In our current geopolitical reality, visions of the future have been substituted with analogies from the past. Thinking via historical analogy has become the preferred way to confront the anxieties of the present. A day hardly goes by when we aren’t transported back to Europe’s tragic interwar period or the turbulent (but far less tragic) 1970s or even ancient history. Elon Musk confesses that he can’t stop thinking about the fall of Rome. “Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans,” Musk enjoys repeating. For him, Rome’s birth rate decline in the first century B.C. tells you everything you need to know about the global conjuncture today—namely, that demography is destiny.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, several prominent thinkers focused their minds on the shape of the world to come. Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?” (1989), Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” (1993), Ken Jowitt’s “After Leninism: The New World Disorder” (1991), and Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s Civil Wars (1994) were all prognostications about a new world order. In the three decades since, irrespective of the accuracy of their predictions, many of their contentions have become embedded in the general policy discourse.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, several prominent thinkers focused their minds on the shape of the world to come. Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?” (1989), Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?” (1993), Ken Jowitt’s “After Leninism: