DBWI: Fukuyama wrong; History keeps going

What if, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collpase of the USSR a few years later, capital-H History had kept on going, with various challenges and setbacks emerging against liberal democracy, rather than the relatively peaceful and prosperous march forward we've been experiencing since at least the late 1990s?

Who could some of the anti-liberal challengers could be. Radicalized Islam? A recalcitrantly authoritarian China? Environmental extremists, unimpressed with the pace and strength of the supposedly post-Historical international co-operation on the environment? Crazed economic populists in Europe and the American flyover?

Obviously in this scenario, the September 11th Statement On Global Co-operation And Priorities doesn't get signed, or is at least VERY different from what we got IOTL.
 
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"Environmental extremists, unimpressed with the pace and strength of the supposedly post-Historical international co-operation on the environment?"

Or for that matter, economic nationalists who deny scientific evidence as some sort of international conspiracy, many of whom would probably be funded by the fossil fuel industries.
 
"Environmental extremists, unimpressed with the pace and strength of the supposedly post-Historical international co-operation on the environment?"

Or for that matter, economic nationalists who deny scientific evidence as some sort of international conspiracy, many of whom would probably be funded by the fossil fuel industries.

A real possibility, yeah. We probably dodged quite a few bullets when we lucked out on History. When you think of some of the characters we could be dealing with right now, ugh.
 
The fact that Russia recuperated very quickly from a serie of coup was, I believe, a strong factor.
Of course, sucks to be Chechen or Central Asian, but those wars helped keep everything together and led to a peaceful "capitalisation" of Russia, while the money from that new market helped foster the American social net on a European model
 
Tanc49:

Agreed. And Russia's hegemony over Central Asia definitely had a soothing effect on the Islamic world, which is probably the reason we're seeing a lot of Islamic countries embracing social progress(eg. secularism and feminism) even faster than many western nations did in the C20. (Granted, the Clean Energy Revolution sidelining Saudi Arabia's influence probably had a big impact as well.)
 
History keeps going? Then folks would have real problems to worry about. Lacking serious social issues or global conflict theres a whole class of people wringing their hands and wailing over 'crisis' like toxic fabric socks from China, or vegetable blight from North America. Several hundred people die from Eubola in Africa & entire nations around the world go into lockdown. Its like there is a personality type who is not satisfied unless there is something to panic over & everyone else is equally hysterical over a rabid rodent 300km away.
 
Who could some of the anti-liberal challengers could be. Radicalized Islam? A recalcitrantly authoritarian China? Environmental extremists, unimpressed with the pace and strength of the supposedly post-Historical international co-operation on the environment? Crazed economic populists in Europe and the American flyover?

What about Christian extremsts? Or some extreme neo-Communists in Southern Europe?
 
Or some extreme neo-Communists in Southern Europe?

Good call. Given the tensions that had been building up around immigration in the late 80s, I could see the far-left launching a strong counterattack, combining sections of their traditional working-class base with immigrant and ethnic voters threatened by the right-wing's flirtation with xenophobia. If the neo-Communists manage to link right-wing nativism with the corporate elites, it could be a very strong basis for a 21st Century European populism based on cultural cosmpolitanism and economic justice.
 
History is still going guys.

History in a Hegelian sense - a continuing conflict of ideas. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Revolution, and the George HW Bush administration's successful transforming of Cold War era tructures into a post-Cold War International System, there hasn't been a real alternative to the Liberal-International order.



If you wanna make things messy...

1) Break up Yugoslavia more nastily. The OTL acceptance of Croatian and Slovenian independence on the condition that they accept the remaining borders of Yugoslavia (and Yugoslavia respect their independence) played a big role.
2) Have the Iranian Revolution of 1980 go differently. The death of the Shah allowed for the establishment of the Republic which, despite a sort of rocky start, contributed to stability in the region and probably prevented a more illiberal regime from taking over (the clergy were on the verge of engaging much more heavily in politics before the abolition of the monarchy)
3) Break up the USS. The Union of Sovereign States and its Eurasian Trade initiative have brought economy prosperity throughout Eurasia and tightened the system of international trade and movement of peoples. Ultimately Azerbaijan and Ukraine left the Union before it formalized - albeit with Crimea opting to remain - but the important thing is the stability it helped to preserve in Central Asia.
4) Have the Chinese Government crack down on the Tiananmen Protestors. OTL the refusal of soldiers to fire upon them lead to the collapse of the government into the Chinese Federal Republic which was strongly pro-international.
5) Have the US start a war or two somewhere. Just look at how it reacted to Bin Ladin's 1993 World Trade Center Attack and the East African Embassy bombings - a massive international chase for Bin Ladin that resulted in his capture. The US nearly invaded Sudan before the Sudanese coughed him up. Have a dumber regime give Bin Ladin Protection, and the US might start a destabilizing conflict.
6) Expand NATO aggressively. The terms of German reunification were that NATO couldn't expand into the post-Soviet sphere, but even OTL that got testy with the absorption of Slovenia, Croatia, and Albania which were never really in the Soviet Sphere. Had NATO gone so far as to expand into actual Warsaw Pact States (or worse... the Baltics) that would have peeved the Russians big-time.
 
Well, the conflict of ideas I think will still happen, given how there are growing problems regarding large corporations trying to become oligopolies and so on. Sure we've had peace and prosperity, but that's not gonna stop various groups from causing trouble if it's not rosy elsewhere. South America still needs to be ironed out given Brazil's growing volatile nature and Central Asia is still being dragged into the modern times, kicking and screaming.

The conflict of ideas is still happening, but I think it will change to internal problems. Reagan's "voodoo econmics" remains a spectre within the Republicans and people didn't realize the problems of the banks until the Great Recession of 2008.

Heck, we got lucky when exposing alot of the fossil fuel industry's attempts of stifling research and it pretty much was the beginning of the end for the Koch financial empire
 
The fact that Russia recuperated very quickly from a serie of coup was, I believe, a strong factor.
Of course, sucks to be Chechen or Central Asian, but those wars helped keep everything together and led to a peaceful "capitalisation" of Russia, while the money from that new market helped foster the American social net on a European model

This is true, and for this, it's hard to overstate how momentous the Bush Administration's 1993 "Russian Marshall Plan" was for making that capitalization happen. Bush was wise to listen to Richard Nixon's advice and not miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to foster trust and cooperation with Russia and put it on a path to capitalist liberal democracy and making them an ally and trading partner of the West. Sure some leftover hawks whined about pouring American dollars into supporting what people still thought to be an adversary, but leaving aside the obvious humaninatrian justification, it paid well politically as well. I've got to give all due credit to Bush for that.

Could this be a potential POD? Something happens which causes Bush to lose in 1992, and a different President somehow ignores this opportunity? And a revival of Russian nationalist revanchism ensues?
 
This is true, and for this, it's hard to overstate how momentous the Bush Administration's 1993 "Russian Marshall Plan" was for making that capitalization happen. Bush was wise to listen to Richard Nixon's advice and not miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to foster trust and cooperation with Russia and put it on a path to capitalist liberal democracy and making them an ally and trading partner of the West. Sure some leftover hawks whined about pouring American dollars into supporting what people still thought to be an adversary, but leaving aside the obvious humaninatrian justification, it paid well politically as well. I've got to give all due credit to Bush for that.

Could this be a potential POD? Something happens which causes Bush to lose in 1992, and a different President somehow ignores this opportunity? And a revival of Russian nationalist revanchism ensues?
To me, one of the big PoD is the realisation in the late 80's/early 90's that those fast liberalization programs that are supposed to bring fast prosperity are mainly used for cash grabs by oligarchs. I mean, the IMF fucked Africa up in the 80's and it took them what, 20 years to recover?
It's not just the money poured in, it's the fact Russian industry had some breathing room to get up to speed and that this liberalisation was made over 15 years in a very controlled way.
That also meant they could keep their economic ties in Central Asia and allow the region to grow slowly.
I do remember the Russian president was instrumental in calming the situation when there was a coup in Pakistan in '98, that was a close call
 
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