Err.. then perhaps you aren't looking into it enough, as there are some rather obvious reasons to think he is wrong.

The rise of bullies and their corrupt cadres in the USA and Russia, at the very least, is an objective announcement that something other than democracy is running things. The USA's now utterly skewed constitutional powers (too many to mention here), its obliviousness to that 'Bill of Rights' thing we have(ditto), its willingness to hand over the foundation of democracy to a hidden, unaccountable, biased and cheatable form of electronic voting- it's not at all clear that the USA is a real democracy at this point, to a foreign observer.

Add China's and Russia's sneering at global standards, and bully-ism would seem to be making a statement that might makes right, not anything else. Doesn't it matter that the Big 3 are not only setting very low standards, but modeling 'bully' behavior for everyone else? Expect to see more from less powerful countries, because without moral authority, all that's left is more bullying.

But - other structures are surely nascent in the world, beyond even the nation-states. A brief deployment of the imagination will show both old and new non-democratic forms elaborating. There's our old-standy corporatism... another not-exactly-democratic replacement for states as the major players, autocratic or not, possibly nailed down to 'capitalism' (now defined as institutionalized greed that pays to write legislation) --but what is capitalism without democracy? Merely a more efficient feudal system.

Or military-energy-industrial complexes, those parasitic symbioses that nepotistically connect class, personal, and business relations to capitalism, forming networks that may well take over the global driver's seat. There's a case to be made that that has already happened.

Islam of course, powerfully importuning its followers not to question, and not to listen to anyone else who questions.

Or even Berlusconi-type media-political complexes; who knows what could emerge as yet, humans seem easily tricked into captivity.

One could argue, in fact, that a plethora of alternatives to that earlier democracy that seemed so iconic and inevitable, has begun to differentiate itself. The Blogosphere even, or some populous global movement, are now emerging as potential structures in a new global dynamic; meanwhile the hidden interests which have always guided nations and economic waves are furiously networking.

I guess if the above are acceptable versions of 'democracy ad capitalism' as opposed to deformed growths of them, then you 'can see no reasons' why Fukuyama is wrong. But I suggest you and Fukuyama too, take the blinders off.

>>But for all of China's strengths, its system is not a serious challenge to the United States' animating -- and winning -- ideas.

Currently those 'winning ideas' are an illusion that virtually all countries have seen through (unless we happen to be holding up their despotic right-wing governments, then it's not prudent to acknowledge the joke). Most cultures though, are happy to accept US hypocrisy with a wink-wink and a smile as the cash trades hands. You've got your own hypocrisy audit here in fact: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4440 .. so clearly someone has a clue at FP.

Unless democracy gets its act together, we'll have only a memory of an illusion, and never fulfillment of the raw potential of the democratic ideal. A mere image of democracy without the sustaining spirit and intention, as we currently have in the USA, will crumble before structures which more effectively harness greed for growth. It already has, in so many places.

Not being oblivious is surely the first step.