Richard betts: "Conflict or cooperation? Three Visions Revisited"
Betts argues that the three most prominent visions of the future, Fukuyama's End of History, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, and Mearsheimer's infinitely anarchical world, are not as diametrically opposes as they have been perceived because they buy into the same principles and understanding of the international system. Fukuyama supports Kant's idea of a Perpetual Peace that comes from the common interests between growing liberal democracies. The international system will become homogenous as states move towards liberal democracies, the end goal of government progress as shown by the end of the Cold War. Mearsheimer, on the other hand, argued for a traditional realist future with cyclical and inevitable conflict. According to Betts, Mearsheimer claims that competition among states in a system without a supreme power will lead to conflict and can never result in peace. Huntington argues that the separation of civilizations, unlike Fukuyama's homogenized, peaceful world, will lead to conflict because the civilizations will be forced to interact with each other. Huntington's idea of "West vs. The Rest" is not xenophobic or racist as many liberalists claim. It merely proposes the idea that liberal values may not align across civilizations and because civilizations differ historically, they will evolve differently towards their independent liberal values. Betts claims that these three visions are not as different as they seem because Fukuyama and Huntington are actually in line with each other and because Mearsheimer's predictions make sense in Fukuyama's world. Both Huntington and Fukuyama believe in certain elements of realism while they both depart from traditional realism. Fukuyama predicts the unification of Western liberal ideals, a concept that Huntington encourages, through Huntington's world demands global multiculturalism. Each of these theorists have distinct understandings of the conflicts with the Middle East and China but Betts addresses this problem as the limits on the practicality of applied theories. Betts is a liberal realist, which gives legitimacy to the liberal principle because the possibility of peace exists, even in a firmly realist perspective.