And so we have come to the end of the end of history.

Remember Francis Fukuyama? He was the American professor who declared in a book of that title, that the ferocious competition of political “isms” — capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism — which so plagued the world and ravaged societies for much of the 20th century was over, with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. 

Liberal democracy had triumphed. Mankind had reached the final stage of sociopolitical evolution, with political and economic liberalism as the ultimate system for governing modern societies.

That triumphalist view, however, is now dead. Globalization is in retreat. Nationalism, populism, nativism and religious fundamentalism are on the march.

Significantly, as the New York Times reported last week, Chinese investment in the United States has plummeted nearly 90 percent since President Donald Trump took office.

The fall, it said, reflected a growing distrust and how the “world’s two largest economies are beginning to decouple after years of increasing integration”.

The implications of all of this are enormous and ominous.

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