Why has the rule of law had global rhetorical appeal in the last few decades, and will it last? I argue that during the Cold War there was no space for this to happen, but with the collapse of European communism it appeared to many that a western, liberal democratic package with the rule of law at its core was and would continue to be triumphant. As a result, rule of law promotion swept the world. It has not vanished today, but its prospects have dimmed. I attribute that to twentieth-century geopolitical changes, on the one hand, with rivals to liberal democracies springing up, as well as to the transformation within liberal democracies, on the other. Both new democracies and older, apparently well-established ones have spawned increasingly powerful tendencies hostile to the rule of law. These tendencies are unlikely to disappear any time soon. The fate of the rule of law will depend in large part on whether they succeed.