The Cold War, as Martin Shaw (1992) has reminded us, has been “cold”; its dominating feature was the “freezing” of the domain of national politics by international considerations. With the declaration of the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the “primacy of the national” reasserts itself in international agendas. This is largely a consequence of the end of “ideological politics” and the relative decline of geopolitical posturing and reasoning especially by the major powers. Accepted theories and practices of international relations were challenged and are in the process of transition and/or transformation. New constitutive and reflexive agendas reinserted themselves into the interplay of global diplomacy and politics: human rights, the market, environment, “security”, and “rights” all now re-emerged as fundamental issues yet to be resolved within the world.

Notwithstanding this flux in history, some commentators still maintained a unilinear reading of global trends (Buzan 1991a; 1991b; Fukuyama 1989). For these analysts, the end of history is nigh and the indomitable West, accompanied with its twin angels — liberal democracy and market capitalism — continues to triumph. What is remarkable in this reading of world events is the failure to grasp the historical effects the West has had on the “non-West” via colonization, armaments, and economic domination, processes which have subverted histories and stunted development in the non-Western world.

A more fundamental question, however, remains: how far will the “West” be able to carry public opinion, both within its domestic space and without? For many in the West, a post-materialist post-modern political agenda, based no longer on the satisfaction of wants but of values, and no longer confined to representation of national interests but that of international responsibilities, is gaining salience. This has correspondingly engendered new ways of relating and different modes of sociability. The dominant cultural traditions of progress, universalism and objectivism are now interrogated and struggled over. Unlike Fukuyama's and like-minded prosaic proclamations of the “end of history”, different histories and their fragments are being reconstituted, created, and recreated.