geopolitics

American political scientists have made a niche in the last twenty years of expounding the "grand theory". As the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 80s, so too did the fundamental premises that framed strategic thinking in Washington and elsewhere. A rash of large ideas (with attached buzz words) rushed into fill the void. 1993 was a bumper year for this species of pontification, notable efforts including Samuel Huntington's now infamous "The Clash of Civilisations" and Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man", which argued that the end of the Cold War was confirmation of the final triumph of liberal democracy and the free market.