Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history,” prophesied in the final stretch of the twentieth century, now seems to have reversed itself — by a paradoxical twist of fate — into its very opposite. We feel surrounded by unrelenting conflicts, a sensation compounded by a “globalized” world that delivers news in real time and appears to erase every distance, physical and psychological alike. Our era exists in a permanent state of crisis — whether economic, social, political, strategic, military, or humanitarian in nature. ...