Since the late twentieth century a series of political, social and cultural upheavals has refashioned the world in which we live, creating the impression that history is ‘speeding up’. With hindsight, the two hundred years from the Fall of the Bastillein 1789 to the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, or, more briefly, the period from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, appear to have been characterized by continuity and relative stability, at least by comparison with the uncertainty, even shapelessness, of the contemporary world. Marx's comment that ‘All that is solid melts into air’, made in 1848, has come to have an eerie but unmistakable relevance. For some, these developments mark the passing of the ‘age of ideologies’, implying that the major ideologies are now, effectively, disengaged from the political world they once interpreted and helped to shape. Such arguments are the major ideological traditions are having to adjust to, and are in some cases are being redefined by, a series of new and often interlinked challenges. The most significant of these are the following:
• The changing world order
• Post modernity and ‘post-isms’
• Globalization
World order has been significantly changed as a result of the end of the Cold War, brought about by the collapse of communism in the eastern European revolutions of 1989–91, and, more recently, by the advent of global terrorism . The ‘long’ Cold War – or what Hobsbawm (1994) referred to as the ‘short’ twentieth century, 1914–91 – was marked by an ideological battle between capitalism and communism, which was significantly intensified by the emergence of the USA and the Soviet Union as rival super powers in the post-Second World War period. The ideological ramifications of the collapse of communism have been profound and wide-ranging, but remain the subject of debate. The earliest and initially most influential interpretation was that the demise of communism had left western-style liberal democracy, particularly in its US form, as the sole viable ideological model worldwide. This view was advanced though the so-called ‘end of history’ thesis, Such developments have certainly had a profound effect upon socialism. Revolutionary socialism, especially in its Soviet-style, Marxist-Leninist guise, appears to be a spent force, both in the developing world and in post communist states. Democratic socialism has nevertheless also been affected; some argue that it has been fatally compromised. In particular, the failure of central planning has weakened faith even in more modest versions of ‘top-down’ state control, forcing democratic socialists to accept the market as the only reliable means of generating wealth. The ramifications of the end of the Cold War have not been confined to socialist ideology, however. For example, far from bringing about the victory of universal liberalism, the collapse of communism has resulted in the emergence of a range of ideological forces. Chief amongst these have been nationalism, particularly ethnic nationalism, which has displaced Marxism-Leninism as the leading ideology in many post-communist states, and religious fundamentalism, which, in its various forms, has had growing influence in the developing world. Moreover, even ideologies that were meant to profit from the ‘death of socialism’, notably liberalism and conservatism have been affected in sometimes odd ways. To some extent, the strength and coherence of liberalism and conservatism in the twentieth century had derived from the fact that they were defined in opposition to a socialist or communist ‘enemy’. For instance, the new right emerged in the late twentieth century to express general antipathy towards ‘creeping socialism’, and particular hostility towards Soviet communism. The collapse or retrenchment of their traditional enemy means that in the twenty-first century liberalism and conservatism are each becoming more shapeless and differentiated. September 11, 2001, the date of the devastating terrorist attacks on New York and Washington,
Has widely been interpreted as ‘the day the world changed’. However, it is less clear how it has changed and what its implications are, or might be, for the major ideologies. The advent of global terrorism has undoubtedly had major international and national consequences.
Internationally, under the auspices of George W. Bush's ‘war on terror’, the USA has adopted an increasingly forward and, in some respects, unilateralist foreign policy. Examples of this include the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nevertheless, the ideological consequences of such actions are difficult to predict. On the one hand, if the ‘war on terror’ succeeds in constraining or destroying anti-western religious militancy and in toppling those who give it support, it may, in the long term, help to universalize liberal-democratic values and institutions. On the other hand, in line with Samuel Huntington's (1993) ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, it may provoke a still more bitter anti-American and anti western backlash and further strengthen fundamentalist religion. At a national level, global terrorism has served to bolster the state generally and, in particular, to ground state authority more firmly in its capacity to protect citizens and maintain security. In The Shield of Achilles (2002), Philip Bobbitt thus argued that the state is essentially a ‘war making institution’. To the extent that the terrorist threat establishes the primacy of order and state security over a concern with civil liberties and individual rights it may be associated with a drift towards conservatism and the erosion of liberal sensibilities.
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