Neo-coms are the threat

After the Berlin Wall fell, many Western analysts thought the successor to the Soviet Union would willingly give up its satellite states and move inexorably toward democracy.

Many in the State Department, especially secretary of state James Baker, felt that the "end of the Cold War" meant an end to the special status of Israel in Middle Eastern affairs, not dreaming that the rise of radical versions of Shi'ite and Sunni Islam exported by Iran and the Saudis might make the country more valuable than ever.

But history does not move in straight lines or dialectical patterns to suit liberal social scientists or Marxist social theorists. Rather, it repeats itself or moves in cycles, based not only on economic factors but those of custom, culture, religion and human nature.