Fukuyama thinks that we won the Cold War mainly because an unworkable system reached its inevitable point of collapse, helped by the actions and inactions of Mikhail Gorbachev; that, apart from oratory and some funding of pro-democracy groups, we did little in the way of intervention; and that we ought to thank our stars and decline to draw grand policy lessons. Grand lessons were drawn, though, and that is why so many American intellectuals believed that regime change in Iraq was not only readily achievable but cosmically mandated. If they thought that this is a view shared by the author of “The End of History,” they know better now.
