That 'American Interest' article is three minutes of my life that I won't get back again. All hints and suggestions and no substance.
Francis Fukuyama has been spectacularly wrong before.
He is the author of 'The End of History and the Last Man'. (From Wiki) - in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama predicted the eventual global triumph of political and economic liberalism:
'What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such.... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.'
Bless...
On Iraq:
As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism, although his works came out years after Irving Kristol's 1972 book crystallized neoconservatism.[19] Fukuyama was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank starting in 1997, and as a member co-signed the organization's 1998 letter recommending that President Bill Clinton support Iraqi insurgencies in the overthrow of then-President of Iraq Saddam Hussein.[20] He was also among forty co-signers of William Kristol's September 20, 2001 letter to President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks that suggested the U.S. not only "capture or kill Osama bin Laden", but also embark upon "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq".[21]
A big thank you to Francis Fukuyama for all of that.
According to Wikipedia he is associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement, which he apparently realised was a big mistake, but obv too late to put the toothpaste back into the tube...
Clearly, he soldiers on though.