Iraq war ‘was a mistake,’ says Fukuyama

History’s gravedigger explains why he has abandoned the neoconservative movement but still stands by his ‘End of History’ theory

‘I think the basic structural reasons for American hegemony will remain in place for some time but I think that this use of American power has generated a big backlash in many parts of the world, so that American power is going to be resisted a lot more strongly that it would have been in the absence of the war,’ Francis Fukuyama told Kathimerini English Edition in Athens last week.

By Harry van Versendaal - Kathimerini English Edition

Big shocks change perceptions. It was January 1998 when former neocon guru Francis Fukuyama co-signed, along with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other hawks, a letter to then-US president Bill Clinton calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Now that the Iraq war is in its third year and the number of victims exceeds even the most pessimistic forecasts, the Japanese-American theoretician has abandoned the sinking ship of neoconservatism and has turned against his former friends.

«I have concluded that neoconservatism, as a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something that I can no longer support,» writes Fukuyma in his latest book «After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads.» In this interview shortly before his speech at an Economist conference in Athens last week, he explains why.