by Kenneth Bell

Created on: September 15, 2007   Last Updated: September 17, 2007

If we had to put a date to the end of the modern era it would be 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, the demise of modernity had been announced already by the likes of Francis Fukuyama, who told us that we were living at The End of History. To be fair to Dr. Fukuyama, he did put a question mark after his title, which suggests that he wasn't entirely convinced himself.(1)

Fukuyama was thinking about history in the Hegelian sense; that human progress had a definitive end, and that this end was liberal, western capitalism. Countries would accept this model and history as the tale of competing systems would cease. It was a lovely theory that had only one slight flaw: it was total bollocks.

At first this was not apparent. There was much mutual backslapping as various types told each other that the future was going to be rosy and dollar signed. Naturally there were those who seemed to be dragging their feet, but a short bombing campaign soon brought them to their senses. Once Kosovo had been removed from the evil clutches of the recalcitrant Serbs, these types told each other, then everything would be jolly. Then reality kicked in because the Kosovo-Muslims did not want to live in a nice, multi-cultural, social democratic state: they wanted to stuff the Serbs. They had always wanted to stuff the Serbs, that is why their fathers had joined the SS Skanderburg division over 50 years earlier, that is why Kosovo's autonomy had been stripped from her to protect the Serbian minority: the Kosovans just enjoyed killing Serbs. Of course, the Serbs also enjoyed killing Kosovans, which brings us full circle to 1999 and the American-led war against Yugoslavia, but the whole point about that war is that the West's leaders convinced themselves that a little bombing would go a long way, and that milk and honey would flow once the wicked government in Belgrade had capitulated. They were just plain wrong.

As states collapse, their peoples are not suddenly becoming docile consumers of the latest Western pap: older loyalties are re-emerging; beliefs and values that the West thought long dead and buried are emerging into the daylight once again. In a world that has gone mad an individual's family will provide his basic support. Extend the family to cousins, uncles and the like and you have the makings of a clan. Extend it still further to take in the clans who live around yours, probably those clans who share the valley with you, perhaps those who are engaged in similar

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