Mr. Fukuyama acknowledges this today. “The old version of the idea modernization was Euro-centric, reflecting Europe’s own development,” he said in a recently published interview. “That did contain attributes which sought to define modernization in a quite narrow way.”

In the same interview, he was right in emphasizing that the three components of political modernization were the creation of an effective state that could enforce rules, the rule of law that binds the sovereign, and accountability. Indeed, these are the very traits of political modernization that many Asian states are aspiring to achieve.

Asians surely agree that no state can function or develop without an effective government. We feel particularly vindicated in this after the recent financial crisis. One reason the United States came to grief was the deeply held ideological assumption in the mind of key American policymakers, like Alan Greenspan, that Ronald Reagan was correct in saying that “government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Fortunately, Asians did not fall prey to this ideology.

Consequently, in the 21st century, history will unfold in the exact opposite direction of what Western intellectuals anticipated in 1991. We will now see that the “return of history” equals “the retreat of the West.” One prediction I can make confidently is that the Western footprint on the world, which was hugely oversized in the 19th and 20th centuries, will retreat significantly.

This will not mean a retreat of all Western ideas. Many key ideas like free-market economics and rule of law will be embraced ever more widely. However, few Asians will believe that Western societies are best at implementing these Western ideas. Indeed, the assumption of Western competence in governance and management will be replaced by awareness that the West has become quite inept at managing its economies.

A new gap will develop. Respect for Western ideas will remain, but respect for Western practices will diminish, unless Western performance in governance improves again.

Sadly, in all the recent discussions of “the end of history,” few Western commentators have addressed the biggest lapse in Western practice. The fundamental assumption of “the end of history” thesis was that the West would remain the beacon for the world in democracy and human rights. In 1989, if anyone had dared to predict that within 15 years, the foremost beacon would become the first Western state to reintroduce torture, everyone would have shouted “impossible.”