advanced, their social system is advanced, so this is the root of their victory over the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union completely collapsed, Russia was almost capitulating to the United States begging for aid, hoping that the United States would give it a large amount of economic assistance, and recruiting many economists from the United States as advisers to change its economic system. Because many Russians felt at that time that after 40 years of confrontation, our system had failed, our economic system was not good, so our development could not catch up with the United States. Now that we have surrendered, we have conceded, and we have let the Americans guide us. We will not confront the Americans anymore, and we will work with him to develop the economy in the future.
So Fukuyama believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was ultimately a testament to the strength of the American system, so he proposed the end of history. What do you mean? He believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union proves one thing, that is, the American system, that is, the best system ever invented and discovered by mankind, which has reached its peak and will not be surpassed, and there will be no system that can challenge the American system in the future.
Any controversy in the past can disappear with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire because history has ended, and there were indeed many people who held similar views to Fukuyama at that time, because it seems that the real living reality is placed here, after 40 years of confrontation, the United States won, the Soviet Union lost, the United States won in the system, the Soviet Union lost in the system, so the end of history seems so logical.
But is history really over? Has this debate really ended? Is the American system really the most perfect and best system ever invented by mankind? Obviously this is not the case, a simple example, the United States to learn from russia introduced American economists to engage in shock therapy, and eventually the economy collapsed, under Yeltsin, Russia's GDP fell sharply, Russia's national strength greatly weakened.
To tell the truth, at the end of Yeltsin's rule, many people said that in a few years, Russia would still be torn apart and then broken into seven or eight scattered pieces, and then the real threat to the world would be gone. So it is clear that history is not over, following the American system has not allowed Russia to live a good life, and after Putin came to power, we found that the farther Russia and the United States went, the economic strength slowly increased, and the United States itself actually had major problems.
In the past, we told you that the peak of the United States' national strength, in fact, was probably in the 90s of the last century, on the one hand, it won the Cold War, and on the other hand, the entire Gulf War made the world vibrant. It turns out that modern warfare is fought like this, cutting melons and cutting vegetables, and the US military quickly destroyed Iraq. At the same time, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. economy was thriving. The entire computer age that we want to talk about today is actually the foundation laid by the United States in the 90s of the last century, and in the Clinton era, the United States even had a fiscal surplus every year, and the GDP of the United States alone accounted for about 35% to 40% of the world, which was really the peak of American power at that time, so Fukuyama can put forward such a point of view, and the end of history does not need to be debated anymore.
However, 30 years later, just recently Fukuyama issued another point of view, in his view, the American democratic system may even one day completely die out, because after 30 years of development, the American system has not only not become better, but has become worse, not according to the January 5 article, january 6, 2021, at the instigation of then President Trump, the mob attacked Congress, setting an ominous precedent for American politics.
Since the end of the Civil War, there has not been a peaceful transfer of power in the United States, and no president has deliberately contested the results of elections, even if there is sufficient evidence of free and fair elections. The incident continues to reverberate in U.S. political circles, but its impact is clearly not limited to domestic, it has also had a significant impact internationally, marking a significant decline in U.S. global power and influence.
Isn't the lawyer over? It's not that Americans have invented the best system in the world, but it's that kind of system that gave birth to Trump. It is such a system that makes the divisions in American society more and more serious, and it is such a system that gave birth to the Capitol Hill Riots on January 6 last year, so that the whole world can see the weakness of the United States, so to this day Fukuyama has to revise his views at that time.
Fukuyama said he underestimated two factors, one of which was the difficulty of creating democracy and also creating a modern, just, and clean state. Second, there is the possibility of political decay in so-called advanced democracies. Yes, the history of the United States may still be too short, more than 200 years, so his scholars may have experienced less. Unlike the continent, which has a history of thousands of years, we know that things always turn from prosperity to decline, and we know that many problems always have to appear in turn, just like the United States, which peaked in the 90s of the last century, but it has been declining for the past 30 years, as Fukuyama said, it underestimated the possibility of political decline in a so-called advanced democracy, and the emergence of Trump accelerated the process of political decay in the United States, even before Biden was elected president. Many Americans also feel that their system has the so-called purification ability, and after the emergence of Trump's odd number, they will quickly elect Trump, choose a qualified person, and choose a better person to reverse all this.
However, Biden's administration this year has really surprised many Americans, and some people now regret saying that they would have known that it was better to continue to vote for Trump that year. Yeah, Biden has done a more honest job this year than Trump. The US system not only does not have the ability to purify itself, but it is afraid that it has chosen a more incompetent person.
Thirty years ago, the weakening of the Soviet Union was the result of less external pressures than internal evolution. The fortress is the easiest to break from within, and today there are really many Americans who have issued such a cry, Hillary Clinton herself said that if Trump becomes president again in 2024, the American democratic system will completely disappear. Trump himself said that maybe in two or three years, the United States will follow the old path of the former Soviet Union, so Fukuyama, who was able to be complacent and proud 30 years ago, put forward the final conclusion of history. Today he said that he has looked at two problems, and the American system may really be so flawed that it is now all exposed.