The Return of History and the End of Dreams
by: Robert Kagan
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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.
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
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Rating: 
- Fukuyama vs. Kagan and The Return of Ideology
Kagan (2008) takes his title from Francis Fukuyama's The End of History (1992).
According to Kagan, the fall of Soviet Communism and the apparent hegemony of the United States lead some thinkers such as F. Fukuyama to believe that history had come to an end, and that specifically the ideal of liberal Western democracy had replaced narrow national interests of the past.But Fukuyama, Kagan says, was dreamy and wrong.
Kagan reminds us, forcefully, that nationalism trumps ideology in the ... Read More
Rating: 
- The Return of Common Sense
"The Return of History" should be welcomed as the return of common sense in an America suffering from foreign policy dillusions and mind-numbing spin. In the real world of jockeying self-interested great powers described by Robert Kagan, clearly only a well-armed, tough-minded America can succeed.Windmills, little green cars, carbon credits and an ocean of red ink will not trump the nukes of Russia, Iran and China and their rogue surrogates.
Rating: - Bookend to Fukayama
As always Kagan is excellent.A short readable book like his "Of Paradise and Power" that lays out a strategic theory for the early 21st century.
I find him a bit pollyannish though on his idea that great power competition between autocracies (Russia, China and their hangers-on) and democracies will be the framework for 21st century international relations.He sort of dismisses the struggle with pre-modern Arab-Muslim traditional culture as sort of a passing fad precisely because they ... Read More
Rating: - Good "Clash of Civilizations" follow up
This is a very good book about international politics trends.In 1992, Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man statedthat with globalization and modern technology liberal capitalism had won.The fall of the Berlin wall and the USSR collapse supported this optimism.But, in 1995 Samuel Huntington rebutted Fukuyama in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.Huntington saw a world balkanized by antagonist cultural and fundamentalist religious groups including the ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
- Fukuyama vs. Kagan and The Return of IdeologyKagan (2008) takes his title from Francis Fukuyama's The End of History (1992).
According to Kagan, the fall of Soviet Communism and the apparent hegemony of the United States lead some thinkers such as F. Fukuyama to believe that history had come to an end, and that specifically the ideal of liberal Western democracy had replaced narrow national interests of the past.But Fukuyama, Kagan says, was dreamy and wrong.
Kagan reminds us, forcefully, that nationalism trumps ideology in the ... Read More
- The Return of Common Sense"The Return of History" should be welcomed as the return of common sense in an America suffering from foreign policy dillusions and mind-numbing spin. In the real world of jockeying self-interested great powers described by Robert Kagan, clearly only a well-armed, tough-minded America can succeed.Windmills, little green cars, carbon credits and an ocean of red ink will not trump the nukes of Russia, Iran and China and their rogue surrogates.
- Bookend to FukayamaAs always Kagan is excellent.A short readable book like his "Of Paradise and Power" that lays out a strategic theory for the early 21st century.
I find him a bit pollyannish though on his idea that great power competition between autocracies (Russia, China and their hangers-on) and democracies will be the framework for 21st century international relations.He sort of dismisses the struggle with pre-modern Arab-Muslim traditional culture as sort of a passing fad precisely because they ... Read More
- Good "Clash of Civilizations" follow upThis is a very good book about international politics trends.In 1992, Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man statedthat with globalization and modern technology liberal capitalism had won.The fall of the Berlin wall and the USSR collapse supported this optimism.But, in 1995 Samuel Huntington rebutted Fukuyama in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.Huntington saw a world balkanized by antagonist cultural and fundamentalist religious groups including the ... Read More
- The Return of RealismLike 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 ... Read More
