Understanding the decline of western dominance

THE international system that is currently disintegrating, formed after World War II following the defeat of Germany and its allies.

- Z KHAN

Britain, France, and the US emerged victorious, and two major powers dominated the new world order: the US and the Soviet Union. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, many proclaimed that the 21st century would be an entirely American century.

A number of American thinkers, philosophers, and politicians began promoting what they called a "New American Century," based fundamentally on power.

At the same time, ideas and theories emerged in the early 1990s suggesting that the only path forward for humanity was the American Western model - what's known as Western liberalism.

According to this view, the world had no choice but to adopt the Western model in all domains: political, economic, cultural, civilizational, and ethical.

The most famous thesis in this context came from a well-known researcher, Francis Fukuyama, an American of Japanese descent, who published a significant book in the early 1990s titled The End of History.

He claimed that history had essentially ended with America's dominance as the sole global superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Yet only a decade later, America entered a radically different phase, especially after the events of September 2001.