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"Ideas shape the course of history," John Maynard Keynes boldly remarked a century ago. True to his word, the British economist almost single-handedly defined the post-Second World War international economic order through his compelling analysis of modern macroeconomics.
The so-called Bretton Woods Institutions, namely the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, were the brainchild of Keynesian economics, which continues to dominate policymaking in the capitalist world. Similarly, ideas also play a key role in shaping geopolitics.
With the end of the Cold War, leading thinkers scrambled to define the new global order. Most famously, Francis Fukuyama triumphantly predicted “The End of History”, namely the definitive ascendancy of democratic capitalism against all rival systems of social organisation. Shortly after, his former professor at Harvard, Samuel Huntington, predicted a global “clash of civilisations”, one supposedly pitting the West against a resurgent China and the Islamic realm.