The Return of History and the End of Dreams
Robert Kagan
Atlantic Books, 117pp, £12.99
With the end of the Bush era now in clear sight, Americans are turning to the question of what next. Iraq overshadows this spring surge of writing on America's options - a good deal of it declinist in mood. This is the end of the American dream for the "millennium generation", the end of the dollar, the end of American global power: most of the recent opinionating is at least to some degree self-chastened. Robert Kagan's slim essay stands out amid the spate of offerings for its even, urbane tone and terse analytic delineation. It remains, however, an unashamed declaration of faith in America as a necessary force for global good and, as such, symptomatic of just how deep the self-examination of America's policy elites is actually willing to go. Remarkably, these recent reflections adhere to the premises that have persistently defined America's relationship to the world. Iraq has not, in fact, instigated any profound re-examination of America's desire for world hegemony.
In affirming that desire, Kagan has as his primary target what he sees as an American belief about the course of history. After the end of the Cold War, a belief in benign globalisation, in convergence towards universal values and in the spread of liberal democracy supported by newly enriched middle classes conspired to disarm American nerve. The delusion was fostered that Americans could shed their economic, political and moral burdens - because the irreversible movement of history would achieve what earlier in the 20th century had required Americans to win by active struggle.
But, Kagan insists, the texture of international politics remains fundamentally unchanged: our world is one "that a 19th-century diplomat would recognise instantly". It is defined by great-power competition, where nationalism - or rather, what Kagan prefers to see as "nationalist resentment" - remains a basic motive, as do fear, honour and shame: all political passions uncorroded by intensifying economic commerce between nations. Here, and in his impatience with economistic optimism about global order, surely he is right - as he also is in his mapping of the contours of great-power competition today.
Scanning the world, he starts with Russia, where a new tsarist capitalism is being built, and then focuses on Asia - the most dynamic region in the world. There, a three-way rivalry is developing, between China, an autocratic state whose economic prowess encourages an international posture designed to remove long-felt humiliation, and two democracies - Japan, already economically advanced and now readying for a greater regional and even global role, and India, which has long nourished international ambitions, and that it now hopes to fulfill through economic power. Kagan considers Iran, too, as part of this set of competing global powers, but he gives no special analytic place to radical Islam (which he sees as motivated by similar sentiments to the other states). The international domain shows no convergence towards universal values, but a growing struggle between competing truths.
This messy, edgy world that Kagan maps he ultimately subsumes under a single conflict - between the world's democracies and autocracies. Successful autocracies such as Russia and China stand today as models that inspire the ambitions of despots in Africa and elsewhere. The democracies of the world would therefore be ill-advised to sit back and hope that historical evolution will secure the world for them - they must actively defeat the strengthening comeback of autocracy.
But how to do this, given that America's recent experiences with self-proclaimed democratic interventionism have gone rather astray, and that it has restricted the military options? Here Kagan perceives the importance (and fragility) of something Americans have assumed is part of their natural endowment, and which in recent years they have squandered - legitimacy. President Bush has fulfilled his promise, early in his second term, to spend his political capital: he has helped amass, along with the US's huge trade deficit, a huge global legitimacy deficit. The US has done much to undermine the legitimacy of international organisations such as the UN, while the ranks of the "coalition of the willing" are not exactly swelling. In short, America is desperately short of effective tools with which to pursue its interests. Kagan proposes a neat solution. The US can outsource its legitimacy deficit to the world's other democracies.
Thus, he calls for a "concert of democracies", which would bind the EU, Japan, India and Australia to the US - and will work to keep in check Russia, China, Iran and other threats or nuisances to US interests. This is a remarkably airy conclusion to Kagan's otherwise grounded analysis; but it resonates with proposals from other clever American policy intellectuals - such as Philip Bobbitt, who has placed legitimacy even more prominently at the centre of his analysis, and has called for the US and the EU to come together. Such arguments show an acute sense among Americans that they need the rest of the world to co-operate with the pursuit of US interests. In addition to military power, the US also needs what Joseph Nye calls "smart power".
And yet there has been little serious questioning of the way the US has defined its own power and its relationship to the world. Instead, America's bright minds search for ingenious descriptions of the world - which can convince Americans (and, they hope, the rest) that the US genuinely does have a chosen historical role, one on which it must never renege. What Kagan sees as "nationalist resentment" could also be seen as quite reasonable responses to the challenge the US poses to other states. The projection of great power, the aspiration to monopoly, will invariably incite resistance. Kagan's book comes decorated with an endorsement from Senator John McCain, who stands for a more sober, realist approach to America's role in the world. But a more chastened America is not necessarily an America rendered more safe for the rest of the world.
Sunil Khilnani is Starr Foundation Professor and director of South Asia studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC
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