Thirty-five years after the end of the Cold War, the optimism that shaped the 1990s has largely disappeared. The liberal international order, once regarded as the inevitable destination of history under the unipolar direction of the United States, is under pressure and in retreat. Russia has returned as a geopolitical challenger. China has emerged as a global rival. Europe faces internal fragmentation, while the United States itself is deeply polarized. Rather than entering an era of perpetual peace and balanced global stability, the world has returned to great-power rivalry, geopolitical instability, a multipolar design and even faces a year-long war in Europe.
This outcome was not inevitable. Nor was it entirely unpredictable. It resulted from poor political choices throughout.
Three of the most influential political thinkers of the 1990s—Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, and William Strauss and Neil Howe—identified remarkably different, and yet equally essential inte rpretationsof the post-Cold War world. Yet Western policymakers either misunderstood or ignored their deeper insights.
Understanding these theories today is not only critical for understanding why Western strategy has repeatedly failed over the past three decades but, even more importantly, to cast a prosperous way forward.
Recognition Before Power
Francis Fukuyama became famous for proclaiming "the End of History." His argument, however, has often been reduced to the prediction that liberal democracy had permanently triumphed in the ideological evolution of mankind.
But this was not his central philosophical insight for organizing international relations.
Drawing upon Hegel and Plato, Fukuyama argued that human beings seek, individually and as collectives, not only material prosperity and well-being but also recognition—thymos, the desire for dignity, respect, and equal standing.
This dimension was largely ignored after 1991.
Rather than integrating Russia into a genuinely new European security architecture based on equal partnership, the West increasingly treated Russia as a defeated power expected to adapt unconditionally to an expanding liberal order. NATO enlargement, successive interventions, and support for political transformations throughout the post-Soviet space were interpreted in Western capitals as the natural expansion of democracy.
In Moscow they were perceived differently: as strategic encirclement and denial of recognition.
Dismissing this psychological and political dimension proved to be a profound strategic mistake. Stable international order cannot rest upon attempted unilateral military dominance. It also requires mutual recognition among major powers. A denial of these parameters triggers resistance and defiance.
This is why ignoring Fukuyama's concept of recognition contributed significantly to today's confrontation.
Civilizations Never Disappeared
If Fukuyama emphasized recognition, Samuel Huntington emphasized identity.
In The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington argued that the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century would increasingly give way to conflicts rooted in civilization, culture, and religion. The principal dividing lines would no longer be political borders but competing cultural worlds.
Many critics dismissed Huntington as overly pessimistic.
Events since then suggest otherwise.
The assumption that liberal democracy represented a universally attractive destination underestimated the enduring importance of civilizational identity. Russia increasingly defined itself through Orthodox Christianity and sovereign statehood and looked with disdain at the civilizational deterioration of the West. China emphasized its own civilizational continuity. Large parts of the Islamic world resisted Western liberal universalism. In Europe and North America, debates over national identity, immigration, and cultural cohesion became increasingly central.
The Western tendency to interpret international politics primarily through liberal luniversal values frequently overlooked these deeper cultural realities.
This does not imply that civilizations are destined for conflict. It does suggest though that a lasting international order requires respect for civilizational diversity and overcoming the assumption that all societies across the globe will eventually adopt the model offered and imposed by the West.
History Moves in Cycles
The least discussed—but perhaps most intriguing—theory comes from William Strauss and Neil Howe.
Their book The Fourth Turning proposed that Anglo-American history develops through recurring generational cycles of roughly eighty to one hundred years. Each cycle culminates in a period of profound institutional crisis—a "Fourth Turning"—during which political orders are fundamentally transformed.
Whether one accepts the theory literally is less important than recognizing its explanatory power.
The financial crisis of 2008, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing political polarization, declining trust in institutions, and renewed geopolitical rivalry all resemble the characteristics Strauss and Howe associated with systemic crisis.
Their theory also helps explain the rise of political movements rejecting the assumptions of the post-Cold War era.
In this context, Donald Trump's "America First" foreign policy appears less as an historical anomaly than as a symptom of a broader structural transition. It reflects growing scepticism toward global interventionism, puts increasing emphasis on national sovereignty, and a reassessment of America's strategic priorities.
Whether one supports or opposes these policies is secondary. Of primary importance is the realization that they represent deeper historical forces rather than merely temporary political preferences.
From Wilsonian Universalism to Strategic Realism
Taken together, these three theories reveal a common weakness in Western strategy after the Cold War.
The dominant foreign-policy establishment increasingly embraced a Wilsonian vision of international politics based upon democratic universalism, humanitarian intervention, and the expansion of a liberal international order.
This approach often underestimated the three enduring realities introduced here:
First, nations seek recognition, not merely economic integration. Second, civilizations preserve distinct historical identities that cannot simply be transformed through political engineering. Third, historical orders eventually reach points of exhaustion requiring strategic adaptation rather than ideological persistence.
The failed policies resulted in a succession of costly strategic disappointments—from Iraq and Libya to the deterioration of relations with Russia and the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
The problem was not the probably good-willed aspiration toward peace or democracy. The problem was the misconception that these objectives could be achieved while ignoring power, history, identity, and recognition.
A Multipolar Future
The liberal international order is not simply collapsing. It is being transformed.
The emerging world is increasingly multipolar. Great powers pursue distinct civilizational interests. National sovereignty has returned as a central organizing principle of international politics. Strategic competition has replaced assumptions of inevitable convergence.
Recognizing this reality does not require abandoning liberal values in whatever configuration they are present in Western societies. It certainly requires abandoning the belief that those values alone can organize international politics.
A more durable international order will depend upon mutual recognition among major powers, respect for cultural diversity, and a realistic understanding of geopolitical interests.
The post-Cold War era demonstrated the limits of ideological certainty. The decades ahead will demand something different: strategic prudence grounded in political philosophy rather than political wishful thinking.
The insights of Fukuyama, Huntington, and Strauss–Howe remain valuable precisely because they remind us that successful statecraft begins not with universal power aspirations but with a clear understanding of human nature, historical development, and the enduring diversity of civilizations. Only by recovering these insights can the West hope to navigate an increasingly complex international order.
If Fukuyama, Huntington, and Strauss–Howe each illuminate one dimension of political reality, what philosophical framework can reconcile their insights within a single theory of strategy? This question forms the point of departure for my next essay, where I introduce Idealistic Realism—an attempt to recover the transcendental foundations of strategic thought that have largely disappeared from contemporary international relations. Without such philosophical grounding, strategy risks becoming little more than the management of power without wisdom.
