When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the world hoped that an era of peace was finally at hand. With the forces of capitalism and communism no longer clashing, no longer vying for territories on their peripheries, no longer financing and arming revolutions and counterrevolutions, it seemed that the bitter battles and divisions of the Cold War might be replaced by a new world order based on personal freedom, open markets, and democracy. The United States, it appeared, had emerged from the harrowing Cold War unscathed and stronger than ever, and was now entrusted with leading the world into the next millennium.

But, alas, there was always someone left to fight. Ethnic nationalism and discontent in Eastern Europe flooded into the vacuum that the Soviets had left in Eastern Europe. The Middle East had just seen the end of the horrific Iran-Iraq War and was still enduring the trauma of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And as Africa continued to shrug off its former colonial masters, violence escalated to epic levels in countries such as Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The celebration in Western capitals of the Soviets’ demise was brief and punctuated by the realization that the work of democratic reform and economic liberalization was far from complete in much of the world. Indeed, if anything, the problems of the Cold War era in certain ways seemed simple compared to those of the years that followed.