The Grand Illusion

Charles Krauthammer on the global re-deployment of America’s armed forces. Krauthammer describes our new strategy as “Empire Lite,” in other words, “less plodding, less heavy, less static, less fixed.” Kruathammer sees the shift as the result of 9/11. Fair enough. But let’s not overlook the fact that we now have a very serious, very intelligent group of people setting our defense policy.
In a throw-away line, Krauthammer attributes our failure for more than a decade to come to grips with a changing world to “post-cold war end-of-history illusions.” (emphasis added). The “end-of-history” is a phrase popularized by Francis Fukuyama in his 1991 book The End of History and the Last Man. If I recall correctly, Krauthammer was also an exponent of the view that, in an important sense, history had “ended.” In any event, it is good that Krauthammer recognizes this bit of hubris for what it always was, an illusion.