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The Return of History and the End of Dreams | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.46
You Save: $8.49 (43%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 1018
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 030726923X
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.1
EAN: 9780307269232
ASIN: 030726923X
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
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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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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
A Quick, Substantive Read Worth Reading September 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In this book, Kagan offers a brief and concise overview of contemporary geopolitics in an increasingly multi-polar world. The hope at the end of the Cold War was that liberal values of democracy and capitalism would spread internationally. The resulting economic interdependence and shared prosperity would result in an end to historic conflicts rooted in differences in ideology, competition for resources or pursuit of power. However, over the course of the past 10-20 years US global hegemonic power has diminished as other powers have arisen whose national characteristics are not shaped chiefly by liberal values. Nations that are happily autocratic instead of democratic wield increasing power and have economic interests that do not always harmonize perfectly with the rest. Geopolitical alliances among many different actors become increasingly complex as support is sought to develop or maintain regional influence, protect ideology, pursue economic interests or maintain sovereignty. These diplomatic relations reflect more the many competing identities present in the geopolitical landscape of the 19th century than a contemporary vision of a world with one shared identity and one common pursuit. Happily, the book is not as moralizing and despairing as the title suggests. However, clearly the new global scenario revealed does present its own challenges that will need to be addressed by present and future leaders. The author does occasionally attribute current developments in the modern geopolitical landscape to his pessimistic fundamental beliefs about human nature, however these remarks are few and far between and the author does not overtly seek to make this the crux of the story. Overall, I found this a quick and useful read to bring one up to speed on current geopolitical happenings and would recommend it.
 Political Realism Via Newspaper Headlines August 29, 2008
0 out of 1 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
3 out of 3 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
4 out of 4 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 2 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.
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