In 1989, during the waning days of the Cold War, political theorist Francis Fukuyama declared that liberal democracy  (liberal in a 19th c./Enlightenment sense, not a politically  left/middle left sense) and economics had won the day and “the end of  history” (he backpedaled this in an 2018 article), “the  passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of  history as such:

 250-300 words

When using specific examples or quotations from the text, please use a parenthetical citation, e.g. (Lesson 7.5).

In 1989, during the waning days of the Cold War, political theorist Francis Fukuyama declared that liberal democracy  (liberal in a 19th c./Enlightenment sense, not a politically  left/middle left sense) and economics had won the day and “the end of  history” (he backpedaled this in an 2018 article), “the  passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of  history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological  evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the  final form of human government.”

The last 30 years might  disagree on the permanence of that order (or at least the absence of  challenges to it), see: the rise of political Islam (al Qaeda’s attacks  on liberal democracies, ISIS and the Taliban making efforts to  overcome/throw Western-style governments, or attempts at creating  Western-style governments, in Iraq and Afghanistan), populist opposition  to globalism (ex: Brexit, the politics of Donald Trump and Bernie  Sanders), the continued existence of forms of colonialism and  neo-colonialism (China in Africa, for example), etc.

How would you  characterize the last thirty years compared with the previous eras that  we have discussed (you can examine multiple ones or focus on one, say,  the Atlantic Revolutions or the Cold War)? Does it have particular  attributes or characteristics that historians might identity as unifying  and/or coherent in the future? Did Fukuyama have a point, or not?