22nd May 1990. The two Yemens, north and south, become one. The mood of the world seems to be for the dissolution of old animosities. In that same week, East and West Germany sign a treaty to begin reunification, the US and USSR agree to destroy their chemical weapons, and the World Health Organisation stops describing homosexuality as a disease. The love and fraternity do not end there. During the following year, 16 nations hold their first democratic elections in at least three decades, some like Mongolia and Russia, for the first time ever. The celebrated optimist, Professor Francis Fukuyama, has already declared the victory of capitalism, but now he goes further, proposing that a universal acceptance of Western liberal democracy will herald the end of history and human social evolution. Once that fact sinks in, the Democratic Peace Theory is rolled out. First mooted by Immanuel Kant in 1795, it predicts that democracies will never go to war with each other. The inevitable conclusion is that war is about to become extinct.