ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
There is a theme running through the special 90th anniversary issue of foreign affairs, the staid journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. In the 20th century, ideas really mattered. Ideas about democracy and society, about capitalism and the role of government, socialism and the individual, and all the permutations you can make of those ideas.
The January-February issue of Foreign Affairs is titled "The Clash Of Ideas." And both in selections from past articles and in contemporary essays, it makes you wonder if there are any ideas on the horizon that might help reconcile the often conflicting claims of prosperity and freedom in the world today.
The kick-off essay is by the editor of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Rose, who joins us from New York. Welcome to the program.
DR. GIDEON ROSE: Thank you, good to be here.
SIEGEL: And how would you describe the point of this issue?
ROSE: Well, the gist of it is that although a lot of people think the world is an ideological crisis at the moment - with Western democracy in trouble and the global economy in turmoil, and authoritarian powers like China on the rise - we actually think that the big picture is one of ideological stability, rather than upheaval. And that the post-war order that emerged out of the turmoil of the first half of the 20th century is still intact. And the keys to that order are mutually supportive liberal democracies with mixed economies, where the governments intervenes just enough to not just keep things prosperous, but to spread the wealth around so that everybody benefits.
And that system has basically proven its worth. And it's in trouble now but more for how to do the things that we know should be done, than a question about what to do.
SIEGEL: But if, indeed, that model does not leave most people in the United States and Europe, let's say, confident that it delivers a better life - materially and spiritually - then ideological stability risks becoming ideological stagnation.
ROSE: Exactly, and so there were two things that are required. One is a recognition of just how well this system has worked in comparison to all the alternatives; how we really are at something like what Frank Fukuyama used to call The End Of History. And second, how to keep the system up to its highest potential; how to keep it working so that it benefits everybody. And Fukuyama actually has a new article in the same issue called "The Future Of History," in which he talks about the problems that are going on now with keeping the middle class robust and growing.
So I think that the current order is fraying around the edges. But it's a matter of going back to what we already know how to do, rather than finding some new Utopian alternative just around the horizon.
SIEGEL: You include edited versions, shortened versions of many articles that appeared in Foreign Affairs over the years. And while it can be interesting to read a book that tells you what happened in Fascist Italy, it's especially interesting to read an article about fascism as it was happening in Italy and even by a fascist.
ROSE: Yeah. As we were putting the articles together for this issue, we realized we had a wealth of material at our archives. And there was a lot of great stuff going on, in which the editors tried to get world events interpreted by the people who were actually making them at the time. And so, we were able to cull selections from our archives, tracing the stories of the ideological battles of the first half of the 20th century and later.
And there are fascists talking about fascism, communists talking about communism, liberals talking about how to revive liberalism from the depth of the Depression.
SIEGEL: There's one article and quotation which for me sums up how insightful writing about international affairs can be, and also how wrong it can be. In 1944, Geoffrey Crowther, the editor of The Economist, wrote an article for Foreign Affairs. And I'll read this quotation.
He said, "The dominant doctrines of the 19th century, if not dead, are so battered that they will not serve us any longer as our main props. We are, indeed, living in a vacuum of faith. But the trouble about a vacuum is that it gets filled. And if there are no angels available to fill it, fools or worse rush in."
That is very smart. He went on however to say that: Whatever happens in the present war - and this was during World War II - Hitler will be hot on our heels for the rest of our lives. He was convinced the Nazis were a going concern.
ROSE: No. See, actually I think what he meant by saying that Hitler will be hot on our heels is not that the actual living creature of Adolf Hitler will be but that the specter of some kind of populist response to domestic and economic crisis will always be there. And that if democracies didn't manage to find some way of filling the emotional and material needs of the bulk of their population, there will always be some demagogue waiting in the wings.
And so, that piece is a crucial piece of the issue because it shows the liberals themselves starting to get their minds around the idea that some kind of government intervention in the economy, some kind of welfare state, some kind of activist government was necessary in order for classical liberalism to gain a new life in the conditions of mass democracy and 20th century capitalism.
And that's actually what the story of the new order after the war that emerges is. And we're still living in the world that you would have seen in 1950, I think, in a way that we're not, let's say, living in the world of 1910.
SIEGEL: Mr. Rose, thank you very much for talking with us.
ROSE: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: That's Gideon Rose, who is the editor of Foreign Affairs. The 90th anniversary issue of Foreign Affairs is devoted to what is called "The Clash Of Ideas: The Ideological Battles That Made the Modern World and Will Shape the Future." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.