Kagan abandoned neo-conservative daydreaming in favor of a tough, but classic, reading of the history that once again awaits us. Kissinger reminded us, as Fukuyama rediscovered, that nation-states have not become irreplaceable nor has the economic supplanted the strategic. Without a new approach it risks becoming beholden to the influence of fear, something already seen with the Bush Administration’s simplistic politics of force, which was destined for failure.ĭuring the past few years, the great conservative (Kissinger) and neo-conservative (Fukuyama, Kagan) thinkers have caught onto this new state of world affairs. The West is now faced with an urgent need to reflect on policies effective for managing this tectonic shift. We are certainly not yet in “the post-American world,” which is also the title of his work, but the West has already lost its monopoly on history, if not on the influence and power that Europeans then Americans have held onto since the 16th Century. While a great many international analyses are conventional, biased, and repetitive – such as the oft-cited notion that the West struggles to break free from its navel-gazing, myopia, and phobias – the brilliant editor of Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria, manages to cut to the heart of the matter by directly addressing the rise of emerging powers and actors, its consequences for the West, and possible responses.
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