Customer Reviews:
 Political Realism Via Newspaper Headlines August 29, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
'The Return of History' is virtually an afterdinner monologue. 'The Return of History holds that political realism is the order of the day but the book lacks arguements and fails to deliver a broad presentation of facts. The book more or less contains the sort of opinions one might glom onto after reading newspaper headlines.
 Democracies of the World, Unite August 27, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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 August 27, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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 Georgia? They might well do nothing. Post-modern Europe can scarcely bring itself to contemplate a return of conflict involving a great power and will go to great lengths to avoid it. Nor is the United States eager to take on Russia when it is so absorbed in the Middle East. Nevertheless, a Russian confrontation with Ukraine or Georgia would usher in a brand-new world - or rather a very old world. As one Swedish analyst has noted, `We're in a new era of geopolitics. You can't pretend otherwise.'"
Will Kane threw his badge in the dirt and rode out of town, and the town didn't care. Frank Miller was dead. Who needs Will Kane? But then a few years later Frank Miller, wearing a ski mask, rises from his grave. He isn't dead after all. Quick, send for Will Kane. Does anyone know where Will Kane is?
Lawrence Helm
www.lawrencehelm.com
A great study August 14, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
The author, Robert Kagan, is a brilliant writer, historian and political scientist, much too bright to be a part of the Dick Cheney staff, yet he conceals those prejudices in his writing. He has become one of my favorite authors, and this book is a wonderful study of the history of America's expansionist foreigh policy.
Return of History: Power Politics and Nationalism Here To Stay August 1, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
At barely over a hundred pages this book contains a wonderfully wise and judicious summary of the diplomatic, foreign policy conundrums facing the world today.
On the day I began reading Robert Kagan's Return of History I heard on the news that Russia had begun patrolling the Arctic region with nuclear submarines, something they had not done since the fall of the Soviet empire.
This datum ties in very nicely with Kagan's succinct, well-written book putting current-day foreign policy in its precise qualities: we're certainly not in an era that's "the end of history." Rather, it's a return to power politics and nationalism, when inhabitants of a country feel pride when their country is powerful.
It helps to explain, for example, the rise of Russia, which I hardly hesitate to call fascist, what with the murdering of dissident journalists and former spies, even those residing outside of Russia.
Just before I have written this, I listened to a BBC podcast, NewsPod of 30 July 2008, describing the launching of subs to delve the depths of Lake Baikal, where 20 percent of the world's freshwater is located. The lake I believe is 5,000 feet deep. The Russian sailors chanted "Glory to Russia!" when they emerged from the sub after the dive. Odd-sounding to Westerners, I think.
Kagan, whose previous book Dangerous Nation was very influential for me, changing my ideas of foreign policy--which had been more in line with Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul--is a wonderful, knowledgeable writer who impresses. People are interested in more than being reductionist homo economicus. Reminding me of my college reading of Plato, we possess a soul spiritedness, a thymos, "a spiritedness and ferocity in defense of clan, tribe, city, or state." (page 8) So actors, be they individuals or states, act in ways that may be irrational or counter-productive. That's not always the point.
This spiritedness often manifests itself as simple patriotism, nearly a dirty word to Europeans. Kagan agrees, calling it a "dirty word in the postmodern Enlightenment lexicon, but there is no shame in a government restoring a nation's honor." (30) Indeed. The naivete of postmoderns will be their undoing.
Russia opposing the United States, even if they may lead to reaction contrary to Russia's immediate interests, is explained very well in The Return of History. Russia is determined to be accepted as a Great Power, even if its economy doesn't warrant it. It's what it once was, and it--led by Vladimir Putin--aims to be thought of once again.
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) proves feckless and incompetent to contain this traditional ugly behavior (at least from their perspective): "Russia and the EU are neighbors geographically. But geopolitically they live in different centuries. A twenty-first-century EU, with its noble ambition to transcend power politics and lead the world into a new international order based on laws and institutions, now confronts a Russia that is very much a traditional, nineteenth-century power practicing the old power politics." (20) The result is that "Europe may be ill-equipped to respond to a problem that it never anticipated having to face." (22) You think? It's almost humorous watching Germany trying to be passively diplomatic, for example, to Russia's bullying over its natural gas supplies, while it arbitrarily cuts off certain countries like the Ukraine or Belarus.
In regards to China, Kagan asks a good question: "In the long run, rising prosperity may well produce political liberalism, but how long is the long run?" (57) The theory with China is first let it become a thoroughgoing capitalist country, and political liberalizations will follow. We may have to wait a long time on that.
"As China scholar Minxin Pei has pointed out, when Chinese leaders fact the choice between economic efficiency and the preservation of power, they choose power. That is their pragmatism." (61)
NATO is more benign to Russia than a few years earlier, yet is engendering much greater hostility. (61)
"The mistake of the 1990s was the hope that democracy was inevitable." (99)
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