Poorly-written, historically weak, and worst of all, yet more warmongering! - Rated 
Robert Kagan worked in the US State Department from 1984 to 1998, and was a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). He has written this little book in reply to Francis Fukuyama, also of the State Department and of PNAC, who in 1992 wrote `The End Of History And The Last Man'.
This book may be Kagan's application for the post of foreign policy advisor to Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. Among other brilliant ideas, McCain wants Britain to invade Sudan, just like we did in the 1880s. Remember what happened to General Gordon? And to the government that sent him?
Kagan wants whatever he calls democracies to unite against what he calls autocracies, especially China and Russia. But actually he wants empires, US and EU alike, to unite against national sovereignty.
He defines democracy as having competitive elections. But in the USA, the electoral choice is between two wings of the Property Party, two multi-millionaires, equally pro-capital, equally pro-empire (witness Obama's pledges, like McCain's, to back whatever the Israeli state does, to eliminate the so-called threat from Iran and to tighten the USA's illegal blockade of Cuba). Are Russia's elections, or Iran's, or Venezuela's, significantly less democratic that the USA's? Yet Kagan calls these countries autocracies.
Kagan notes that the American people want the USA to play a less prominent world role, but he doesn't let that stop him calling for more globalisation, more capitalism. But the peoples of the world need to determine their own countries' futures, free from outside interference.
He approvingly quotes Blair's adviser Robert Cooper, who says that the EU is a `cooperative empire ... dedicated to liberty and democracy' - so free and so democratic that it refuses its citizens a vote on its treaties. Not surprising, given that Cooper believes, "The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards."
Remember that in 1914, Germany's franchise was wider than Britain's, yet the British and US states called the First World War a war for democracy against German autocracy. Kagan, as a servant of his empire, says that it must fight and defeat the `autocracies' - he is just another warmonger. Here he continues his ten-year campaign for attacking Iraq, claiming that Iraq may join a bloc of pro-US democracies in the Middle East. The end of dreams?
Insightful, pithy, brilliant. - Rated 
Any Bob Kagan fan will be receptive to and familiar with many of the arguments and analyses set forth in this essay, but to have these beautifully articulated in a mere 100 pages is a veritable treat. This should be required reading for every western politician.
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