By John Gray, adapted from an article in the October 2014 issue of Prospect. Gray is the author of many books, including False Dawn, Straw Dogs, and The Silence of Animals.
In October 1997, at a joint press conference in Washington, Bill Clinton told Jiang Zemin, the Chinese president, that Zemin was “on the wrong side of history.” In March 2014, Barack Obama displayed the same confidence regarding the future course of humankind: by absorbing Crimea into Russia, Obama declared, Russian president Vladimir Putin was putting himself “on the wrong side of history.”
It would appear that few world leaders have any…
