Historical fact
The book is not just a book of history, but it does explore history fairly extensively. The book is attempting to reattach the proper abstract imagery to history that its concrete details often don't evoke because most people are familiar with recent history. The goal, then, is to move history from the realm of trivia to the reality of fact. It is relevant to understand both distant and near history to get a proper measure of today's risks. By repeating old mistakes with new technology, humans could destroy the earth.
The realness of time
Another problem facing humanity is the chronic detachment of personal life from political life. Instead of perceiving reality correctly, many people exist in a world without time. People don't typically take things very seriously, because it is painful to consider death, but by reviewing the history of the world, the genocides, the wars, the torture, the weaponry of recent development, and by reviewing the sureness of human death, Fukuyama attempts to relocate the reader in time. This is not just another story, it is the literal truth about human history. It is hard to appreciate the End of History if one doesn't consider themselves contained within History in the first place.
Political systems
Communism and democracy are explored as the two primary modes of human government. The various pros and cons are assessed, and a portrait is depicted of those world views competing through time. This is important because that conflict reached a fever pitch when Russia and America were threatening each other with nuclear decimation. The reality of mutually assured destruction is a worst-case scenario that has always kept the peace, but without addressing the inherent conflict between different modes of thought, the risk of conflict remains dangerously high.
Risk management
To perform risk management is to assess threats and to strategize for various outcomes. Fukuyama argues that as major world governments continue forward in time, they ought to consider the risk of war a completely untenable threat because of the threat of modern weaponry. There are obvious pros and cons to capitalism, for instance, but chronic disadvantages of competition could lead to instability. The imagery of threat and risk management is the new dance of geopolitical life in the modern era.
