ABSTRACT
In many ways the twentieth century was a glorious one for the West. Western democracies defeated in war their most malignant home-grown enemies, fascism and authoritarianism. Then they forced their identity on the vanquished, Germany and Italy, and Japan in the Far East. Shortly thereafter, they formed a united front against authoritarian communism, defeating it bloodlessly after four decades of containment. As the Soviet Union ran out of steam, many of its Eastern-bloc satellites changed sides and identities almost overnight. In between, remnants of fascism and authoritarianism in Portugal, Spain, and Greece succumbed. Western democracies indeed continued to master the world, though they did so in more subtle ways than those that had served them since the dawn of Western expansion (Bull and Watson 1984).
