Illusions and Realities of the "New Era"

"Last week the world suffered a shock that will inevitably make us divide the time into two parts—before the terrorist acts in the United States and after them. Because a new world and a new world order are being born in the ruins of the World Trade Center" (S. Strokan', "The Dawn of a New Era" Zarevo novoi ery], Kommersant-Vlast', 2001, no. 37 18 September], p. 35). Not only the Russian political weeklies thought this. The tragic events that the United States suffered on 11 September not only sent many countries into shock but also sparked the idea that humanity suddenly found itself in an incomprehensible world, a new space-time—that life would be different from then on, that we would think differently and structure international relations differently. Even some of the supporters of Francis Fukuyama, who proclaimed the "end of history" more than ten years ago, hurriedly declared that the "oracle" was wrong, since on 11 September events of historic scale and significance had taken place in the United States. One critic of the American "prophet" noted, not without sarcasm, that "Black Tuesday" signified "the end of the end of history." That did not, however, shake the convictions of Fukuyama himself. In an article eloquently titled "History Is Still Going Our Way," published in The Wall Street Journal Europe on 8 October, he continued to assert that "we remain in the final stage of history" (F. Fukuyama, "History Is Still Going Our Way," The Wall Street Journal Europe, 8 October 2001).