Read the full interview of Francis Fukuyama, neoconservative intellectual, by Nathan Gardels, editor-in-chief of NPQ (New Perspectives Quarterly), the journal of social and political thought, on HuffingtonPost.com at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/fukuyama-iraq-shows-ther_b_16532.html
Excerpted:
Fukuyama: War is not a good metaphor for what is happening. It confuses what is a long political struggle with what is conventionally understood as war - a conflict of high intensity declared, fought and won, or lost, in a defined time frame. This struggle is going to percolate along at a relatively low level of activity with spikes of intensity, but its not going to have a clear ending.
By using the war metaphor we get into all kinds of trouble from the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo to wiretapping of our own citizens. People say "we have to suspend civil rights because we are at war." War overstates the intensity of the struggle and the kinds of sacrifices that requires.
Gardels: What policies are effective in this long political struggle against jihadist terrorism?
Fukuyama: In dealing with Islamism and the Middle East we need more of a political strategy and less of a military one. America needs to try to shape the world not by the overt use of military power but by establishing a set of multilateral institutions that then shape long-term incentives for stability, growth and cooperation like, for example, the Bretton Woods institutions created after World War II, or NATO, or the U.S.-Japan security treaty. For 50 years these created an institutional framework for the U.S. and others to shape the world without recourse to military might.
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