Fall of the Soviet Union

The communist superpower dissolves, ending the Cold War and creating a brief period of American unipolarity.

The dissolution of the USSR was remarkably peaceful given the stakes. It produced 15 new nations, economic chaos in Russia, and a triumphalist "End of History" narrative in the West.

Perspective

Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis aged poorly, but it captured a real moment of Western hubris. The 1990s felt like liberal democracy had won forever. That certainty blinded us to the forces — nationalism, religious extremism, economic inequality — that were already building the 21st century's crises.