Twilight Struggles

When the Cold War ended suddenly in 1991, it was widely believed that its demise opened the gates to an eternity of peace and freedom. Francis Fukuyama’s immensely successful End of History, published in January 1992—days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—reflected this comforting faith. Applying Hegelian precepts, it argued that the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy was conclusive, and that hostile ideologies would never again disturb global stability. Alas, this prediction turned out to be utterly wrong. Much closer to the truth was Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, published five years later, which predicted a continuation of global conflicts. This time it would involve not traditional nations or ideologies, but supra-national entities—”civilizations”—especially the West and Islam.

The Cold War and the War on Terror bear some resemblance. In both cases, the West has been compelled to defend itself from forces fundamentally inimical to it, to repel assaults that, in the eyes of its opponents, have to end in the victory of the one or the other. Lenin made this objective explicit in a speech delivered to party faithful in March 1919, barely five months after the end of what was, at the time, the bloodiest war in history: “The existence of the Soviet Republic alongside the imperialist states over the long run is unthinkable. In the end, either one or the other will triumph. And until that end has arrived, a series of the most terrible conflicts between the Soviet republics and the bourgeois governments will be unavoidable.”

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Richard Pipes

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When the Cold War ended suddenly in 1991, it was widely believed that its demise opened the gates to an eternity of peace and freedom. Francis Fukuyama’s immensely successful End of History, published in January 1992—days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—reflected this comforting faith. Applying Hegelian precepts, it argued that the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy was conclusive, and that hostile ideologies would never again disturb global stability. Alas, this prediction turned out to be utterly wrong. Much closer to the truth was Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, published five years later, which predicted a continuation of global conflicts. This time it would involve not traditional nations or ideologies, but supra-national entities—”civilizations”—especially the West and Islam.

The Cold War and the War on Terror bear some resemblance. In both cases, the West has been compelled to defend itself from forces fundamentally inimical to it, to repel assaults that, in the eyes of its opponents, have to end in the victory of the one or the other. Lenin made this objective explicit in a speech delivered to party faithful in March 1919, barely five months after the end of what was, at the time, the bloodiest war in history: “The existence of the Soviet Republic alongside the imperialist states over the long run is unthinkable. In the end, either one or the other will triumph. And until that end has arrived, a series of the most terrible conflicts between the Soviet republics and the bourgeois governments will be unavoidable.”