Generation Kill: The Wars of Gen X

Join writer Sean Patrick Hughes in his ongoing series as we explore the culture, events and history of Generation X.

I applied to Annapolis within a few years of Francis Fukuyama writing The End of History and The Last Man. The Cold War was over. And the long peace was to begin. I had no idea what was coming. So much time has been spent on what it meant to wander into the post-9/11 world as members of the military; generation kill as we were to be. And so much ink has been spilled to explain that history didn’t end. What’s been missed is deeper discussion of the  window that existed when Fukuyama wrote and when my generation signed up.

FDR, Stalin and Churchill negotiated the end of the Great Wars with an aim to keep a peace among great powers for 50 years. Their task was accomplished. But the wars of my generation, Generation X, the realization of Fukuyama’s warnings for the future: “…that we will return to being first men engaged in bloody and pointless prestige battles, only this time with modern weapons.”

Americans of Generation X spent their 20s, 30s, and 40s engaged in never-ending wars. And we will spend our time in political power with the return of the conflict of great powers.

In this salon, we’ll discuss the wars of Generation X—past, present, and future.

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