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Title: The Return of History and the End of Dreams
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Manufacturer: Knopf
List Price: $19.95
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| The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Knopf "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 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, 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 recent simple faith in a new international 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." | | The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Knopf Product Description | 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. 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. |
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