0序言：衰落之後：從歷史的終結到民主的危機，政客們如何摧毀了我們的世界
介紹
歷史終結的終結
自2016年以來，民主世界大部分地區爆發的激烈政治鬥爭，與25年前普遍存在的樂觀情緒形成了鮮明對比。當時，蘇聯正在解體，冷戰即將結束。 70年代的滯脹和80年代的工業動盪已成為過去。經濟學家們正在爭論，央行官員們精妙的政策調整是否已經使商業週期過時。放鬆管制、私有化和自由貿易這三大支柱——在國內被稱為新自由主義，在國外被稱為華盛頓共識——佔據主導地位。聯合國授權一支多國部隊將伊拉克軍隊驅逐出科威特，這標誌著新的全球秩序的到來。民主在東歐、拉丁美洲和亞洲大部分地區蓬勃發展。北愛爾蘭和中東地區長期停滯的和平談判在經歷了數十年的血腥僵局後終於取得了進展。令人驚訝的是，即使在種族隔離時期的南非，和平轉型也在悄悄進行。中國和越南倖存的共產主義政權正以皈依者的熱情擁抱資本主義，並積極爭取加入世界貿易組織和其他國際組織。俄羅斯即將加入七國集團，使其成為八國集團。法蘭西斯·福山因宣稱歷史終將到來而聲名大噪。
到2016年，所有這些欣喜之情都已消散殆盡。那時，自大蕭條以來最嚴重的金融危機已經粉碎了美國的金融霸權和「華盛頓共識」。新興經濟體不再覺得受制於美國模式及其經濟互動規則。中國推出了「一帶一路」倡議，透過在非洲、亞洲和拉丁美洲大力投資基礎設施，輸出其「北京共識」。新的國際秩序胎死腹中，被全球反恐戰爭重創，這場戰爭在阿富汗和伊拉克陷入了泥淖。北約一手策劃的利比亞崩潰，又給美國留下了一條失敗國家的長河——同時也徹底粉碎了美國能夠作為公正的調解人，阻止掠奪性政府屠殺本國人民的任何幻想。俄羅斯的遊說——先是希望加入北約，後又希望限制其無情的東擴——屢屢被置之不理。 2008年，俄羅斯入侵喬治亞；2014年，又入侵烏克蘭，重現了冷戰時期與西方互動的模式。中東和平進程已然停滯。本雅明·內塔尼亞胡領導的極右翼聯盟已連續贏得三次以色列大選，似乎將在可預見的未來繼續掌控政府，擴大以色列對西岸的控制，而加薩地帶則動盪不安。
以色列並非特例。民粹主義政黨在世界各地崛起，兜售保護主義、反移民甚至赤裸裸的威權主義綱領，這構成了二戰以來對自由民主的首次嚴重威脅。關於不斷擴大、日益緊密的歐盟的辯論，已被對歐盟能否生存下去的擔憂所取代，因為歐洲中央銀行在應對金融危機的後續影響時舉步維艱，而希臘和義大利則威脅要步英國後塵，退出歐盟。任何認為英國脫歐和唐納德·川普當選只是偶然事件的希望，都將在隨後的幾年裡破滅。在美國歷史上，除了1860年國家陷入內戰之外，2020年大選後，權力和平交接首次受到嚴重質疑。主流政黨分裂，反體制政黨在幾乎所有老牌民主國家蓬勃發展。波蘭、土耳其和匈牙利等新興民主國家的民主制度也開始衰退。內塔尼亞胡在短暫的權力真空期後重掌大權，他開始攻擊以色列的法律機構，並很快捲入加薩地帶一場慘烈的新戰爭。諸如《民主如何死亡》、《通往不自由之路》、《民主如何終結》和《民主資本主義的危機》等書籍，反映了當時精英階層的悲觀論調。發展中國家也未能倖免，經濟成長緩慢且腐敗猖獗，為印度、巴西和南非的民粹主義候選人提供了支持。金磚國家再也沒有人慶祝了。
我們是如何從那時走到今天的？柏林圍牆倒塌時盛行的樂觀情緒，為何會如此迅速地被如今的政治局勢所取代？而如今的政治局勢，其歷史最接近的相似之處，莫過於上世紀30年代法西斯主義和共產主義摧毀民主政體、將世界推向災難邊緣的時期。這一切是否不可避免？還是政治和經濟領導人做出了某些決定，從而造就了我們今天的現實，或至少大大增加了這種可能性？如果是後者，那麼我們能從研究這些選擇和錯失的良機、關注那些未被選擇的道路中學到什麼？這些問題正是本書的寫作動機。
或許1989年只是一個天真的幻想。畢竟，歷史上不乏預言世界末日最終卻慘遭失敗的例子。黑格爾、各種馬克思主義者、現代化理論家、丹尼爾貝爾以及其他許多曾經高呼理性與仁慈政治即將到來的人，都被迫在歷史的洪流中收回了他們的預言。為什麼這次會有所不同呢？或許我們正經歷著一場令人沮喪的回歸均值的過程。
本書認為，1989年並非虛幻之年。誠然，歷史並非必然，甚至並非不可逆轉，但蘇聯帝國的崩潰帶來了難得的機會。二戰後塑造政治格局的僵化約束突然變得靈活，為創造性變革提供了前所未有的機會。人們有機會拓展並深化富蘭克林·羅斯福和哈里·杜魯門在二戰末期開始構建、卻因鐵幕落下而停滯的基於規則的國際秩序。人們有機會將冷戰聯盟重塑為不同的安全安排，從而鞏固這一正在形成的秩序。此外，人們還有機會重新思考那些將數百萬選民排除在資本主義勝利之外的經濟政策，而這些政策最終必將自食其果。西方領導人非但沒有抓住機遇，反而處理不當與前蘇聯集團的關係，透過反恐戰爭和在中東拙劣的政權更迭嘗試破壞了正在形成的全球秩序，甚至在2008年金融危機摧毀了新自由主義經濟正統理論的政治合法性之後，他們仍然變本加厲地推行該理論。他們沒有鞏固和發展二戰後的秩序，反而製造了一個更像一戰戰勝國所建立的那種災難性動盪的世界。
我們無法預知那些未曾選擇的道路會開啟怎樣的未來，但我們有充分的理由相信，截然不同且遠勝於我們今日所處的世界，將會湧現出截然不同的可能性。這並非事後諸葛亮。政府內外許多嚴肅人士都曾提出令人信服的論據，描繪出通往更美好未來的前景。然而，這些論點卻被置之不理或棄之不顧。短視的左右翼領導人非但沒有抓住機會塑造一個更美好的世界，反而白白浪費了這些機會。如今，數千萬人正為此付出代價。我挖掘這些被遺忘的論點，旨在幫助讀者更好地理解我們身處此境的原因，以及如何更好地思考未來的挑戰與機會。
政治基本面發生創造性變革的機會十分罕見，而且往往轉瞬即逝。大多數時候，政治領袖的行動自由都受到嚴格限制。既有的製度、利益團體以及根深蒂固的意識形態限制了人們能夠接受的——甚至他們所能想的——可行方案。但有時，這些結構會鬆動甚至瓦解，拓寬創新變革的空間，直到新的結構鞏固下來。共產主義經濟崩潰和冷戰結束時，就出現了這種情況。
這一點在蘇聯集團國家很快就顯現出來。幾乎一夜之間，人們發現他們可以購買以前禁忌的東西：公寓、金融資產以及新近私有化的公司的股份。一些負責私有化的官員一夜致富，其他人也紛紛抓住這股快速改變帶來的商機。許多人生平第一次可以暢通無阻地前往西方，創辦企業，並從事新的法律和專業職業。從李維斯牛仔褲到麥當勞漢堡，再到好萊塢電影，各種消費品與更多低端美國商品一起湧現，其中一些——比如我在1991年3月在莫斯科阿爾巴特街市場看到的“沙漠風暴”避孕套——滑稽可笑（或許“沙漠盾牌”更貼切）。黑市變得多餘。莫斯科紅場上的古姆百貨公司就是這種變化的典型例證，這家商店在舊秩序末期貨架空空如也，如今卻擺滿了奢侈品——大多來自國外。不久之後，克里姆林宮對面便會建成一座三層樓高的地下購物中心——獵人商行（Okhotny Ryad），裡面擠滿了數十家出售昂貴珠寶和名牌服裝的商店。西方遊客——尤其是美國人——隨處可見。在人們的記憶中，這是第一次沒有人害怕秘密警察。
西方也出現了新的動態。一些評論家預期，政治左翼——如今已不再受制於社會民主是通往奴役之路的邪惡驛站的指責（正如弗里德里希·哈耶克在其反對政府權力擴張的論戰中所言）——將會得到加強。然而，事實證明他們錯了。冷戰的結束加速了全球勞動市場的一體化，以及隨之而來的工會衰退——而這種衰落已經在大多數資本主義民主國家持續了數十年。有組織的勞工力量的衰落與其政治影響力的減弱相匹配，因此政府更加關注並回應商業利益。隨著資本主義成為唯一的選擇，中間偏左的政黨拋棄了凱因斯主義思想的最後殘餘，開始向選民和遊說者兜售自己比教皇更虔誠的形象：比奉行財政緊縮和新自由主義正統的中間偏右政黨更能勝任。經濟精英——尤其是金融精英——突然發現自己擁有了自19世紀以來，或許是歷史上前所未有的政治權力。他們將如何運用這種權力，則是未知數。
全球共產主義的崩潰也引發了各國如何追求地緣政治利益的新問題。北約會繼續存在嗎？如果存在，哪些國家會加入，它又將扮演什麼角色？全球安全還有其他選擇嗎？這些選擇又該如何實現？美國會繼續獨佔鰲頭，還是會形成其他結構──或許更類似歐洲國家在拿破崙戰爭後在維也納建立的權力平衡？又或許會形成全新的結構？俄羅斯和前蘇聯加盟共和國將如何融入正在形成的格局，更不用說中國、越南和北韓等國家了。在1989年後的幾年裡，不同的領導人和分析家提出了各種各樣的方案，包括徹底廢除北約、立即接納包括俄羅斯在內的所有前蘇聯集團國家加入北約，以及各種逐步擴張的計劃。美國和其他西方國家的政府就如何應對這一局面展開了激烈的辯論。塵埃落定之後，世界格局將會如何，無人知曉。甚至在蓋達組織 2001 年 9 月 11 日對美國發動攻擊再次擾亂現實之前，各大國就已經改變了許多應對方式。
長期以來因冷戰對立而僵化的意識形態也變得靈活多變，1989年以前難以想像的可能性突然出現。幾十年來一直在推演從資本主義過渡到社會主義的各種方案的知識分子，發現自己開始思考相反的情況，而且往往與一些意想不到的人結盟。到了20世紀90年代初，像波蘭前馬克思主義者亞當·普熱沃斯基、匈牙利保守派經濟學家亞諾什·科爾奈和美國技術官僚杰弗裡·薩克斯這樣背景迥異的人，都在大力推崇休克療法，認為它能幫助人們度過過渡期的陣痛，並儘快融入新的現實。 2持這種觀點的並非只有知識分子。 1991年春天——甚至在蘇聯解體之前——西方訪客震驚地發現，蘇聯政治局委員公開宣稱他們的體制已經破產，亟需解體。3在南非，馬克思主義的非洲人國民大會（非國大）立場發生了戲劇性的轉變——納爾遜·曼德拉出獄後的首次出訪之一便是前往哈瓦那，宣稱菲德爾·卡斯特羅是“所有熱愛自由的人民的精神支柱”。 4非國大執政數月後，便拋棄了神聖不可侵犯的信條，公開與英美資源集團等白人大型企業合作，並採納了標準的自由主義經濟政策。在這方面，他們效仿了英國新工黨、美國新民主黨以及許多歐洲社會民主黨。 1970年代和80年代歐洲共產主義的最後殘餘也很快消散殆盡。
長期穩定的機構也在改變。柏林圍牆倒塌後不久，世界貿易組織就開始接納前共產主義國家。聯合國大會開始通過新的授權，並以前所未有的方式彰顯自身權力。自《聯合國憲章》創立以來就奉行的國家主權神聖不可侵犯的理念，正逐漸被這樣一種原則所取代：各國政府應對嚴重侵犯人權的行為承擔責任——既可以透過在國際刑事法院起訴肇事者，也可以在安理會授權的情況下對主權國家進行軍事幹預。 2005年，聯合國大會透過《世界首腦會議成果文件》正式確立了這些原則，該文件宣布所有政府都有義務保護其人民免受種族滅絕、戰爭罪、種族清洗和危害人類罪的侵害。透過該文件，聯合國大會首次確立了自身作為全球立法機構的地位。
制度、意識形態和利益無需同時放鬆，深遠的改變才有可能發生。 1972年，理查德·尼克森對華開放政策為美國商業創造了前所未有的機遇，這涉及利益格局的劇烈重組，但並未質疑冷戰意識形態或現有的製度結構。事實上，尼克森及其國家安全顧問亨利·基辛格將其視為對抗蘇聯的精明戰略舉措。林登·約翰遜在1964年和1965年支持民權運動的決定是對南方白人意識形態的正面衝擊，但他是在既定的選舉制度和經濟利益框架內採取的行動。然而，當這三者同時放鬆時，就像冷戰結束時一樣，就會出現一個異常廣闊的變革空間，但這不太可能持續太久。
而事實並非如此。如今，世界主要經濟體中死灰復燃的保護主義限制了經濟成長、貿易和旅行的可能性。貿易戰如同戰爭一樣，結束遠比發動難得多。在民主國家，大量憤怒、焦慮、疏離的選民在無法改變建制派政黨時不斷離去，這使得人們難以看到扭轉這些變化的政治動力來自何處。西方國家再次因烏克蘭和台灣問題與俄羅斯和中國陷入僵局，許多來自全球南方的國家也像冷戰時期那樣結盟。北約東擴加劇了這些分歧，而唐納德·川普更是讓北約的未來前景蒙上陰影。聯合國和世貿組織等曾經緩和諸多緊張局勢的機構如今舉步維艱，但目前尚不清楚究竟是什麼機構——如果有的話——將取代它們。共產主義經濟意識形態並未死灰復燃，但冷戰結束時人們普遍期待的那種溫和的國際主義，即便沒有徹底消亡，也已奄奄一息。唐納德·川普復興了查爾斯·林白在20世紀40年代提出的「美國優先」意識形態，與此同時，其他地區也出現了咄咄逼人的民族主義，更不用說伊斯蘭原教旨主義和伊斯蘭恐懼症的死灰復燃——所有這些都限制了國際合作的可能性。
這些排他性意識形態爆發之快，應該讓我們意識到它們並非不可逆轉。然而，即便其政治擁護者兜售的補救措施不過是流血犧牲品，想要遏制它們也絕非易事。除非主流政客和經濟領袖們能夠做到他們幾十年來一直未能做到的事——支持那些旨在解決經濟不安全感的產業和扶貧政策，否則這些措施不太可能奏效。正是這些經濟不安全感，導致許多選民最初接受了排他性意識形態。否則，經濟焦慮和政治疏離感將會加劇，唐納德·川普、瑪麗娜·勒龐、弗拉基米爾·普丁和維克托·歐爾班這樣的人物將會層出不窮。
如今情況更加嚴峻，但並非毫無希望。新冷戰並非不可逆轉，但政治領袖需要警惕如何擺脫當前破壞性的局勢——即便在美俄中三國新領導人上任之前，擺脫困境的機會可能難以出現。那些原本就脆弱的、促進國際合作的機構如今已被嚴重削弱。重振這些機構需要領導者重新學習克制行動所帶來的「以牙還牙」的益處，而這些教訓在上世紀90年代和本世紀初卻被輕率地拋諸腦後。這可能意味著在採取更大行動之前，需要先踏出一些建設性的步伐。北約或許可以發展成為一支建設性力量，以限制國家間（甚至在某些情況下限制國家內部）的侵略行為，但這需要重新思考其使命和治理方式，而美國和其他主要成員國目前尚未願意這樣做。反過來，這需要更了解該聯盟是如何發展成今天的樣子，以及在過程中錯過了哪些機會。
打破充斥我們政治的種種弊端的前景令人望而生畏，但放棄既無益也無道理。二戰後的最初幾年，對於那些懷抱民主情懷、渴望為子孫後代留下比他們繼承的更美好世界的人們來說，想必同樣令人沮喪。大蕭條帶來了空前的失業率和不平等、普遍的不安全感、法西斯主義、納粹大屠殺，以及歷史上最具破壞性的戰爭——據保守估計，這場戰爭至少奪去了六千萬人的生命，並摧毀了無數人的生活。因此，幾乎沒有人能夠預料到隨後幾十年將帶來的經濟和政治復興：前所未有的財富和經濟增長，其成果惠及大眾；美國的「偉大社會」計劃，以及許多飽受戰爭蹂躪的國家建立的穩定的民主福利國家；還有國際和平——至少與本世紀上半葉相比是如此。超級大國設法將持續的緊張局勢限制在發展中國家的代理人衝突中，避免了核災難的達摩克利斯之劍威脅，並和平地結束了冷戰。
然而，「幾十年」並非這些變革的「源頭」。設計、籌資並實施歐洲的馬歇爾計畫和日本的經濟復興，需要持續不斷的想像和專注的努力；創建並維持聯合國（此前國際聯盟步履蹣跚、最終失敗），需要持續不斷的努力；談判裁軍條約和分階段脫離核邊緣政策，也需要持續不斷的努力。誠然，有效的領導力必不可少，但領導者也必須動員廣泛的公眾支持他們的行動。正如阿爾伯特·赫希曼曾經說過的那樣，如果人們要支持現有機構，就必須確信他們的政府正在創造一個更美好的世界。 5戰後西方民主國家賴以維繫的正向回饋循環已經萎縮。現在的挑戰是如何建立新的循環。
我們應該感到欣慰的是，西方菁英們已經開始意識到他們盲目追求自身利益的代價。他們發現，走投無路的人會做出孤注一擲的事情；那些未能乘著全球供應鏈和新技術浪潮前行的人，很容易被騙子和煽動者利用，去支持貿易戰、貿易保護主義以及其他令許多精英感到擔憂的政治運動。商業圓桌會議呼籲修改以股東利益最大化為核心、排斥其他利害關係人的公司治理模式，商學院的課程也開始跟進。這些觀念的轉變為政治領袖創造了機會，讓他們能夠爭取企業界對促進包容性成長政策的支持。在私部門工會幾乎消失殆盡、有組織的勞工政治力量日漸式微的時代，這種支持至關重要。正如主流政黨曾經趨同於那些只讓富人受益的經濟政策，從而破壞了歐洲的社會民主和美國的「新政-偉大社會」共識一樣，如今，他們也必須趨同於那些惠及大眾的政策。
我們必須認識到，情況可能會變得更糟。歷史不會完全重演，但許多導致1930年代可怕的民主崩潰的經濟、社會和政治因素，在當今世界卻令人不安地似曾相識。那十年最終以悲劇收場。 1919年，約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯在《和平的經濟後果》一書中預言了後來發生的許多事情。然而，凱因斯的預言最終落空，議會四分五裂，政治菁英們——受制於報復性經濟民族主義——忽略了結構性經濟變革帶來的不穩定後果。本書旨在幫助降低未來出現類似災難性後果的可能性。首先，我們必須了解我們是如何走到今天這一步的。
Introduction
The End of the End of History
The explosion of virulent politics across much of the democratic world since 2016 stands in stunning contrast to the widespread optimism that prevailed a quarter century earlier. Then, the Soviet Union was collapsing and the Cold War was ending. The stagflation of the 1970s and the industrial strife of the 1980s were in the rearview mirror. Economists were debating whether the fine-tuning expertise of central bankers had rendered business cycles obsolete. The trifecta of deregulation, privatization, and free trade—christened neoliberalism at home and the Washington Consensus abroad—reigned supreme. The United Nations had authorized a multinational force to expel Iraq from Kuwait, signaling the advent of a new global order. Democracy was on the march in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and much of Asia. Long-stalled peace negotiations in Northern Ireland and the Middle East were moving forward after decades of bloody gridlock. Amazingly, a peaceful transition was unfolding even in apartheid South Africa. Surviving communist regimes in China and Vietnam were adopting capitalism with the zeal of converts and angling for membership in the World Trade Organization and other international bodies. Russia would soon join the G7, turning it into the G8. Francis Fukuyama became a celebrity for declaring that the end of history had arrived.
All that euphoria had evaporated by 2016. By then, the worst financial crisis since the Depression had shattered American financial hegemony and the Washington Consensus. Emerging economies no longer felt constrained by the US model or its rules of economic engagement. China had rolled out its Belt and Road Initiative, exporting its Beijing Consensus by investing heavily in infrastructure across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The new international order had been stillborn, battered by the Global War on Terror that had turned into quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO’s orchestration of Libya’s collapse had added one more to the trail of failed states that the US was leaving in its wake—along with the remnants of any notion that it could serve as an honest broker to prevent predatory governments from slaughtering their own populations. Russia, whose lobbying—first to join NATO and then to limit its relentless eastward expansion—had repeatedly been brushed aside, had invaded Georgia in 2008 and then Ukraine in 2014, reviving Cold War patterns of interaction with the West. The Middle East peace process was dead. Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-right-wing coalitions had won three successive Israeli elections and seemed set to control the government for the foreseeable future, expanding Israel’s grip on the West Bank while Gaza seethed.
Not that Israel was special. Populist parties were on the rise everywhere, selling protectionist, anti-immigrant, and even nakedly authoritarian agendas that posed the first serious threat to liberal democracy since World War II. Debates about expanding an ever-closer European Union had been displaced by worries about whether it could survive, as the European Central Bank flailed at the downstream effects of the financial crisis, and Greece and Italy threatened to follow Britain out of the union. Any hope that Brexit and Donald Trump’s election had been aberrational would be undone in the years that followed. For the first time in American history—other than in 1860, when the country had disintegrated into civil war—the peaceful transition of power would come seriously into question after the 2020 election. Mainstream parties fragmented and antisystem ones flourished in almost all the older democracies. Democracy began atrophying in newer democracies like Poland, Turkey, and Hungary. Netanyahu, back in power after a brief interregnum, was attacking Israel’s legal institutions and would soon become embroiled in a horrific new war in Gaza. Books with titles like How Democracies Die, The Road to Unfreedom, How Democracy Ends, and The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism captured the pessimistic alarmism of the chattering classes. Developing countries were not immune, as slow growth and rampant corruption fed populist candidates in India, Brazil, and South Africa. No one was celebrating the BRICS anymore.1
How did we get from there to here? How could the widespread optimism that prevailed when the Berlin Wall came down give way so quickly to politics whose closest historical parallels are to the 1930s, when fascism and communism obliterated democracies and took the world beyond the brink of catastrophe? Was it inevitable, or did political and economic leaders make decisions that produced our reality, or at least made it much more likely? If the latter, what can we learn from studying those choices and the forgone opportunities, from attending to the paths not taken? Those questions motivate this book.
Perhaps 1989 was a naive fantasy. After all, history is littered with end-of-history prognosticators who wound up with egg on their faces. Hegel, various Marxists, modernization theorists, Daniel Bell, and many others who have trumpeted the arrival of ever-more rational and benevolent politics have been forced to backtrack by events. Why should this time be different? Maybe we are living through a dispiriting regression to the mean.
This book contends that 1989 wasn’t a fantasy. To be sure, nothing in history is inevitable or even irreversible, but the Soviet empire’s collapse presented rare opportunities. Rigid constraints that had shaped politics after World War II suddenly became fluid, offering unusual opportunities for creative change. There was a real chance to extend and deepen the rules-based international order that Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman had started building at the end of the Second World War but was frozen when the Iron Curtain came down. There were opportunities to refashion Cold War alliances into different security arrangements that would have reinforced this emerging order. There were also opportunities to rethink economic policies that excluded millions of voters from the benefits of capitalism’s triumph in ways that eventually would come home to roost. Rather than seize the moment, Western leaders mismanaged relations with the former Soviet bloc, undermined the emerging global order with their war on terror and their bungled efforts at regime change in the Middle East, and doubled down on neoliberal economic orthodoxy even after the 2008 financial crisis had shattered its political legitimacy. Rather than entrench and build on the post–World War II order, they manufactured a world that is more like the disastrously unstable one that the victorious powers established after World War I.
The future that the paths not taken would have opened up is unknowable, but there are good reasons to think that different and vastly superior possibilities would have emerged instead of the world we find ourselves in today. And this is not twenty-twenty hindsight. Serious people inside and outside government made credible arguments that offered prospects for a better future. Those arguments were brushed off or ignored. Instead of taking advantage of opportunities to fashion a better world, short-sighted leaders on the left and the right squandered them. Today, tens of millions of people are paying the price. In excavating the forgotten arguments, my goal is to give readers a better grasp of why we are where we are and how best to think about the challenges and opportunities going forward.
Opportunities for creative change in the fundamentals of politics are rare and often fleeting. Much of the time, political leaders’ freedom of action is tightly constrained. Prevailing institutions, constellations of interests, and entrenched ideologies limit what people will accept—and often what they can even conceive—as viable options. But occasionally these structures loosen up or even disintegrate, widening the scope for innovative change until new structures solidify. That is what happened when communist economies collapsed and the Cold War ended.
This quickly became obvious in the Soviet bloc countries. Almost overnight, people found that they could buy things that previously had been off-limits: apartments, financial assets, and shares in newly privatizing firms. Some officials overseeing privatization became instant millionaires, as did others who saw ways to cash in on the rapid changes. For the first time in their lives, many people could travel unhindered to the West, start businesses, and pursue new legal and professional careers. Consumer products from Levi’s jeans to McDonald’s burgers and Hollywood films proliferated alongside more down-market American fare, some of it—like the Desert Storm condoms that I saw on sale in Moscow’s Arbat street market in March 1991—kitschily comical (Desert Shield might have made better sense). Black markets became redundant. The Gum department store on Red Square in Moscow, whose shelves had been empty in the terminal years of the old order, exemplified the change as it filled up with luxury goods—mostly from abroad. It would soon be flanked by the three-story underground Okhotny Ryad shopping mall opposite the Kremlin, which was packed with dozens of stores selling expensive jewelry and designer clothes. Western visitors—especially Americans—could be seen everywhere. For the first time in living memory, no one was afraid of the secret police.
New dynamics also emerged in the West. Some commentators expected that the political left—newly immune from charges that social democracy was a nefarious way station on the road to serfdom, as Friedrich Hayek had put it in his polemic against creeping big government—would be strengthened. They were soon proved wrong. The end of the Cold War accelerated the global integration of labor markets and the accompanying decline of trade unions that had been underway in most capitalist democracies for decades. Organized labor’s declining industrial might was matched by diminished political clout, so that governments became more focused on—and responsive to—business interests. With capitalism now the only game in town, left-of-center parties junked the last vestiges of Keynesian thinking and began selling themselves to voters and lobbyists as more Catholic than the Pope: better stewards than center-right parties of fiscal austerity and neoliberal orthodoxy. Economic elites—especially financial elites—suddenly found themselves with more political power than they had wielded at any time since the nineteenth century, perhaps ever. How they would use that power was an open question.
The worldwide collapse of communism also raised new questions about how countries would pursue their geopolitical interests. Would NATO endure? If so, who would belong and what would it do? What were the alternatives for global security? How might they be pursued? Would a triumphant US reign supreme, or would other structures prevail—perhaps something more like the balance of powers the European countries established in Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars? Or something altogether new? How would Russia and the former Soviet republics fit into the emerging architecture, not to mention countries like China, Vietnam, and North Korea? Different leaders and analysts pushed for a great variety of arrangements in the years after 1989, including outright abolition of NATO, immediate admission of all former Soviet bloc countries, including Russia, to the alliance, and various agendas for its gradual expansion. There were spirited debates in the US and other Western governments about how to proceed. No one knew what the terrain would look like once the dust settled. Major powers changed their approaches multiple times, even before al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on the US scrambled reality again.
Ideologies that had long been ossified by Cold War oppositions also became fluid, with possibilities that had been unthinkable before 1989 suddenly coming into play. Intellectuals who had for decades been gaming out different scenarios for transitions from capitalism to socialism found themselves contemplating the reverse, often in the company of strange bedfellows. By the early 1990s, people as different as the Polish former Marxist Adam Przeworski, the conservative Hungarian economist János Kornai, and the American technocrat Jeffrey Sachs were all extolling the virtues of shock therapy to get people through the transitional pain and socialized into the new reality as fast as possible.2 Nor was it just intellectuals. In the spring of 1991—even before the USSR collapsed—Western visitors were shocked to encounter Soviet Politburo members openly declaring their system to be bankrupt and in urgent need of dismantling.3 In South Africa, the Marxist African National Congress turned on a dime—one of Nelson Mandela’s first foreign trips after prison had been to Havana to proclaim Fidel Castro “a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.”4 Within months of taking office, the ANC had discarded sacrosanct shibboleths, was openly collaborating with white big businesses like the mining conglomerate Anglo American, and was adopting the standard neoliberal economic policy diet. In this they were mimicking Britain’s New Labour, the American New Democrats, and many European Social Democratic parties. The last vestiges of the Eurocommunism of the 1970s and 1980s soon faded away.
Long-stable institutions were also changing. The World Trade Organization started admitting former communist countries soon after the Berlin Wall came down. The United Nations General Assembly began adopting new mandates and asserting itself in unprecedented ways. The idea that national sovereignty was sacrosanct, enshrined in the UN Charter since its inception, was giving way to the doctrine that governments can be held accountable for gross human rights violations—both by prosecuting perpetrators in the International Criminal Court and even by staging military interventions within sovereign countries when authorized by the Security Council. By formalizing these doctrines in 2005 with its World Summit Outcome Document, which declared that all governments have an enforceable responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, the General Assembly was, for the first time, asserting itself as a kind of global legislative body.
Institutions, ideologies, and interests need not all loosen up together for far-reaching change to become possible. Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972, which created hitherto unimaginable possibilities for American business, involved a dramatic reordering of interests without questioning Cold War ideologies or the existing structure of institutions. Indeed, Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, saw it as a shrewd strategic move against the Soviets. Lyndon Johnson’s decision to get behind civil rights in 1964 and 1965 was a frontal assault on Southern white ideology, yet he did so within the prevailing framework of electoral institutions and economic interests. But when all three loosen up at once, as they did at the end of the Cold War, an unusually broad scope for change opens that will not likely persist for long.
And indeed, it has not. Today, resurgent protectionism among the world’s biggest economies limits the possibilities for growth, trade, and travel. Trade wars, like shooting wars, are a lot harder to end than to start. In the democratic countries, large numbers of angry, anxious, alienated voters continue deserting establishment parties when they cannot transform them, making it hard to see where the political impetus to begin reversing these changes can come from. Much of the West is once again in a standoff with Russia and China over Ukraine and Taiwan, with many countries from the Global South lining up as they did during the Cold War. NATO’s eastward expansion has buttressed those divisions, even as Donald Trump has thrown the alliance’s future viability into question. Institutions like the UN and the WTO, which used to blunt many of these tensions, are floundering, though it remains unclear what—if anything—will replace them. Communist economic ideologies have not resurfaced, but the benign cosmopolitanism that had so widely been anticipated at the end of the Cold War is on life support if it has not been obliterated. Donald Trump’s resuscitation of Charles Lindbergh’s America First ideology from the 1940s has been matched by aggressive nationalism elsewhere, not to mention the resurgence of both Islamic fundamentalism and Islamophobia—all of which limit the possibilities for international cooperation.
The speed with which these exclusionary ideologies have erupted should alert us to the fact that they don’t have to be with us indefinitely. Dialing them down will be hard, however, even if their political champions peddle remedies that amount to little more than bloodletting. It is unlikely to work unless mainstream politicians and economic leaders do what so many of them have failed to do for decades: get behind industrial and ameliorative policies that address the economic insecurities that lead so many voters to embrace exclusionary ideologies in the first place. Failing that, there will be more economic anxiety and political alienation. More Donald Trumps, Marine Le Pens, Vladimir Putins, and Viktor Orbáns.
Things are much more constrained today, but not hopeless. The new Cold War is not cast in stone, but political leaders will need to become alert to ways of escaping today’s destructive dynamics—even if the opportunities to do so are unlikely to materialize until new leaders take the helm in the US, Russia, and China. The always fragile institutions that foster international cooperation have been dangerously weakened. Reviving them will require leaders who can relearn the tit-for-tat benefits of acting with restraint, lessons that were cavalierly tossed aside in the 1990s and 2000s. It will likely mean taking baby constructive steps before bigger ones become viable. NATO might conceivably evolve into a constructive force to limit aggression between—and in some circumstances even within—countries, but this will require rethinking its mission and governance in ways that the US and the other leading members of the alliance have not yet been willing to do. That, in turn, will require a better understanding of how the alliance came to be what it is and the missed opportunities along the way.
The prospects for interrupting the baleful dynamics that have swamped so much of our politics are daunting, but giving up is neither productive nor warranted. The early years after World War II must have seemed at least as dispiriting for people with democratic sensibilities who aspired to leave their children a better world than they had inherited. The Great Depression had ushered in extraordinary levels of unemployment and inequality, widespread insecurity, fascism, the Holocaust, and the most devastating war in history that by conservative estimates killed at least sixty million people and shattered the lives of countless millions more. Few, then, would have predicted the economic and political renaissance that subsequent decades would bring: unprecedented levels of wealth and economic growth whose benefits were widely shared; the Great Society in the US and stable democratic welfare states in many countries that had been devastated by the war; and international peace—at least when compared with the first half of the century. The superpowers managed to limit their continuing tensions to proxy conflicts in the developing world, avoid the Damoclean threat of nuclear catastrophe, and navigate a peaceful exit from the Cold War.
Except that “the decades” didn’t “bring” these changes. It took sustained imagination and focused effort to design, fund, and implement the Marshall Plan in Europe and the economic revitalization of Japan; to create and then sustain the UN where previously the League of Nations had faltered and failed; and to negotiate arms reduction treaties and a phased disengagement from nuclear brinkmanship. Effective leadership was required, to be sure, but leaders also had to mobilize broad public support behind what they were doing. As Albert Hirschman once said, people need to be convinced that their government is creating a better world if they are to support establishment institutions.5 The resulting positive feedback loops that sustained postwar Western democracies have atrophied. The challenge is to create new ones.
We should be encouraged that Western elites have begun learning the costs of their blinkered pursuit of self-interest. They are discovering that desperate people do desperate things, that people who aren’t surfing the waves of new global supply chains and technologies can be mobilized by charlatans and demagogues to support trade wars, protectionism, and other political movements that many among the elites find alarming. The Business Roundtable has called for revising models of corporate governance that are based on maximizing shareholder return to the exclusion of other stakeholders, and business school curriculums are starting to follow suit. These shifting attitudes create openings for political leaders to garner business support for policies that will promote inclusive growth, support that will be vital in an era when private-sector unions have all but disappeared and the political power of organized labor is moribund. Just as mainstream parties once converged on economic policies whose benefits accrued to the very rich, undermining social democracy in Europe and the New Deal–Great Society consensus in the US, they must now converge on policies whose benefits are widely shared.
And it’s vital to grasp that things can get worse. History never repeats itself exactly, but many of the economic, social, and political dynamics that fostered the horrific democratic breakdowns of the 1930s are disconcertingly familiar in today’s world. That decade did not end well. In 1919, John Maynard Keynes predicted much of what subsequently transpired in The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Keynes turned out to be shouting at the wind, as parliaments fragmented and political elites—in thrall to retributive economic nationalisms—ignored the destabilizing consequences of structural economic change. This book is written to help reduce the likelihood of a comparably malignant future. First we must understand how we got here.
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