The Return of History and the End of Dreams | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 7321
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 28 more reviews...
A late awakening November 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 world knew that the ghost of the bygone era might return in multifarious forms. If at all, it is the American post cold war foreign policy makers who are to be blamed for bringing the contemporary international political situation to such a pass.
My book rightly suggests in ch. 6 that a plastic surgery rather than a cosmetic change is required to save the international order from a certain anarchy. The United States needs to have a solid introspection and initiate changes to prolong its global domination. Vague ideas about liberal democracy carry little conviction when the United States itself flouts with international regimes.
Robert Kagan, has done well to highlight these disturbing trends but fails to suggest how to strike a balance between use of force and liberalistic approaches.
Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies Since Independence.'
 The Return of History November 20, 2008
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.
 Superb insight October 18, 2008
Well laid out sequel to "Paradise and power". All the more intriguing since it was written before the Russian invasion of Georgia--ominiously predictable from the pages of Kagan's book. Let's hope his transatlantic call to action is heeded.
Geopolitical realism from 30,000 feet up October 12, 2008
Robert Kagan takes us up, up and away to view relations between nations of the earth from economic, military, cultural and political perspectives. He hews to the "great powers" view of national relations -- in which large nations strive to maximize their influence on their neighbors. He views Europe and America as assuming they are moving toward a post-modern, post-nationalist global economy in which economic interrelatedness trumps the need for war. Meanwhile, Russia, China and Japan each vie for influence based on older notions of honor and desire for influence. Kagan suggests that cultural and historical contexts affects the way that nations behave. His observations are up to date, especially in light if Russia's recent occupation of neighboring Georgia. What Putin and other Russian leaders desire is not a return to Soviet-style communism, but to pre-Cold War Russian greatness. Similarly, China's military buildup is partially a reaction to the shame of a century of weakness, in which it was prey to Japanese and Euro-America power.
What fascinates is the view that nations, like individuals, are motivated by human emotions. "Nations are not calculating machines. They have the attributes of the humans who create and live in them -- the intangible and immeasurable human qualities of love, hate, ambition, fear, honor, shame, patriotism, ideology and belief -- the things people fight and die for, today as in millennia past." This might come as a disappointment to some leaders in the West, who hold the optimistic view than the past is more or less irrelevant.
Kagan, while supporting the spread of Western-style liberal democracy, preaches the need to view nations realistically. Autocracies like Russia and China define "democracy" differently from the US, and have (at least to them) legitimate reasons for doing so -- the chaos of the Yeltsin years and the threat of popular demonstration of the Tienanmen Square days spooked these nations into allowing economic reform while clamping down on civil freedoms. These measures "work" in autocratic countries to maintain political stability, and need to be kept in mind by Western leaders whose pressure to uphold human rights, for instance, is seen as destabilizing.
"The Return of History" will give the reader important insights into the minds of Eastern autocratic leaders. It explains how Western European powers will continue (in spite of rhetoric) to align with the US. It explains why Islamic fundamentalism is doomed to failure, but until then will continue to be a problem, since the developed work can never roll back its own progress enough to satisfy them. It explains that America will continue to influence events as long as it has the means and ambitions to do so. Sadly, the book does not address Africa and South America very much. This is a reflection of their lack of economic and military clout, a reality that dooms them to be pawns of the great powers.
Kagan attempts to do the impossible in this book -- to value liberal democracy while cautioning the West to be wary of assuming that its political system is the inevitable product of human progress. Until the 18th century, all human societies were autocratic at best, an arrangement that promoted stability, if often at the expense of individual human autonomy. The rise of Russia, China, India and Japan show ho complex and nuanced are national reactions to the end of the Cold War.
Kagan's book is written with relatively few examples. This may be confusing to those not in the know about world events. It also leaves him open to questions about a possible political agenda behind his words. I found his book a good primer into the geopolitical realities that obtain in 2008, and are being played out in the news of the day.
accurate and up to date October 3, 2008
the book gives the reader an easily read up to date review of world politics since the demise of the soviet union as it relates to the course of world togetherness versus nationalism and regional competition among world powers which include the usa,russia,china japan,india and japan. countries which are governed as democracies or autocracies.
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