LONDON (AP) Months before the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, with the Soviet stranglehold over the Eastern Bloc crumbling, a young political scientist named Francis Fukuyama made a declaration that quickly became famous. It was, he declared, the end of history.
But the heralded defeat of Communism didnt usher in a lasting golden age for Western, capitalist-driven liberalism. Far from it.
In the decades since, seismic events, movements and global patterns have shaped the 21st century into a splintered, perhaps more dangerous era than the Cold War.
The 9/11 attacks happened; the Iraq and Syria wars helped produce the bloody emergence of the Islamic State group and, later, a refugee crisis. The economy tanked in 2008. China became a superpower. Russia resurged. A new populism took root.
All have had a transcendent impact. History, it seemed, didnt end.
Today, Fukuyama acknowledges that some developments over the decades have disappointed him. He says his book wasnt a prediction, but an acknowledgement that many more democracies were coming into existence.
Now the world is in a phase he didnt anticipate. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Fukuyama took time to reflect on some of what he has seen and what could still happen.
AFTER THE WALL: THE FIRST YEARS
With the passage of the decades, Fukuyama says, now you have a whole generation of people who didnt experience the Cold War or Communism.
In those initial years after the wall came down, new countries were born and Germany reunified. But wars and conflicts also erupted after the Soviet Union collapsed and postcolonial debt-settling spiked.
Some of the 1990s bloodiest civil wars Congo, Liberia became footnotes to history. Rwanda endured a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands. Yugoslavia, ripped asunder by sustained violence, massacres and displacement, produced far more coverage and even new nations.
Western military intervention at the end of the 1990s blunted Serbias nationalism and unshackled Kosovo. A weakened Russia was in no position to help its traditional ally in Belgrade. But the global economy was generally strong.
Then came 9/11.
THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY: TECTONIC SHIFTS
Al-Qaida took terror to a never-before-seen level that was watched in real-time around the world. In response, the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban, which had hosted Osama bin Laden as he plotted against the West. Eighteen years later, the United States is still there.
The Iraq War was based on false intelligence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, backed by the U.S. when he fought Iran, possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington pushed a youre either with us or against us global outreach that backfired in some places most notably in Britain, where then-Prime Minister Tony Blair remains a political outcast to this day for following Bush.
Fukuyama was once aligned with neo-conservatives and supported the Iraq invasion, but later declared his opposition to the war. Now, he says the Iraq war undermined American policy around the world, while the 2008 financial crisis undercut the U.S. claim that it had established a good economic international order.
Says Fukuyama: I think those two events paved the way for a lot of the populist backlash that were seeing now.
POPULISM AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY
Fukuyama says hes dismayed so many voters could choose divisive populist leaders who lack a formula for governing democratically.
