The end of the end of history

For more than thirty years, the dominant assumption in international politics was that the world was moving, slowly but inexorably, toward a Western-led liberal order. Globalization would integrate economies, democracy would expand, and large-scale war would fade into the past. No one captured this confidence more clearly than Francis Fukuyama, who famously described it as “the end of history”.

A brief look at the world today shows how fragile that belief really was. From Europe and the Middle East to Africa and the Indo-Pacific, conflicts have become the new norm. Worst of all, those conflicts are increasingly interconnected, where energy corridors link regional crises and local wars draw in distant powers.

The world is no longer converging into one system. On the contrary, it is fragmenting into shifting blocs shaped by geography, resources, and raw power.

The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States standing alone at the top of the international system. With no rival superpower, Western institutions expanded outward, and it seemed as though the basic rules of global politics would now be written by Washington and its allies.

At the same time, globalization accelerated. Markets opened, supply chains stretched across continents, and new technologies connected societies at unprecedented speed. Economic interdependence was expected to make war irrational and increasingly unlikely. If prosperity spread, politics, many assumed, would eventually follow.

International institutions appeared to reinforce this confidence. From NATO and the European Union to the United Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank, global governance looked strong enough to manage crises and contain instability.

Yet beneath this optimism lay a powerful illusion: that power politics had been permanently restrained, and that history was moving in a single, predictable direction.

The first cracks appeared in the very wars meant to consolidate the post-Cold War order. The interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were framed as efforts to build stability and spread security. Instead, they exposed the limits of Western power and damaged the credibility of the institutions that had claimed to manage global conflict.

The 2008 financial crisis deepened the sense of uncertainty. What had been presented as a flawless model of global capitalism suddenly looked fragile. Millions felt left behind, and the idea that Western leadership guaranteed prosperity began to ring hollow.

At the same time, rivals re-emerged. China turned economic success into technological ambition and military strength, while Russia openly challenged the status quo, first in Georgia and then in Ukraine.

Compounding all this was growing political polarization inside many Western democracies, weakening their authority abroad. Debates that once stayed domestic began to paralyze decision-making, erode trust in institutions, and make it harder for these states to speak with one voice on the world stage.

The unraveling of the post–Cold War order is most visible on the map. In Europe, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shattered the assumption that borders on the continent were permanent. NATO has expanded and begun to rearm, with some members moving toward 5 % of GDP on defense, while the European Union scrambles to secure energy supplies and rebuild its defense industry, with plans to mobilize upward of 800 billion euro for defense. What began as a regional war has hardened into a wider confrontation between Russia and the Western alliance.

In the Middle East, no single power is in control. Iran has cultivated a network of proxies across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. This network that still gives Tehran leverage, even as parts of it have become overstretched, challenged, and politically unpopular on the ground. Gulf states, meanwhile, hedge their bets: relying on the United States for security while deepening economic and technological ties with China and, at times, Russia. Conflicts in Gaza, the Red Sea, and beyond are increasingly intertwined with global energy routes and maritime trade, with some analyses estimating that up to $1 trillion worth of goods were disrupted in the Red Sea from late 2023 through mid-2024, where container traffic fell by as much as 90 % in early 2024.

Similar patterns appear elsewhere. In the Caucasus, Russia’s weakened position has opened space for Turkey and others to assert themselves. Across parts of Africa, Russia offers security partnerships while China consolidates influence through infrastructure and mineral extraction, filling vacuums left by a retreating West.

The Indo-Pacific has become the strategic core of this emerging order. Tensions around Taiwan and the South China Sea overlap with new security arrangements such as AUKUS and the Quad, as regional states try to avoid choosing definitively between their main security partner, the United States, and their main trading partner, China.

What is returning, above all, is the language of power. Sovereignty now comes first: governments, such as the United States, that once spoke about spreading universal values increasingly focus on protecting borders and national stability.

Alongside this, the old security dilemma has re-emerged. States arm to feel safer, yet their neighbors interpret those moves as threats and respond in kind. Deterrence expands on all sides, even when no one claims to want a wider war.

Geography and resources, long treated as secondary, have become strategic again. Maritime chokepoints, energy corridors, rare-earth minerals, and semiconductor supply chains shape alliances as much as treaties or ideology ever did during the Cold War.

What we face today is a looser and more fluid struggle, where power rather than grand ideals once again defines the boundaries of what can be achieved. In place of competing ideologies, we are left with shifting alignments and pragmatic bargains. What ended was not history, but the illusion that history had already been settled.