There was never ‘the long peace’ for poor countries

“For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity.” – Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, published in 1994

I have never seriously studied Derrida because his school of deconstruction was for me the epitome of verbosity. If there is one thing I truly believe in, and am fully committed to, in this life, it is that you should never write more words than you absolutely need to say something. At least that’s my ideal, though often unrealised.

Derrida and his followers, whose numbers, thankfully, have been dwindling in recent decades, always offered a hundred words when they could have done it in 10, and insisted on using very long words, even neologisms, when simple ones would do. Perhaps the original French language allowed the master his literary meandering, but when translated into Chinese or English, you just wanted to tear up his books, or your own hair.

Still, if nothing else, I respect Derrida’s foresight as shown back in 1994. That period marked the triumph of the West and the peak of Pax Americana: the end of the Soviet Union, the rise of neoliberalism in economics; the coming age of neoconservatism in politics and the military; globalisation; the ascent of central banking and monetarism. All these trends were summed up as liberal democracy and free-market capitalism, the political religion before which all must bow down.

That was the end of history, the last station and final destination for humanity riding on the great train of history. The West had built the rail system; everyone needed, or rather had no choice but to jump aboard. Some just arrived earlier than others. Or as Derrida asked, “Can one be late to the end of history?” Well, horrors were already unfolding in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Those people weren’t even late, they didn’t get on the train. Of course, we now know there never were such trains in the first place. Derrida, before most people, was already writing about the end of the end of history.

Now, Putin has finally ended that grand illusion of the West, namely that it is anything special or sacrosanct. Some commentators have recently claimed that the Ukraine invasion has ended “the long peace”. That is a phrase some historians have used to describe the unusually lengthy period during the Cold War – when the superpowers didn’t physically clash in a major war – and thereafter.