Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of TAC and the author of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

After his great victory in Desert Storm, George H.W. Bush went before the United Nations to declare the coming of a New World Order. The Cold War was yesterday. Communism was in its death throes. The Soviet Empire had crumbled.

The Soviet Union was disintegrating. Francis Fukuyama was writing of The End of History. Savants trilled about the inevitable triumph of democratic capitalism.

Yet, in 2012, sectarianism, tribalism and nationalism are all resurgent, reshaping a world where U.S. power and influence are visibly receding...