Consider how seductive those times were, from the end of the Cold War through to the day before the 9/11 attacks, which plunged the world into darkness. Consider the rhetoric in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The swagger and liberal triumphalism. The arc of history bends towards progress and enlightenment. The world is flat. Market-driven globalisation is inevitable. No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other. Economic liberalisation will lead to political liberalisation. The kaleidoscope has been shaken and now is the time to reorder the world.
We don’t need me to name names. We know who the rhetoricians were. And we all know what they got wrong, what they did not understand, what they chose to ignore. The American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq was for Great Britain the gravest foreign policy catastrophe since the Suez debacle in 1956. There were no weapons of mass destruction. British troops were sent into conflict inadequately equipped. Islamic State rose and metastasised. Liberal Democracy did not flourish in the Middle East or indeed Afghanistan. Western democracies have become self-hating and internally riven. Who now in the West speaks of reordering the world?
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