Democrats v Autocrats

July 2008

Kagan agrees that in the long run, rising prosperity in China and Russia may well produce political liberalism, but this, he points out, “may be too long to have any strategic or geopolitical relevance”. Tellingly, he cites a sardonic joke about how “Germany launched itself on a trajectory of economic modernisation in the late 19th century and within six decades became a fully fledged democracy.” But, of course, the intervening 60 years were quite a different story.

This well-aimed humour makes it all the more surprising that Kagan devotes so little attention to what he calls “the hopeless dream of radical Islam”. His contention, not entirely persuasive, is that radical Islam will be unable ultimately to resist the forces of modernisation. However, like the long run, “ultimately” can be much too long a time, particularly given the possibility, which Kagan himself acknowledges, that the connection between terrorists and nuclear weapons may soon be made.

This dismissal of radical Islam is at least partly tactical. Kagan does not hide his concern that placing too much emphasis on the danger of Islamic terrorism may promote “illusions” about the possibilities of cooperation with Russia and China. Elsewhere he has argued that basing foreign policy on US political principles can attract more support abroad than appealing to the danger of terrorism. But even if one believes that managing the rise of new major powers is a greater challenge for the future than Islamic extremism, there is no way to avoid dealing with both at the same time.

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Franklin D. Lomax

July 7th, 2008
12:07 PM

editorialstaff net notes: The inevitable SinoRussian energy/commodity blackmail alliance is coming together, as the PC colonialist nations ignore, at their immediate peril, China buying up petty dictators, their enslaved peoples, and the energy and commodities their dictators are engaged in stealing, with a pitiful few millions of "No strings attached cash aid, " spirited away to Swiss bank accounts. The wastrel Carter's tossing of the Panama Canal, with the decline of the necessary Monroe Doctrine, have opened even the South American patch to monster regimes from the Levant, China, et al. A new free world alliance, with active competition, containment for the wholesale purchasers of backwater monster regimes is the absolute minimum survival level for the PC wobbly leaders of the temporarily free world. Sarko leading France back into the fold, taken with the abject failure of socialism, and the welfare state, everywhere bode well for the establishment of some adult supervision for the filth we have allowed to build up in the regimes of Mugabe, the Burma junta,and others engaged in simple robbery of their peoples. Timely decapitation of those outlaws, allowing the elected leaders of the nations to bring the survivors of their beleaguered peoples into the sunlight of the free world family will be a start. It is to be the cold war, without MAD, since the goons enslaving the Chinese, Russians, et al, have the will, but not the superpower tools to actually destroy the world.

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