In 1992 political theorist Francis Fukuyama published his highly acclaimed text ‘The End of History and the Last Man’. The central thesis was that Liberal democracy had ultimately triumphed over Socialist communism. The victorious democratic capitalist state, he suggested represented the last ideological stage in the progression of human history. Capitalism and market forces were evidently superior and centrally planned command style economies had proven their inherent inefficiency.To all intents and purposes claimed Fukuyama, history had ended and so was the Cold War. Europe and the Western World had entered a period of seemingly endurable peace. Someone joked that we should not make predictions, particularly about the future. As I write, Europe is demonstrably at war, the first major conflict in Europe since World War II ended in 1945 and it is in part ideologically driven. History has of course not ended.
