Since the end of the cold war, historians, economists, and political scientists have undertaken a feverish quest to define the global dynamic. In 1992, perceiving no world view to challenge Western-style liberal democracy, Francis Fukuyama wondered whether the end of history might be in sight. By 1996, conversely, Samuel P. Huntington thought an imminent clash of civilizations would soon return states to their traditional condition of active rivalry. Since then, a stream of books has described the end, or the beginning, or the restoration of economic and foreign-policy challenges to the West in general and to the United States in particular—with, most recently, a sub-genre of titles suggesting nothing less than the demise of America itself as a civilization.

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