Exactly twenty years ago Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) heralding what Francis Fukuyama was to famously call 'the End of History.'

According to Fukuyama's thesis the moment marked the triumph of Western liberal democracy as the "final form of human government" and the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution."

Two decades later the remarkable events of 2011 – where populations have risen up to demand alternatives – give the lie to Fukuyama's neo-liberal endism.

The Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the growth of political Islam in the Middle East and the decline of America's global economic dominance demonstrate that rather than living at the beginning or end of history, we all exist in interesting times somewhere in the middle.