kagan quotes i'll look at

there's certainly a lot of things that I strongly disagree with Kagan about, but he's a smart guy, and it's helpful to read someone who is able to describe the bush administration and the past decade as a logical, linear process (on the surface to me it just seems disconnected and illogical). also, his conclusion--the last three paragraphs below--seem incredible for a realist like kagan to make. a realist advocating more international cooperation and a less state-centric world?? that's what I just wrote in the post I made five minutes ago! so, guess it's pretty clear i agree with that conclusion then...as much as my analysis of the bush administration may differ. here are some quotes:


The problem with the "war on terror" paradigm is not that the war has failed in its main and vitally important purpose. It is that the paradigm was and is an insufficient one on which to base the entirety of U.S. foreign policy.

In a world of selfish states and selfish peoples -- which is to say, the world that exists -- the question is always, "What is in it for us?" The inadequacy of the "war on terror" paradigm stems from the fact that very few nations other than the United States consider terrorism to be their primary challenge. The United States' fight has not been regarded as an international "public good" for which the rest of the world can be grateful. On the contrary, most nations believe that they are doing the United States a favor when they send troops to Afghanistan (or Iraq), often at a perceived sacrifice to their own interests.

The war on terror, in short, has been a source more of division than of unity. The United States, which in the 1990s was already seen by many as a bullying hegemon, came to be viewed after September 11 as a self-absorbed, bullying hegemon, heedless of the consequences of its actions.

....

It would also be an illusion, however, to imagine that there can be an easy return to the U.S. leadership and the cooperation among U.S. allies that existed during the Cold War era. There is no single unifying threat along the same lines as the Soviet Union to bind the United States and other nations together in seemingly permanent alliance. The world today looks more like that of the nineteenth century than like that of the late twentieth. Those who imagine this is good news should recall that the nineteenth-century order did not end as well as the Cold War did.

To avoid such a fate, the United States and other democratic nations will need to take a more enlightened and generous view of their interests than they did even during the Cold War. The United States, as the strongest democracy, should not oppose but welcome a world of pooled and diminished national sovereignty. It has little to fear and much to gain in a world of expanding laws and norms based on liberal ideals and designed to protect them. At the same time, the democracies of Asia and Europe need to rediscover that progress toward this more perfect liberal order depends not only on law and popular will but also on powerful nations that can support and defend it.

In a selfish world, this kind of enlightened wisdom may be beyond the capacities of all states. But if there is any hope, it lies in a renewed understanding of the importance of values. The United States and other democratic nations share a common aspiration for a liberal international order, built on democratic principles and held together, however imperfectly, by laws and conventions among nations. This order is gradually coming under pressure as the great-power autocracies grow in strength and influence and as the antidemocratic struggle of radical Islamic terrorism persists. If the democracies' need for one another is less obvious than before, the need for these nations, including the United States, to "see further into the future" is all the greater.