Is it worth checking out what's on John McCain's summer reading list days?
If you do you'll find he is re-reading "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," by McCain Campaign Adviser and Neoconservative Writer Robert Kagan. And you'll find a dark vision for America's future.
In The Return of History, The End of Dreams, Kagan outlines a world that has returned to the dark power politics of the 19th century. Now some may think "Freedom is on the March," but they'd be wrong. Freedom and liberal democracy are not on the March, but rather Western Civilization is facing a new struggle and a potential death struggle with the rising forces of Autocracy.
Though some thought that with the fall of Soviet Communism, European Nations would capitalize on a peace dividend and turn away from the pursuit and practice of hard power and toward the use of cooperative soft power. This would be accomplished through the creation and strengthening of the European Union and International Law and Institutions. Russia would be invited into the European Order and would be co-opted to eventually join the new peaceful order. China and India would benefit from globalization and increasing connectivity with the New World Order. In this unipolar world with America as the sole benevolent super power preserving the peace and with growing economic connectivity, the World would get smaller, it would flatten and War among Great Powers would become a thing of the past.
But this was all an illusion.
You see what was old is now once again new. Might Makes right. Power is law, Power creates order, and the Powerful seek the Permanent Perpetuation of their Power. The Strong will do what they will and the weak will suffer as they must.
We learn, however, that when the Soviet Empire collapsed, the threat posed to the world's liberal democracies did not collapse as well. True, Communist dominion was no longer feared. There was only one superpower instead of two and the mulitipolar world had become a unipolar world. But Nature abhors a vacuum and with the collapse of Soviet power and influence, this vacuum would be filled by new powers. The threat has merely transformed, we are told, to a new ominous challenge.
The world has now become divided into the forces of Liberal Democracy and those of Autocracy. Great Powers, democracies and autocracies, are rising and will seek places of respect in the new international order. America would still be a super power but will be challenged by other Great Powers, China and Russia for instance, through a system of secret treaties and alliances akin to the Great Power Politics of the 19th century. What was old, say hyper nationalism for example, would become new again. And the dreams for a new world order, a peaceful world order, European dreams, Emmanuel Kant's dreams, have been shattered.
The year is now 1914.
But there is hope we learn in another Kagan book Of Paradise and Power. Fortunately for the sake of Humanity, it is The United States and, to a lesser extent, fellow practitioners of Liberal Democracy that still constitutes the Strong and can and must confront the rising Great Powers. You see the Strong and the weak view the world and risks differently. The strong are less likely to tolerate a risk and more likely to confront as risk. “A man armed with only a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, in as much as the alternative, hunting the bear armed only with a knife, is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn’t have to?"
From Of Paradise and Power, by John McCain adviser and Neoconservative writer Robert Kagan.
And thus armed not with a knife but with a rifle and through this position of strength, the Strong can promote Universal Values if not impose those values on peoples of far flung regions throughout the globe. It is reasonable for the strong to wish to do this.
Eternal vigilance and the willingness to use immoral means to promote moral goals is the price of freedom. Or rather putting it a little more refined: among civilized chaps we will follow civilized rules, but when in the jungle the League of Democracy must take advantage of all the laws of the jungle. With much of the world constituting the foreboding jungle it is all together appropriate for the Strong to do as it will, to make the world safe for Universal Values to endure and expand.........FORCEFULLY when and if necessary.
So as we follow McCain's foreign policy pronouncements and read the words of his intimates, we see that the world we knew though the 1990s was as good as it gets, so they'd say. We are told that America can do no better, we can be no more secure than what we were in the PAST. And a long slow decline, a collapse, or more favorably treading water is the way of the future as the Western Liberal Democracies will constantly be challenged the Great Autocratic Powers for dominion. We learn that the use of immoral means to achieve moral objectives is justified and is to be embraced.
In this world today, once more it is time to choose sides. Are you with us or are you against us. History has returned and the days of Dreams of creating a world that could someday know peace have faded to black..... in John McCain's world view.
And that is why it is important to know just what John McCain is reading.
