No author can control what happens to his words once they have been written. Like birds in a cage, once the door is opened the words take flight. The political scientist Raymond Aron surely had this in mind when he gave his work on Clausewitz the title Penser la guerre, and in doing so opening up a truly breathtaking perspective on the subject.⁽¹⁾ If Clausewitz were to read it, he would undoubtedly be astonished by the inevitable outcome of his thoughts, and by the destruction of their essence. Unless, of course, such a realisation late in his own life led to the melancholy which it is said cast gloom over his old age. Yet at the same time, I cannot see that it was Raymond Aron’s intention to broaden the debate to the extent that, in whatever field one might choose, to start reflecting on things amounts to destroying them. In the West, our shining lights set in motion a form of destructive thinking from which a kind of intellectual bloodbath has followed. God was the first victim, then war and now history. Let us start with the latter, and, at the risk of shocking you, with Francis Fukuyama’s startling announcement, yet to be refuted, of the end of history.

The End of History

Fukuyama’s assertion, and I mean assertion rather than prophesy, is perhaps less interesting than the extraordinary violence—hate, almost—that the publication of his work whipped up among his opponents. All of them, political analysts, historians and the military in general, felt under attack from this little Japanese American who, they thought, was destroying their basic currency and the pillar of their passion. What was it, then, that Fukuyama actually said? This is worthy of a slight diversion, since the end of history and the end of war essentially amount to the same thing.

In his own way, he reminded us of what certain great philosophers before him had said: Kant, Hegel, Tocqueville, Nietzsche and Kojève had all already prophesised the end of history. He simply said that their common prophesy had come to fruition and that the horrors of the twentieth century, those ideologies that, as we know all too well, lead to war, such as nationalism, communism and fascism, were but a regrettable aside to the main course of events. Their effect was simply to delay the outcome of the masters’ ireful vision. Today, it is a fait accompli—or nearly.