Dubai: The emergence of the terror group Daesh, also known as ISIS, has been greatly overplayed by the American media and the US government, noted political scientist Francis Fukuyama said on Sunday.
“I do not believe that ISIS is a long-term powerful geopolitical actor,” said Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man and Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity.
Fukuyama, who is also a Stanford University professor, was speaking at the Arab Strategy Forum being held in the Ritz-Carlton at Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
Fukuyama was a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy and served on the US President’s Council on Bioethics. He was also a member of the Political Science Department at the Rand Corporation and is currently a member of the board of trustees.
“The reason ISIS appears powerful is that everybody around it is weak,” said Fukuyama. “It may get some sympathy from Turkey, Qatar and some other regional states but ISIS has no overt supporters. There is no state willing to back it. Geographically, it is not in a favorable position in the desert areas of Syria and Iraq.”
Fukuyama said that even though Daesh has access to oil resources, it may not actually be capable of becoming a state.
“Yes, ISIS has access to oil resources but it cannot sell it legally. They have to smuggle it out of the country. It has expanded so rapidly that it is actually vulnerable to airpower. We need to look at the question whether ISIS is actually capable of becoming a state,” he said.
Although critical about the way US President Barrack Obama has handled political developments in this region, Fukuyama insisted that Obama was cogent on one point. “Obama said that no regional state, such as Libya and Syria, is going to get its act together in terms of state-building and deployment of a monopoly as a legitimate power if the US plays too large a role in the region. He has a point,” he said.
“The US has frequently made the mistake of excessively intervening in foreign affairs. The US military is the most powerful and capable military force in the world. If you ask the military to fix a problem, they will do whatever they can to fix it. And while working with an ally that is not so powerful, there is a constant temptation for US commanders to do their job for them.”
Fukuyama said such excessive intervention will prevent states from building a sustainable government.
“If the US relieves the Arab states of that existential pressure to get their own act together, there will be no proper Arab state institutions able to maintain power in the long run. They will suffer. Because the US will not remain the primary combatant in the region for very long, it’s simply not going to happen.”
World affairs in 2015, said Fukuyama, cannot possible be as bad as they were in 2014. “International politics always tends to fall back on a natural equilibrium.”
A large portion of Fukuyama’s speech was dedicated to discussing the roles of superpowers China, Russia and the United States internationally.
“China’s defence spending has been steadily increasing in the last decade,” he said. “China now spends as much on military as the entire European Union. Its ambitions have been parallel to its power position. Their ambitions grow as their powers grow. There is also a great deal of nationalism coming up from grassroots level.”
Fukuyama said that China will likely be in conflict with the US in 25 years.
“China is likely to overtake the US as the world’s dominant superpower. The question is, how do you get there peacefully? It is hard to accommodate a radical shift of a power balance.”
Of Russia’s ambitions, they were salient and not mysterious, according to him.
“Putin has unleashed a grassroots nationalism that he won’t be able to control,” he said. “His agenda is driven by nostalgia of the USSR. However, the problem, unlike during the USSR, is the Russian people are believing the lies Putin is telling them.”
Fukuyama pointed out that Russia had no way to supply water and electricity to its recently annexed territory, Crimea. “The Ukraine war will have long-term consequences,” he said. “For now, Russia has no way to supply water or electricity to Crimea. It is likely to build a sort of corridor to supply the country with the resources.”
