High stakes, compelling characters ...

... Stratblog: The Grand Strategy of Rome.

The belief that some forms of social organization generate greater power, including military power, than others is at the heart of Hegel’s concept of the end of history — and was taken up by Francis Fukuyama. Liberal capitalist democracy, Fukuyama argues, promotes a better mix of solidarity and individualism, of dynamism and stability than societies organized in any other way can do.

That may or may not be true, and there is more than one model of liberal capitalist democracy from which to choose. Nevertheless, it seems clear that no serious grand strategist can afford to ignore the relationship between the internal situation of a state and the economic, political and even moral constitution of a society and its ability to sustain itself in international life.