From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2008 - 16:37:58 EDT
The return of history July 26th, 2008 . Jasper van Dijk MP In The Return of History and the End of Dreams (Random House, 2008), Robert Kagan argues that as the dreams of the Cold War period evaporated the liberal democratic world should have given more consideration to its reaction. The years since, with the rise of the great autocracies of Russia and China and the beginnings of the campaign of the Muslim fundamentalists, have divided and diverted the attention of the democracies. History is back, and it is up to the democratic nations of the world to put their differences aside in order to shape this history. If they don't, others will shape it for them. Kagan is a power politician and an advisor to John McCain and so not exactly a natural ally of the SP, but that does not make his book any less interesting. The book and its title are, of course, a reaction to Francis Fukuyama The End of History, the 1992 tome which argued that with Communism defeated, and liberalism victorious, it was only a question of time before the rest of the world joined the US and Europe in becoming liberal - or neoliberal - democracies. Read more? http://www.international.sp.nl/bericht/27264/080726-the_return_of_history.html Kagan's prescription for the future is that league of democracies McCain calls for, an intellectual improvement over the short-lived "coalition of the willing" of the Bush years. To make the league harmonious, the next American president will have to deal with Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the discordant notes that have made it so easy for America's opponents to mock the "freedom agenda." But that's the easy part. Far harder is grappling with the American impulse - seen in Bosnia during the Clinton years and Iraq in the Bush years - to assert the right of the "international community" to reach deep inside national borders and oust leaders who repress their own people. No American president will want to give up that option. And the world's autocrats, including those in Moscow and Beijing, will remain deeply suspicious, as Kagan notes, that "the democracies, whatever they say, would welcome their overthrow." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Sanger-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin _______________________________________________ ope mailing list ope@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
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