What next — after the end of history?

Professor Fukuyama is famous for having told us at the end of the Cold War that history was at an end. By this he meant that the slow advance of liberal democracy was inevitable. As he explains in his latest book he did not mean that we should try to accelerate the process by killing thousands of Iraqis and creating a political context in which Iraqis kill each other every day while American occupation forces look on. Saddam too was a killer; but Saddam is on trial for his life.

Fukuyama now carries his thinking forward into the world after the poisonous flowering of the neocon doctrine which he once favoured in more innocent form. Not everyone in Britain will want to read his account of the academic origins of the neocon movement or his detailed prescriptions for reorganising the Washington bureaucracy. What is left is thoroughly worthwhile and will give many thoughtful people a sensible path forward.