After the End of History: Conversations with Francis Fukuyama

by Mathilde Fasting

This tendency is being greatly enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the natural suspicion it raises of foreigners. No nation cooperates with other nations simply out of the goodness of its heart or because it’s meeting some kind of moral requirement. You do it out of self-interest. You realize if you don’t cooperate with other countries, you’re not going to solve global health, or control money laundering, or any of the kinds of problems that the international community faces. It is a question of whether you sacrifice short-term sovereignty for long-term benefits. What we’ve seen is, especially on the part of the United States, a narrowing of that sense of self-interest in the case of Donald Trump. It’s so transactional that, basically, if the United States doesn’t make money on a particular agreement, we’re simply not going to have any part of it.