All Intensive Purposes

Charles Krauthammer and Francis Fukuyama used to be neo-con pals, but no longer. Fukuyama Krauthammer uses his valuable space on the Washington Post's op-ed page today to trash Fukuyama in a personal way -- for fabrication and opportunism -- without even bothering to connect his personal pique to less important issues like, such as the continuing failure of U.S. policy in Iraq. In a chat on washingtonpost.com, Fukuyama responds, to my eyes getting much the better of the exchange. The very first Q&A gives a nuts-and-bolt answer and then -- unlike Krauthammer -- Fukuyama gets at the larger issue between them:

Denver, Colo.: Mr. Fukuyama, [h]ow do you respond to Mr. Krauthammer's characterization of your description of his speech?

Francis Fukuyama: Krauthammer's speech was an extension of his earlier writings on the need for the US to benevolently manage a unipolar (what others would call hegemonic) world. A successful democratic transition in Iraq and the uncovering of WMD there were critical to the legitimacy of our performing this larger role, and there is no reference to the fact that the missing WMD or chaotic post-war situation had gravely undermined our credibility. That is why I thought it was completely disconnected from the reality that I was seeing at the time.

Then again, I'm no Krauthammer fan. He rarely says anything interesting, and he rarely says it well. If his column is useful, it is as a barometer of what a certain sort of conservatives is thinking. Krauthammer succeeds as an intellectual in the same way that Dick Cheney succeeds at policy, which is to say that they are taken very seriously in Washington, D.C., because their positions have real currency there, and no one there notices that these positions crumple on contact with reality.

Many, many people will read Krauthammer trashing Fukuyama on the op-ed page, and very few will get to see Fukuyama's response. Since he and Fukuyama have fought back and forth about their substantive differences for the last two years, it's particularly odd to see this corner of the Post used as a vanity press in this way.

Fukuyama does not need to rely on the Post for publicity for his ideas and his new book. Courtesy of Greg Djerejian, here is Louis Menand discussing Fukuyama in The New Yorker:

Modernity, Weber said, is the progressive disenchantment of the world. Superstitions disappear; cultures grow more homogeneous; life becomes increasingly rational. The trend is steadily in one direction. Fukuyama, accordingly, interprets reactionary political movements and atavistic cultural differences, when they flare up, as irrational backlashes against modernization. This is how he understands jihadism: as a revolt, fomented among Muslim émigrés in Western Europe, against the secularism and consumerism of modern life. (This is also how he interprets Fascism and Bolshevism: as backlashes against the general historical tendency.) Jihadism is an antibody generated by our way of life, not a virus indigenous to Islam.

This one paragraph explains radical Islam better than the whole of President Bush's speeches on the subject since 2001. But Menand's piece has more to say about Fukuyama than simply repeating some of his ideas; it's worth reading before it slips behind a subscription wall.