By Studying the history of international relations is hardly possible without encountering Francis Fukuyama’s essay, The End of History, where he argued that liberal democracies and free markets have brought the best way of governance and thus, have ended the strive for anything better or ideologically different.
Fukuyama’s thoughts have both been praised and criticized, its title having been in all sorts of configurations and intents – naturally, present writing included – and nowadays, Fukuyama’s laughable naïveté has become nostalgic at best.
China is drawing ever closer to start some sort of an invasion to Taiwan while Western powers do nothing more than being concerned, Israel is attacking United Nations barracks, Europe is gradually using itself up in its internal futilities, the United States electing either a politician without any hard strategy or splendor or a megalomaniac billionaire in the midst of an assassination attempt happening against the latter on a biweekly basis. The list easily goes on even without mentioning the war in Ukraine.
The most conspicuous proof that “history” is back presents itself if we take a closer look at the European Union. A once flourishing and truly unique economic bloc with prudent and sensible regulations opening its area up not just to business on the inside, but also on the world stage.
That European Union is no more.
What we have right now is petty political play (the election of current Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk alone was enough to free up frozen financial support, really?) mixed in with red tape and endless institutional answers to questions nobody asked.
What we now also have – as a true novelty of the post-2022 era – are deception and hypocrisy. Many an expert has stated that Cold War reflexes are indeed back but so far that has been seen on the surface of political communication in the form of paranoia, distrust, fake news and endless competition. Deception and hypocrisy are truly new to the game, tangibly present since the re-escalation in Gaza.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. (Photo: Naaman Omar / apaimages / Wikimedia Commons)
The European Union has been a very conscious actor when it comes to the war in Gaza. In addition to its usual level and nature of support, the EU and its member states, pseudo-enthusiastically and somewhat in a tired corporate manner, for some reason billed Team Europe have acted quickly to mobilize further humanitarian assistance, which is channeled through humanitarian partners on the ground. In addition to that, since October 2023 €940.8 million have been provided in humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people.
This is good, of course. But Team Europe has had other endeavors, since, according to Al-Jazeera referencing official EU data from the European External Action Service’s COARM database, between 2018 and 2022, EU member states sold arms worth 1.76 billion euros ($1.9bn) to Israel. The news portal’s authors say, arms have continued to flow from EU countries to Israel even after the International Court of Justice made an interim ruling in January that the Israeli army was plausibly committing genocide. According to data by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Germany is by far the largest European supplier, providing Israel with 30 percent of its weapons between 2019 and 2023. Exports increased tenfold last year from 32.3 million euros ($35m) to 326.5 million euros ($354m) with the majority of licences granted after October 7.
The peace project seemingly wants something very different than its own parts.
Deception and hypocrisy thus in part resurrected history. It would be nice to end them at least. Because history – believe it or not – is definitely here to stay.
