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By James O. Jackson The mood in the West at the beginning of the 1990s was so optimistic that the period was defined by a single provocative phrase: "The end of history." Historian Francis Fukuyama, at the time deputy director of the U.S. State Department's policy-planning staff, first used the line in an obscure 1989 essay, then expanded upon it in a book, "The End of History and the Last Man". Fukuyama argued that the forces of freedom had triumphed over Marxism with its legacy of war, revolution and totalitarian oppression. The result, he warned, could be an era so devoid of conflict and challenge as to be deadening. As TIME's Strobe Talbott (later U.S. Deputy Secretary of State) described Fukuyama's thesis in a 1992 essay: "Mankind is entering a state of grace and risking terminal boredom." Europe certainly seemed to enter the '90s in a state of grace. It was a decade that began with the final failure of communism, dissolution of the Soviet Union, withdrawal of armies, destruction of nuclear weaponry, opening of borders and unparalleled prosperity. 1 of 5  |
