http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/90690/fool%e2%80%99s-gold/
Middle East expert Robert Kagan argues in a new book that American foreign policy has spawned a golden age of liberal democracy. He’s wrong.
” A Somalia-style debacle in Egypt, an Islamist tyranny in Tunisia, civil war in Syria, and similar horrors through the Arab world now seem a likelier terminus for the so-called Arab Spring than a “healthier world order.”
America’s global activism made possible today’s golden age of liberal democracy and free markets. This is what Brookings Institution Middle East expert Robert Kagan argues in his new book, The World America Made. What makes the work so disappointing is that Kagan stops the discussion just where it ought to begin, that is, with the religious and cultural content that informs democratic institutions.
Kagan’s purpose in defending U.S. foreign-policy activism here is to deflect criticism of America’s unpopular engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is no easy task, and to perform it, Kagan adopts the two-stage approach to persuasion made famous by Prof. Harold Hill in The Music Man: Establish first that there is trouble in River City, and then propose a solution, namely a marching band. Kagan also offers a marching band, but with 40 divisions behind it.
Where River City is concerned, Kagan’s argument is unexceptionable: Without American leadership, the feckless Europeans can’t be counted on to do anything, and the Chinese can’t be counted on not to do things badly. America shouldn’t abandon its position as the leading world power.
What America should do with that position is a different question. In his