Column

Intellectual Hubris and U.S. Strategic Blindspots

By Abdulrauf Aliyu

In the aftermath of the Cold War, American thinkers believed that the world had arrived at a new, unassailable order. Francis Fukuyama famously declared that we had reached “the end of history,” a time when liberal democracy would reign supreme, having triumphed over all rival ideologies. At the same time, Charles Krauthammer announced the arrival of a “unipolar moment,” in which the United States, with unmatched military and economic power, stood as the world’s sole superpower. Together, these ideas seemed to solidify a vision of a global future where the U.S. would lead the way indefinitely, its values and political system considered the final, universal aspiration.

Yet these assumptions — deeply ingrained in the intellectual and policy elites of the 1990s — have proven to be among the most significant blindspots in modern American foreign policy. They helped lay the groundwork for many of the strategic errors we’ve seen in the U.S. ever since, culminating in the flawed, myopic trade policies of the Trump administration.

Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) was a triumphalist work, one that argued history’s ideological struggle had concluded with the global spread of liberal democracy. The book, written in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, offered a powerful narrative: Communism had failed, fascism was discredited, and capitalism and democracy were now universal. The “end of history” wasn’t just the fall of the Soviet Union — it was the final victory of liberal democracy. Fukuyama believed this was an inevitable trajectory, with little room for deviation or challenge.

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer, in his 1990 essay “The Unipolar Moment,” argued that America’s military and economic dominance following the Cold War made it the sole global superpower. For Krauthammer, the United States was not just the world’s most powerful nation, but the architect of a new international order, one that could shape global institutions and norms to its advantage. His argument was clear: the post-Cold War world was one in which American power would dominate, and Washington’s leadership was both necessary and natural.

These ideas, while intellectually seductive, created a dangerously narrow view of global power dynamics. They blinded American policymakers to the realities of an increasingly multipolar world, one in which China, India, and other rising powers were beginning to assert themselves. Fukuyama and Krauthammer failed to foresee that other countries, particularly China, would soon challenge the unipolar order, both economically and geopolitically.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the story of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The United States, under President Bill Clinton, believed that by integrating China into the global trading system, it would encourage political liberalization, moving the country toward democracy. Clinton’s administration was not alone in this thinking; many Western leaders assumed that China would inevitably follow the path of democratic reform once it became economically prosperous.

But China’s entry into the WTO, far from being a victory for liberalism, was a masterstroke of strategic calculation. China understood the global system far better than the U.S. had anticipated. It saw WTO membership not as a concession, but as a mechanism to accelerate its economic rise while maintaining strict political control. The rapid transformation of China into the world’s factory floor and its unprecedented growth were driven by the very system that the U.S. believed would lead to democratic change. The world was changing, but U.S. policy remained tethered to outdated assumptions about how that change would unfold.

This intellectual blindness to the changing dynamics of global power set the stage for the rise of China and the shifting global balance of power. As Kishore Mahbubani noted in his book Has the West Lost It?, the West’s failure to recognize the long-term consequences of its own policies was one of its greatest strategic missteps. While the U.S. fixated on conflicts in the Middle East and the war on terror, China quietly surged ahead, expanding its influence across Asia and eventually around the world.

The consequences of these intellectual miscalculations were felt years later, when Donald Trump assumed the presidency. His administration’s approach to trade — centered on tariffs, isolationism, and a rejection of multilateralism — was in many ways a reaction to the very forces that Fukuyama and Krauthammer had failed to anticipate. The “America First” policy reflected a deep frustration with the global system that had been constructed after World War II, a system in which the U.S. had once been the dominant architect. By the time Trump took office, that system had evolved, with China emerging as a formidable economic rival.

Trump’s trade wars, especially his trade policies toward China, were born out of the failure to adapt to a new reality. Rather than embracing the complex, interconnected global economy and accepting China’s rise as an inevitable consequence of globalization, Trump attempted to reverse it through tariffs and protectionist policies. His administration's approach was shaped by a zero-sum worldview — one that viewed trade as a simple win-or-lose proposition, failing to recognize the deeper, structural shifts in global power dynamics.

The blindspots fostered by Fukuyama’s optimism and Krauthammer’s unipolar vision also played a role in the U.S. refusal to engage with a rising China on more sophisticated terms. As Fareed Zakaria points out in The Post-American World, the key to understanding the current global order is recognizing that America’s dominance is no longer as absolute as it once was. The rise of China is not a threat to be contained but a sign of a more pluralistic world in which multiple powers coexist and influence global affairs. This shift, however, is not something that Fukuyama or Krauthammer adequately predicted.

Instead of confronting these realities, U.S. leaders, particularly under Trump, reverted to a reactive, often antagonistic approach that sought to preserve an outdated order. Rather than focusing on creating coalitions and strengthening partnerships, the U.S. under Trump sought to isolate itself, believing that it could force the world to bend to its will through economic coercion. This, however, is a flawed strategy in a world that is no longer unipolar.

Ultimately, the intellectual failures of the 1990s have had lasting consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Fukuyama and Krauthammer’s views helped to create a dangerous intellectual complacency in Washington, one that failed to see the complexities of a changing global order. As the U.S. grapples with the implications of China’s rise and its own place in the world, it must first confront the intellectual blindspots that have guided its strategy for too long.

If the U.S. is to remain a global leader, it must move past the assumptions that dominated the post-Cold War era. The world is no longer defined by a unipolar moment, and history is far from over. The challenge now is for America to adapt to a world that is not only multipolar but one in which its own power is increasingly challenged by other, rising civilizations. Only by accepting this reality will the U.S. be able to navigate the complexities of the 21st century and shape a new, more inclusive global order.