Review: The Return of History and the end of Dreams
| Author | John Kane |
| Published date | 01 June 2009 |
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070200906400216 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
THE RETURN OF HISTORY AND THE END OF DREAMS
Robert Kagan
New York: Knopf, 2008. 116pp, $22.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0307269232)
The controversial author of this short book—really an extended essay—
rejects the label “neoconservative” but has long advocated a muscular,
typically neoconservative US foreign policy founded on, and justified by,
America’s unique combination of power and righteousness. Kagan worked
in the State Department during the Reagan administration, co-founded (with
William Kristol) the Project for the New American Century in 1997, pushed
the Clinton administration to adopt a policy of regime change in Iraq, and
was one of the most prominent defenders of President George W. Bush’s
invasion of that country in 2003. He has therefore been held co-responsible
for a shift in American foreign policy that many regard as a disastrous error
fuelled by arrogance and ignorance.
The long and difficult trajectory of the Iraq war and the failure of its
stated justifications (Saddam’s non-existent WMDs) caused many neocons to
reassess their previous positions. Perhaps the most telling recantation was
that of Francis Fukuyama, whose book America at the Crossroads:
Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, singled out Kagan in
particular as a champion of the idea of benevolent American hegemony.
Fukuyama argued that the neocons, having misattributed the fall of the
Soviet Union to a virile show of American strength, wrongly assumed that
| International Journal | Spring 2009 | 583 |
| Reviews |
the virtuous progress of history toward democracy could be accelerated by
aggressive American agency. The misadventures of Iraq, he wrote, gave the
lie to this, and future administrations would have to persuade the world, first,
that America was good and, second, that it could be wise in its application of
power, emphasizing military power less and “soft power” more.
The very title of Kagan’s book suggests a riposte to Fukuyama, whose
most famous work is The...
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