For John Lewis Gaddis, the end of the Cold War spelled the “triumph of hope”. In a similar tone, and as early as 1989, even before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama argued that history was made as a result of the clash between individualism and collectivism, and that the weakening of communist regimes in the USSR and East Europe meant the defeat of the forces of collectivism and the victory of individualism, i.e., liberalism.