The conventional wisdom in some quarters is that _ much like the 1929 Great Depression _ the COVID-19 economic recession will increase world poverty and bring growing social discontent, populism, fascism and perhaps even World War III. But there are reasons to believe that the future will be brighter than that.
That's what I thought after an extended interview with Francis Fukuyama, the famed author of the 1992 book "The End of History and the Last Man." He is one of America's best known and most controversial political scientists.
Fukuyama certainly doesn't rule out a gloomy political outcome of the pandemic. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine recently, the Great Depression of the 1930s brought about a widespread anti-establishment sentiment, isolationism, fascism and World War II. The same could happen now, he wrote.
But Fukuyama, who teaches at Stanford University, sounded more optimistic when I talked to him a few days ago. His cautious optimism stems from the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has not helped populists and authoritarian leaders.
"Populists have not done well in dealing with the crisis," Fukuyama told me. "And here I would point to three of them: Mr. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and Donald Trump in the United States."
He added that they haven't done well for similar reasons: "They don't want to be associated with unpopular things like epidemics. And therefore, they've been in denial that there's even a crisis that they need to deal with."
Indeed, 59.1% of Americans disapprove of Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, up from 43% in March, according to an average of polls by the FiveThirtyEight website.
In Mexico, Lopez Obrador's disapproval rate rose from 28% in January to 42% in late June, according to a poll by the daily El Financiero. In Brazil, Bolsonaro's disapproval rate has remained fairly stable at 44%.
While China has taken advantage of the world attention on the COVID-19 pandemic to assert greater control over Hong Kong, and leaders in Hungary and El Salvador have cracked down on democratic institutions, the good news is that we could see a return to democratic normalcy in the United States, Fukuyama says.
"Donald Trump's response to the crisis has been so bad that if the election were held today, he would lose by a landslide," Fukuyama said.
"In that case, I think you would have a restoration of a United States that wants to be involved in the international system, that cares about allies, that resists populists and authoritarian leaders in Russia, China and other places," he added. "So, in a way, you could have some actually very good results coming out of this crisis."
When I argued that Trump may still defy the current polls and win on Nov. 3, Fukuyama responded that it could happen, but "the general trends are not looking good for Mr. Trump."
The number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the United States keeps rising, the economy is not recovering and, he said, "I don't really see anything that's going to happen in the next 100 days that's going to change that."
It's too soon to forecast a rise of nationalism, authoritarianism and world wars because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will certainly lead to greater unemployment and poverty in the short run, but it may also lead to the demise of populist leaders and would-be autocrats.
Remember, just as the Great Depression brought about a wave of social unrest, fascism and World War II, it also brought about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's election in 1933. His New Deal domestic recovery package and foreign policy spurred the emergence of the United States as the leading democratic power in the world.
Democracies, unlike dictatorships, have free elections that allow voters to boot out inept leaders. We cannot rule out that outcome in the United States, Mexico or any other populist democracy. That would be a most unexpected _ and positive _ side effect of the COVID-19 crisis.
