2000s: A Decade in Review

(Note: the following is only a first draft and is completely unedited. Since I wanted to get this posted before midnight, I may be editing it a bit over the next few days. The concluding couple of paragraphs is a bit more curt than I like, so I suspect those will be altered at some point.)

(I don't really know what to call the decade in spoken word: 'the two-thousand's' is the most natural, but it's a bit unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, 'the 2000s' is what I'll go with in print.)

We've reached the end of a decade, and I've been thinking about what this decade has meant. In thinking it over, I keep coming back to one phrase, drawing on Francis Fukuyama's own phrase, 'The End of History'. The phrase that keeps ringing in my mind is: the end of the end of history. In many ways, the 2000s were a repudiation of the 1990s and are best evaluated in contrast with the 1990s. Herein I'll specifically look at the two ways which have been most prominent: security and national politics.

Francis Fukuyama published a book in 1992 entitled The End of History and the Last Man, in which he posited that with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, liberal democracy had prevailed, and it was now only a matter of time before liberal democracy became the de facto form of government worldwide. In the wake of its publication, the phrase 'The End of History' became a catchphrase for the advent of an era of peace and prosperity, an era during which humanity would only progressively evolve towards its telos.

Admittedly, this was not really the whole of Fukuyama's thesis, but more of a vulgarization of it. Nonetheless, this vulgar perception of 'the end of history' was reflected in the Zeitgeist of the 1990s. The United States of America was the sole remaining superpower with no obvious pretender to the throne. And American foreign policy reflected this mood of Pax Americana. From the original Gulf War in 1990 though the 1999 war in Kosovo, the United States ably acted as the world's guardian of the status quo. We undoubtedly chose our conflicts, not engaging everywhere: Yugoslavia, but not Rwanda; Haiti, but only abortedly in Somalia; etc. But in each case, opposition to American intervention seemed minimal, and in fact often gained the full support of NATO allies, if not the UN.

And the American perspective on war shifted in the 1990s, too. War was now something you watched live on TV in the security of your living room, even as it was something which our soldiers conducted in relative safety (only 114 American soldiers were killed by enemy fire in the Gulf War).

In the rest of the world, the predicted trending towards liberal democracy seemed to be proving itself true. Apartheid ended in South Africa and Nelson Mandela was elected; Israel was more at peace with its neighbors than it had ever been (it even appeared permanent peace in the Middle East was within our grasp); and there was an explosion of peaceful international treaties and agreements, such as NAFTA and the European Union.

Even domestically it appeared that we had reached a sort of 'end of history'. Most of the domestic themes of the Cold War seemed to have collapsed with the Berlin Wall. The culture war was still present, but was more of a background theme. Even the election of Bill Clinton, the fist Democratic president in 12 years, was a bit lackluster. There was undoubtedly animosity between Clinton and those fabled 'right-wing conspirators', but the animosity was almost fabricated and forced. After all, though a Democrat, Clinton was the most moderate Democratic president in nearly 100 years.

I think it no coincidence that 1990s saw the meteoric rise of political talk radio. The feud between Clinton and Gingrich was more of a soap opera than it was real conflict. For better or worse, the energy we had previously spent on opposing the Evil Empire was now vented through intranational political discourse. But the resulting 'conflict' was a trivial source of entertainment, as well as a vent; Rush Limbaugh would be the first to admit that he is an entertainer and not a serious political advocate.

The fact that the most contentious issues of the day were mere welfare reform and NAFTA speaks volumes. (The one outlying exception to this was, of course, Clinton's 1993 health care package.) Even in the course of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, there was, in retrospect, a quasi-farcical element to the enmity. Certainly, the enmity between the administration and the Congress was real and was personal. But the key was that it remained solely personal. When it came down to business, the two parties cooperated on a great deal, such as the historic balanced budget.

In both the US and the UK, the Democratic reaction against the Reagan/Thatcher neoliberalism of the 1980s was measured and restrained. Economically, as a result, we had never been better off than we were in the 1990s. Our national GDP doubled in those 10 years, and the Dow Jones rocketed from 2,700 (an all-time high at the time) to 11,000, while the NASDAQ composite increased tenfold. All this in spite of the dot-com bubble late in the decade! It was truly the decade of prosperity and economic security.

The 1990s were a decade where we enjoyed living in the end of history. Americans were by and large a happy bunch, where the greatest stress came from PTA politics and balancing all five checking accounts at the end of the month. And whether or not we agreed with the party in power in Washington, it was by and large a foregone conclusion that the national stage was a proper and satisfying one for playing out the big issues of the day: each party's main locus for advancing its respective ideology was the floor of Congress, even if that ideology was to have Congress not act. In sum, we were a secure nation.

All of this changed quite quickly when we hit the 2000s. In November 2000, the political tensions which had been bubbling under the surface finally boiled over. For whatever reason, the 2000 presidential election had a bitter taste to it. Perhaps it was the vapidity of the actual campaign season. Neither side had a truly charismatic candidate, the likes of Reagan or Clinton; neither party was wholly satisfied with their candidate. (As incredible as it seems now, I can remember many a talking head lamenting the fact that it was not instead Cheney v. Lieberman.) Or maybe it was because the electoral dispute cut to the very heart of the theory of representative democracy. Or maybe it was the anti-climactic an uncathartic resolution by per curiam decision of the Supreme Court.

Regardless of the reason, the ensuing acrimony had a different character from the political quarrels of the 1990s. The anger seemed to transcend politics and became cultural again. We were red staters and blue staters: and there was a renewed vitriol with which one referred to the other. The chink in America's armor now seemed evident. The Democratic loss was a bitter demonstration of the perhaps misplaced hope in national politics. For the Republicans, it was but a bittersweet victory, against which legacy Bush would contend for his entire tenure, while hoping he would roll back Clinton's programs. Nonetheless, the national political machine labored on and Bush scored an early victory in passing H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind Act.

Then came 11 September 2001, the day that would define the decade. The security that we thought we had achieved at the end of the American Century was shattered. We might criticize the President's immediate reaction in that Florida classroom, but that morning it was identical to that of America: disbelief, terror, and confoundment. Never before had American experienced such an attack. To add to the bewilderment, America wasn't supposed to have any enemies anymore. After all, we were living at the end of history, right?

But apparently we did have enemies, and they were unlike any other we had faced before. While they had state sponsors, they were essentially stateless. Though they were technologically inferior by far - crude, even - they had been spectacularly successful. Those things which had made us so secure previously were of little use against this new enemy; those issues with which we had unequivocally entrusted our national discourse were of no avail. But we nonetheless reacted in the way we were accustomed to, hoping that our strategies would prove fruitful.

While it is impossible for us to know of many of the successes in the so-called War on Terror, the apparent failures are quite prevalent. For they remain with us in the form of two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan was supposed to be a quick in-and-out operation to topple the Taliban and bring al-Qaeda members to justice. While the former was quickly achieved, it nonetheless remains an ongoing effort. And the latter goal is virtually untouched, at least in the public mind. For all intents and purposes, the best possible outcome of the now eight-year-old war in Afghanistan would appear to be a pyrrhic victory. And will we really be all that much secure because of it?

The Iraq war, only 17 months younger than the war in Afghanistan, was no less contentious. The same question of purpose, goal, and cost-benefit which was present in Afghanistan was also present in Iraq. But the war in Iraq highlights even more prominently the failure of national politics, for the failure began well before the actual war even began: WMDs. We were assured that Saddam Hussein had been building and storing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (In fact, few people disputed this fact; the debate was more about whether such a fact was sufficient for a preemptive attack.) Once it became apparent that there were no WMDs, the invasion would later be justified on other grounds. But nonetheless, the federal government had failed yet again.

And perhaps most directly relevant to 'the end of history' is that liberal democracy has not truly taken root in either nation. There is still struggle against anarchy and terror. The plan to export democracy worldwide, which Bush laid out in his second inaugural address, seems to have failed. Or at the very least, come at an exorbitant price.

In the autumn of 2005 we witnessed another illustrative example of the failure of our national government. For when Hurricane Katrina struck the port of New Orleans, we immediately cried out to Washington for relief. Washington did eventually come calling in the form of FEMA, but too little, too late. Even now, four years later, parts of New Orleans remain effectively uninhabitable.

The final casualty of the 2000s was an item that had barely limped its way through the decade to begin with: the economy. After all, even though America felt less secure from attack, we still had our beloved economic security. And being Americans, we were more than content to hide our heads in the sand. Certainly, we were no longer in the booming 90s, but we were secure in our finances.

The Enron scandal, like the terrorist attacks just a month before, set the tone for the decade. Combined with the foreign energy situation, various scandals caused the stock market to languish for 8 years. But finally in September 2008, it all came to a head, and the world quickly dove into a recession, the likes of which it had not experienced in 80 years.

But who did we turn to at this moment of crisis and insecurity? The same federal government which had failed us on 9/11, which had led us into Iraq, which had been lax in its response to Katrina. After all, we thought, does not a national problem require immediate national action? Now perhaps the economic bailout was a necessity - most economists seem to still think it was - but has it really brought us more security? Honestly, the question cannot yet be answered, but it is strange that - to borrow some Inside-the-Belt parlance - while Main St. suffered like it hadn't in decades, Wall St. experienced one of its best in a while.

Just a week ago the Senate passed a bill which promises to reform the health care industry in the America. I have no idea whether it will; I doubt anyone really does at this point. But I do think it a symbolic occasion of significance that this should occur at the end of the decade. For it will either mark a fulcrum around which this decade's trends will turn back on themselves, or it will mark a continuation of those trends. It will either show that national politics can achieve useful ends, or it will demonstrate once again that national solutions are not practicable for our nation's biggest problems.

All the while, our nation has become perhaps more bitterly divided than ever. The partisan protests this summer - tea parties, town hall disruptions, etc. - were virtually unprecedented. While it's been said that our country is a purple one - an even mix of red and blue states - as the decade has progressed, it has seemed to be more and more a mixture of deep red and deep blue, rather than purplish hues. If these various trends are interconnected, this partisanship is not promising for our security and national politics.

So what can we learn from the 2000s, and whither hence? I find two lessons in the past decade, corresponding to the two themes. In the first, we would be well to recognize that though American remains the sole superpower in the world, it cannot act like it is. We are not impervious and our security is not impeccable. This applies both to our economic security and physical security.

The hubris of America had reached its pinnacle in the 1990s and in this way the 2000s were a healthy nadir in correcting this attitude. For many years we were effectively spoiled, as a nation. Fukuyama may have been correct that liberal democracy has won out, but that does not mean that it is omnipresent, nor that every corner of the globe is ready for it. Danger still exists in the world and there still exist enemies. And while we may be ever trending towards economic security, that is a macro-trend, not a surety at each moment. We must remain prudent and ever-cautious.

The second lesson is the relative weakness of our federal government. I am neither a libertarian nor a neoliberal, so I am not writing to rail against the evils of government. I do not think the monumental error of the 1990s and 2000s was statism, but nationalization-ism. The American system of government is federal, and properly so. Such a system reflects the diversity of our nation, and it recognizes the locality of government.

For too long Americans had sought to resolve our problems at the national level. The 2000s underscored the limits of the national politics. Was there a single problem presented to the national stage in the 2000s which we have resolved? I can't think of one, off the top of my head. Yet each party thought for sure that its solution to the problem was best for the entire country, despite the variations in geography, demography, and culture.

The libertarians may be correct that some of these problems are the business of no government whatsoever, but many of these problems can be properly addressed by state and local governments. Instead, America sought to hold a national debate on every issue: same-sex marriage, disaster relief, health care, etc.

I am not at all surprised that Congress' approval rating at the end of our decade is 22/68. (Granted, that's a few ticks above its all-time low last summer, 14/75.) After all, we are asking them to resolve the most divisive issues of our time in a way that will satisfy both Californians and Alabamans, both New Yorkers and Kansans. Perhaps we should de-nationalize our political discourse. Rather than asking our federal system to be a national system, let it be a federal system.

I actually think the two lessons tie into each other quite well, in that they both stem from a uniquely American form of audacity. The former lesson being manifest in brashness; the latter being manifest in presumption. America could do well to remember these lessons in humbly moving forward in the 21st century. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.