Go back three decades and the trend was towards global democracy. Now we see rising authoritarianism. Are we looking at global autocracy?

A few decades ago, it seemed as if the world was heading towards global democracy and political stability. Now we see increasing authoritarianism and global instability. How much should we worry?

A year after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the American political theorist Francis Fukuyama published a book entitled “The End of History” which argued that with the spread of Western liberal democracy, humanity had reached the end of history.

This was not just a matter of passing a chapter of post-war history, the 1947 to 1991 Cold War, “but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

How much the book, described as a bombshell at the time, influenced policymakers in the west is difficult to gauge. But many Western leaders, drawing on what became known as “the peace dividend” began reducing their militaries.

Fukuyama’s argument came at a time of great optimism for the future because of a confluence of events that ended an era of tension — the Berlin wall had fallen in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and China was opening up to capitalism.

But history took a different course.

Nightmare scenarios play out

Three decades after “the end of history,” Fukuyama, now a professor at Stanford University, is warning that the present geo-political combination of forces could lead to “the ultimate nightmare.”

In a 2022 interview with the British magazine The New Statesman, he listed the elements of that nightmare as China backing Russia’s war on Ukraine and Beijing invading Taiwan.

That would mean, he said, “you would really be living in a world that was dominated by these non-democratic powers. If the United States and the rest of the West couldn’t stop that from happening, then that really is the end of the end of history.”

One of the nightmare scenarios became reality on 24 February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Since then, Russia and China have forged close ties, much to the dismay of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance or NATO, whose 32 members met in Washington, D.C. in July 2024 and issued a sharply-worded warning to Beijing to stop helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

Limits to economic warfare

U.S. and European officials say that Chinese machine tools, semi-conductors and other “dual-use” parts have become vital to Russia’s arms industries.

A lengthy communique at the end of the meeting, held to mark the 75th anniversary of NATO’s founding, called China “a decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine, said it helped stoke the largest war in recent European history and called for repercussions.

There is already a wide web of Western bans and trade restrictions and it is not clear what additional pressure the West could exert. Russian leader Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping have routinely shrugged off Western concern over their tight relations by saying they were a bulwark against American dominance.

In the superpower rivalry between the United States and China, Chinese leaders routinely scoff at the notion of “universal values” preached by the West and described them as a smokescreen for a new kind of imperialism.

Turning back to Fukuyama’s “ultimate nightmare,” we see that only one element is missing: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a self-governing island Beijing considers a breakaway province. China has not ruled out military force to bring the island, 100 miles from the Chinese mainland, under Beijing’s control.

Just three weeks after NATO met in in Washington, the president of Taiwan, Lai Ching-te, presided over the largest-ever gathering of foreign lawmakers and dignitaries in Taiwan. The meeting brought together representatives of 23 countries belonging to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC.

The group promotes democracy and monitors Chinese threats to the island, the world’s dominant producer of semi-conductor chips which are used in everything from your cellphone to the drones used by both sides in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Full out war over semiconductors?

Taiwan’s market share in the global industry is estimated at around 68%, and one company, TSMC, makes almost 90% of the most advanced chips used for artificial intelligence and quantum computing applications.

Since China needs such chips, as do the United States and its allies, Taiwan’s dominant position has been termed its “silicon shield” against Chinese attack. There are fears that key factories, such as TSMC, could be damaged or knocked out of operation if invasion forces attempted to take it by force.

Taiwan has such a commanding lead in making super-advanced chips that it will take competitors years to catch up, experts say.

According to estimates by the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank focused on issues of global peace, Chinese semiconductor companies manufacture only about 6% of the country’s needs.

None are capable of making the leading-edge chips that are essential to President Xi Jinping’s stated ambition to make his country a technological peer of the United States by mid-century.

Does that mean “the ultimate nightmare” is still a few decades away? Probably. But it’s advisable to keep in mind that long-range forecasts are often wrong. Just ask Fukuyama.

Three questions to consider:

1. What does the author mean by the “end of history”?
2. Why is the invasion of Taiwan seen as the last step needed for this “end of history”?
3. Why might China not want to invade Taiwan?

Bernd Debusmann is a former columnist for Reuters who has worked as a correspondent, bureau chief and editor in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and United States. He has reported from more than 100 countries and lived in nine. He was shot twice in the course of his work – once covering a night battle in the center of Beirut and once in an assassination attempt prompted by his reporting on Syria.