‘End of history’? 30 years after Berlin Wall, does that still hold?

LONDON (AP) — Months before the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, with the Soviet stranglehold over the Eastern Bloc crumbling, a young political scientist named Francis Fukuyama made a declaration that quickly became famous. It was, he declared, “the end of history.”

But the heralded defeat of Communism didn’t usher in a lasting golden age for Western, capitalist-driven liberalism. Far from it.

In the decades since, seismic events, movements and global patterns have shaped the 21st century into a splintered, perhaps more dangerous era than the Cold War.

The 9/11 attacks happened; the Iraq and Syria wars helped produce the bloody emergence of the Islamic State group and, later, a refugee crisis. The economy tanked in 2008. China became a superpower. Russia resurged. A new populism took root.

All have had a transcendent impact. History, it seemed, didn’t “end.”

Today, Fukuyama acknowledges that some developments over the decades have disappointed him. He says his book wasn’t a prediction, but an acknowledgement that many more democracies were coming into existence.

Now the world is in a phase he didn’t anticipate. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Fukuyama took time to reflect on some of what he has seen — and what could still happen.

AFTER THE WALL: THE FIRST YEARS

With the passage of the decades, Fukuyama says, now “you have a whole generation of people who didn’t experience the Cold War or Communism.”

In those initial years after the wall came down, new countries were born and Germany reunified. But wars and conflicts also erupted after the Soviet Union collapsed and postcolonial debt-settling spiked.

Some of the 1990s’ bloodiest civil wars — Congo, Liberia — became footnotes to history. Rwanda endured a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands. Yugoslavia, ripped asunder by sustained violence, massacres and displacement, produced far more coverage and even new nations.

Western military intervention at the end of the 1990s blunted Serbia’s nationalism and unshackled Kosovo. A weakened Russia was in no position to help its traditional ally in Belgrade. But the global economy was generally strong.

Then came 9/11.