A quarter of a century ago, liberalism appeared to have triumphed. After decades of division, the Cold War officially ended. In Europe, a dozen countries founded the European Union through the Maastricht Treaty. In the United States, after 12 years of Republican rule, Bill Clinton was elected president. “What we may be witnessing,” wrote Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man, “[is] the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
That was long before the 11 September 2001 attacks and the resultant “war on terror” inaugurated a new era of global insecurity. Seven years later, the financial crisis ended the illusion of perpetual growth. Yet progressives were little prepared for the political humbling they have since endured.
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