FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH Nº4: DILETTA GRIGORIADIS

This “Foreign Policy Speech” by Diletta Grigoriadis can be accessed here.

It was originally written for the ATHENA Jean Monnet Chair MSc Course “The EU and the Post-Soviet Space” taught by Dr. Olga Burlyuk. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. This work can be used for background reading and research, but should not be cited as an expert source or used in place of scholarly articles/books.

Context

Today I will be interpreting Francis Fukuyama speaking at the annual Hedley Bull prize ceremony taking place in June 2022. Professor Fukuyama was the winner of the annual prize for a book written in 2019 called “Remarks on the end of history and the last men” for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A brief analysis of the book the author wrote in 1992 (“The end of history and the last men”).

This book had a big impact on the international relations field. He argued that with the end of the Cold war and with the triumph of liberal democracy, the world would have been divided between those countries that accept the liberal democracy (American model) and those countries that wouldn’t. Such countries, in Fukuyama’s theory, will be “stuck” in history since they won’t be able to evolve and occupy an influential role in the international community. Moreover, according to Fukuyama, with the end of the cold war, there won’t be any more wars since liberal democracies don’t make wars between each other.

Fukuyama’s theories were highly contested both in the aftermath period of the cold war and nowadays.