In 1989, Francis Fukuyama was a foreign policy expert with an interest in Hegel. He published a little essay called “The End of History?” in which he argued that the Cold War was more than a rivalry between two superpowers or an experiment to find the most efficient way to organize an economy. Fukuyama thought it was the final chapter in a millennia-long struggle to find a way of life that satisfies our deep spiritual need for freedom and equality. Therefore the end of the Cold War would mark the end of History as such.
To argue that all of human history was coming to a conclusion was always a wild swing-for-the-fences argument but this one connected.
