The Return of History and the End of Dreams, by Robert Kagan

Segundo kagan, o mundo regressa ao "normal"


When Kagan writes about the return of history, he uses the word “return” to reflect less his own knowledge of the word than the understanding of other people. The nineties, again, were hardly devoid of the global competition and violent conflict that had defined human history previously, and the United States did not hesitate to capitalize on its new role as the sole remaining superpower standing over a vanquished and depleted Soviet empire (those liberal internationalists today complaining about American “bellicosity,” “unilateralism,” and “hegemony” would do well to study the rhetoric and actions of the Clinton administration). The U.S. rarely hesitated to carry out military interventions abroad, and it did so using a very liberal interpretation of what defined American “national interest.” Kagan helpfully reminds us that from 1989 until 2001—a period beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ending with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon—the United States “intervened more frequently than at any other time in its history . . . and far more than any other power in the same stretch of time.” Granted, few if any of these interventions would have been possible under the old Cold War rubric, which prevented American-Soviet combat but encouraged aid to local actors, like the Sandinistas and Contras in Nicaragua. But the post–Cold War, pre-9/11 age was not one of global peace, as the atrocities in the Balkans and Rwanda (not to mention al-Qaida’s infrequent yet devastating strikes) should remind us. History has not so much “returned” as it has been amplified.
Aqui