Apostles' Creed for realists
Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 7:45AM
Thomas P.M. Barnett

ARTICLE: End of Dreams, Return of History, By Robert Kagan, Hoover Institution Policy Review

If you want the pure opposition to my thinking, Robert Kagan's produced it in this piece: globalization is meaningless, great power politics are everything, nothing has changed from the past, states rule all and nationalism is stronger than ever and the future is a struggle between democracy and autocracy. We have never left the 19th century, in terms of global dynamics. Any sense that we did was a pure illusion.

As that argument goes, this is about as good as it gets.

What is missing in the piece, of course, is economics, but realists don't care about that anyway, so not a problem. He does seem to acknowledge the continuing reality of MAD, because he doesn't speak of hot wars among great powers. But the key missing link, for now, is that China and Russia can't come together to balance unipolar America, so basically the past decade has been a complete wash, with no harm, no foul from Bush.

Consider this an Apostle's Creed for realists.

Thanks to TurcoPundit for sending this.

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