The Return of History and the End of Dreams

by Robert Kagan

Book Overview

Hopes for a new peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War have been dashed by sobering realities: Great powers are once again competing for honor and influence. The world remains "unipolar," but international competition among the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Iran raise new threats of regional conflict, and a new contest between western liberalism and the great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030738988X
• ISBN13: 9780307389886
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Democracies of the World, Unite

This short book reads more like a long essay than a book and focuses on the post-Cold War world. Like many recent books, this book is also concerned with the United States' current position in the world given the rise of China, the EU, Russia and Iran. The underlying thesis is that in the years to come states will align themselves not based on region or culture, but rather by form of government and foreign policy. In other words, the world's democracies will strengthen ties amongst themselves by way of economic and political ties while the world's autocracies (namely China, Russia and Iran) will further strengthen its bonds, thereby creating a counterbalance to western democracies. In many respects, such an alignment is already underway and there are no signs of letting up. Kagan suggests that liberal democracy has survived the most deadly century of mankind and it is stronger than it ever has been globally. He doesn't argue that democracy is the superior form of government, but he clearly recognizes that if the world is ever to succeed in its quest for worldwide peace and prosperity, it will be up to the United States and the rest of the world's democracies to get us there. But for the time being, post-Cold War dreams of global unity and cooperation have failed and history as we knew it has returned.

Failure of the EU and the end of dreams

Reading Kagan after Zakaria's The Post-American World is refreshing. It feels as though I'm returning to the real world. This is partly because Kagan is an Historical Realist. It is also because Zakaria is an idealist. He may deny that classification, but he has faith in his statistics, trends and economic forecasts. He looks toward the future confident in what his numbers tell him. He has tasted European idealism and declared it good. The EU followed by a host if idealistic followers has been dreaming. Not only that, they have been operating as though their dreams were a reality. Marx dreamed similar dreams long ago. First he dreamed them and then someone made a reality of them. But things can go wrong when the rest of the world isn't dreaming with you. Kagan, unlike Zakaria, looks at the present in terms of the past. He sees the return of 19th century power politics - something Fukuyama scoffed at. For Kagan, the EU experiment isn't working very well. On page 20 Kagan writes, "So what happens when a twenty-first-century entity like the EU faces the challenge of a traditional power like Russia? The answer will play itself out in coming years, but the contours of the conflict are already emerging - in diplomatic standoffs over Kosovo, Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia; in conflicts over gas and oil pipelines; in nasty diplomatic exchanges between Russian and Great Britain; and in a return of Russian military exercises of a kind not seen since the Cold war. "Europeans are apprehensive and have reason to be. The nations of the European Union placed a mammoth bet in the 1990s. They bet on the new world order, on the primacy of geo-economics over geopolitics, in which a huge and productive European economy would compete as an equal with the United States and China. . . They cut back on their defense budgets and slowed the modernization of their militaries, calculating that soft power was in and hard power was out. They believed Europe would be a model for the world, and in a world modeled after the European Union, Europe would be strong. "For a while this seemed a good bet. . . [but] with Russia back on its feet and seeking to restore its great power status, including predominance in its traditional spheres of influence, Europe finds itself in a most unexpected and unwanted position of geopolitical competition. This great twenty-first-century entity has, through enlargement, embroiled itself in a very nineteenth-century confrontation. "Europe may be ill-equipped to respond to a problem that it never anticipated having to face. . . Many western Europeans already regret having brought the eastern European countries into the Union and are unlikely to seek even more confrontations with Russia by admitting such states as Georgia and Ukraine." Kagan wrote his book before Russia invaded Georgia, but he saw that coming. He writes on page 24, "What would Europe and the United States do if Russia played hardball in either Ukraine or

A snapshot of global politics, 2008

Although the title clearly references Fukuyama's book, it's important to point out that Kagan isn't attacking Fukuyama here. Just in the same way that The End of History was a product of the end of the Cold War, The Return of History is the product of the world in 2008. Kagan's book is much less ambitious in the sense that Fukuyama really went out on a limb with his book and made a lot of predictions. While the fall of the Soviet Union undoubtedly remains one of history's most monumental events, time has not been kind to Fukuyama's argument. The central thesis to Kagan's book is that great power politics and nationalistic ambitions did not die with the Soviet Union. Russia under Putin, China, and other autocracies stand opposite the U.S., Europe and other democracies in a struggle for dominance of the international system. Making a reference to Huntington, Kagan argues it is not a country's "civilization" that determines its path, but rather its form of government. Russia and China reach out to and reinforce autocratic governments regardless of where in the world they are, just as many East European and Asian democracies align themselves with the U.S. and Europe. In just over 100 pages, Kagan produces a spot-on analysis of the world in mid-2008. He doesn't offer up sweeping predictions or theories, but rather a snapshot of sorts. One of the most interesting aspects of this book is looking at how Kagan's thinking has evolved since his last brief book, Of Paradise and Power. In that book, he spoke of the differences between the U.S. and Europe that were very pronounced during the lead up to the Iraq war. It's clear that Kagan is capable of providing informed and relevant analysis of world events as they constantly change. I'll be sure to read anything he produces in the future.

Chaos rules, democracy survives, all the rest cause trouble

Brilliant; history has not ended, it is alive and well and in most part ignoring and even rejecting the "exceptionalism" of America and writers such as Fukuyama. In brief, Kagan presents the logical facts about why international turmoil will continue unabated. Yet, he's still stuck in the idealism of Kant and Montesquieu who argued, "The natural effect of commerce is to lead toward peace." But, commerce is competition which becomes riddled with cheating and bullying. From steroids in sports to bribes in business, competition leads to cheating which leads to fisticuffs and, when enough people are involved, to war. Kagan astutely recognizes the ills of the last century; he doesn't sumble until he gets to the future. This may be the most relevant book issued this election year. One of it's central ideas is already part of Sen. John McCain's campaign platform, and an issue for discussion in the Financial Times. Ignore Kagan's sense of reality and Bush's blundering bozos will look like picnickers playing in the park compared to what comes next. "In a world increasingly divided among democratic and autocratic lines, the world's democrats will have to stick together," Kagan advises. It's a proposal McCain has voiced with his 'League of Democracies'. Kagan likely originated it; McCain copied, which at least shows he's capable of recognizing good ideas. Yet, there's another "reality". At this point (May 2008), Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can't form a 'League of Two Democrats' let alone two democracies. Many Republicans have a similar problem in forming a "league" to elect McCain. What does it prove? It proves life is challenged more by chaos than by all the clever philosophies from Plato to Kagan, who writes, ". . . they regarded democracy as the rule of the licentious, greedy, and ignorant mob". They were right. Now it's called chaos. Success is the ability to recognize useful patterns within chaos. The world is not an orderly formula which everyone obeys, like some "Universal Theory" Albert Einstein sought so vainly. It's chaos, confusion, conflict and contusion which the wise learn to analyze and the foolish continue to lament. Aye, there's the rub. How do you implement perceptive insights and good ideas in a world of chaos? Kagan goes right up to this point, then hesitates rather than plunge into uncertainty. He's an American idealist, ready to build the 'city on a hill' as the perfect answer, a man governed by reason, inspired by perfection but somewhat above reality. It is a brilliant essay. It's as current as this year's U.S. elections, as timeless as history itself and as relevant as anything else you may read this year. But, chaos rules. You'll understand after reading this book.

"Back To The Future"

Robert Kagan's "The Return of History And The End Of Dreams" is a sobering, trenchantly written analysis of contemporary international affairs. In it, Kagan takes aim at the largely unwarranted optimism widespread in western democracies following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many at that time thought the world had arrived at "the end of history," that the future would be confined to one inevitable shape (liberal democracy), that nations in the wake of a new geo-economics and globalization would now just peacefully engage in commerce, with nationalism and geo-political confrontation things of the past. Kagan looks at the current scene without such blinkers, reminding his readers of the competitive nature of human beings and of the "stubborn traditions" now once again clearly resurgent in many nation states. Far from presenting a world in which the triumph of liberal democracy is inevitable, he draws attention to the resurgence of its increasingly powerful rivals, autocracy (in Russia and China principally) and to a lesser degree Islamist radicalism (in the Middle East). In short, Kagan reveals the allegedly post-modern world to be a place where power politics still obtains and war is not out of court. The post-Cold War world, then, should be understood as one containing a large measure of "backward-looking" geo-political competition, and that the great conflict now taking shape within it, if one has the courage to see, is the one between democracy and autocracy. Following his demolition of the simple faith in a new international liberal order presumably automatic upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kagan goes on to call the western democracies to a new vigilance. As he puts it, "the future international order will be shaped by those who have the power and the collective will to shape it. The question is whether the world's democracies will again rise to that challenge."