The Hybrid Era Of The “Return Of History”: Systemic Chaos, Gray Zones, And Connectivity

Resumen

What History Returns? In a speech delivered to the Senate following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi acknowledged that a long political era had definitively ended. The Kremlin’s decision not only brought war back to Europe but also dispelled the illusion that economic integration could ensure a peaceful future. "The jungle of history is back," Draghi said. "Its vines seek to envelop the garden of peace in which we believed we lived." The image used by the Italian Prime Minister polemically evoked the thesis enunciated by Francis Fukuyama in 1989 that the "end of history" consisted of the victory achieved by liberal democracies over every alternative political ideology. More precisely, Draghi’s words echoed a thesis that Robert Kagan had articulated almost fifteen years earlier. According to Kagan, the beginning of the new millennium dashed hopes for a freer and more peaceful world, bringing nationalist claims and the motives of old power politics back to the fore. Although the United States remained the world’s sole superpower, the ambitions of old and new players were becoming increasingly relevant. "The order of today," Kagan wrote, "reflects the rising influence of the great powers, including the great power autocracies": "a multipolar world in which the poles are Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that shaped it" (Kagan, 2008, p. 96).

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