by Robert Kagan
from Knopf
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Editorial ReviewHopes 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. Nation-states remain as strong as ever, as do the old, explosive forces of ambitious nationalism. The world remains "unipolar," but international competition among the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Iran raise new threats of regional conflict. Communism is dead, but a new contest between western liberalism and the great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has reinjected ideology into geopolitics. Finally, radical Islamists are waging a violent struggle against the modern secular cultures and powers that, in their view, have dominated, penetrated, and polluted their Islamic world. The grand expectation that after the Cold War the world would enter an era of international geopolitical convergence has proven wrong.
For the past few years, the liberal world has been internally divided and distracted by issues both profound and petty. Now, in The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan masterfully poses the most important questions facing the liberal democratic countries, challenging them to choose whether they want to shape history or let others shape it for them.
Customer Reviews:
- Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
- The Return of Realism
Like a weatherman who predicts that the current day will be mostly sunny - on the evening news, so too does Kagan state the obvious. And that is, the world is a dangerous place! Still, his book is a bit of reality therapy that ought to be absorbed by the "peacenik's", such as they are, who believe that global harmony is achievable through regulation and negotiation (and by building schools and sharing tea).
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many people, to include G.H.W. Bush and the... more info
- Thucydidean Return of Man's Permanent Nature in Global Affairs
The Return of History is a concise and clarifying explanation of the state of geopolitics in early 2008 from a very Thucydidean point of view. The author at a point alludes to the ancient Greek concept of thumos, or a spirited connection with kin, not so much as the unifying concept of our time (as Huntington on a larger scale or Ralph Peters on a tribal scale would have it) but as one of the myriad rocks of man's permanent nature on which the ship of pre-ordained international democratic liberalism has... more info
- A late awakening
Robert Kagan's Return of History has been appropriately named by the author. There is nothing new in this book except skillful writing. Much of these forewarnings in respect of liberal democratic capitalism has been known to foreign policy experts like Huntington, Paul kennedy, etc long ago.
The crux of the matter is not so much to highlight these issues as to look for the causes leading to post cold war developments and disturbances. My book Tracing the Eagle's Orbit does this. Many in developing... more info
- The Return of History
A most disappointing read. I expected much more in depth analysis and found mostly what I read in headlines of various publications. The worst part is that the writer fails to put the pieces together in any way that leads to possible answers for the future. I'd been led to believe that Kagan had powerful insights into where we are and where our options may lead -- instead I found little more than high school level geopolitical history. Don't waste my time.
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