Robert Kagan has issued what seems to be a call for America to take on a robust leadership role in the world as head of a ‘league of democracies’. Kagan’s new book is an elaboration of the foreign policy proposal which he has drafted for Republican candidate John McCain in his capacity as McCain’s foreign policy advisor. Some commentators have argued that this book is a clear statement of the so-called neocon project, and a continuation of the Bush drive for unilateral dominance and destruction of the UN. Edward Luce of the Financial Times, for example, has argued that the book represents a dangerous and worrying restatement of neoconservative plans (1). On the other hand, Francis Fukuyama (against whose ‘end of history’ argument Kagan has framed his polemic) reviewing the book for The Sunday Times, has characterised it as more of an acknowledgement that the brash vision of the neocons is over (2).

Certainly in comparison with Kagan’s last polemic, Paradise and Power, written in 2004 in the context of the Euro-Atlantic disagreements over the Iraq war, there does seem to be a less strident tone to the new book. Then, important Eurocrats such as Robert Cooper (former Blair advisor and now high in the European Commission) sought to argue that the EU showed the world a better way, a ‘postmodern’ system of multilateralism and international law. In Paradise and Power, Kagan chided the EU for its failure to acknowledge that the EU could only live in its beautiful and peaceful ‘postmodern’ garden because the US was patrolling the street outside and making sure that robbers did not break in.

The disagreement over Iraq was not one of principle, however, despite the fancy talk of postmodern versus modern. Neither Kagan nor Cooper would ever deny for one moment that the ‘international community’ did have a right to intervene in Iraq: the disagreement was over method. Yet, although the bust-up over Iraq was not a major ideological disagreement, it did nonetheless highlight the underlying and serious problem of legitimacy for a post-Cold War US role in the world. And this was Kagan’s real point to Europe: look folks, he was saying, without legitimacy for the US role in the world, we’re all in trouble, so please stop fantasising and get with the programme. It is this problematic question of legitimacy that, I would argue, underlies Kagan’s new polemic, but it is also this problem that McCain will not be able to resolve by adopting Kagan’s prescriptions.

Kagan argues that because of the current state of turmoil in the world, America has a legitimate role in terms of acting as head of a ‘league of democracies’. ‘The world has become normal again…’, Kagan states at the very beginning of The Return of History and the End of Dreams. Kagan argues that immediately after the end of the Cold War the world seemed to be on the brink of a new and wonderful international order, one in which peace, democracy and security would spread, the new world order as promised by Bush Senior at the start of the first Gulf War. For Kagan, those hopes have been shown to be just fanciful dreams. Instead we are faced with a world of disorder and turmoil, and to set the scene Kagan throws quite a few things into the pot: Islamic terrorism, failed and rogue states, plus rising autocracies such as China and Iran.

On top of all the general disorder, Kagan’s main argument is that the world has slowly reverted to a scene reminiscent of the nineteenth century. Kagan paints a picture of a world of geopolitical competition, of competing and rising powers such as Russia, China and Iran, Japan, and India, all of whom are seeking to build up their territorial influences and assert themselves as strong nationalist powers. Within this context there is a great schism opening up between the democratic states and autocratic states. It is this schism, argues Kagan, which presents the greatest challenge for democracies and which will shape global politics for the foreseeable future. Kagan argues that the battlefields are already being marked out, giving as an example Western intervention in the Ukrainian elections in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. Other examples include current disagreements over Burma and Darfur. In this context,  Kagan argues, it is the US that is the only democratic state that can lead a concert of democratic states.

As an argument for the importance of US leadership of the democratic world, there is not really much of substance in Kagan’s book. In the main, his characterisation of the world is similar to early post-Cold War Realist international relations analysis, which even at the time simply turned to a familiar model of the past instead of attempting to engage with the present, and which has little relevance today (3) In terms of some specific points, Kagan sets up a straw man by talking up immediate post-Cold War optimism. Indeed, one of the striking things about the end of the Cold War was that there was a pervasive mood of uncertainty and insecurity amongst the so-called victors. For example, Bill Clinton in his inaugural speech as US president argued that post-Cold War world was less stable and secure, while NATO announced a new security strategy orientated around insecurity. Popular polemics such as Richard Caplan’s The Coming Anarchy suggested that the post-Cold War world threatened to be far more dangerous.

More pertinently, although Kagan makes much of an increasing level of antagonism between Russia, China and the West, citing conflicting attitudes to Burma, Kosovo, and sovereignty, it is difficult to find evidence of the great schism between existing democratic and autocratic powers. In fact one of the things that is distinctive today is the level of co-operation between former ideological enemies. Consider the example of the independence of Kosovo. One of the key points of contention between democracies and autocracies, Kagan argues, is the idea of sovereignty. Whilst the developed world, Kagan suggests, is moving away from the idea of sovereignty meaning independence and non-intervention (as exemplified by the ‘postmodern’ EU), the autocracies remain fervently attached to it. However, whilst this might be true in the realm of state rhetoric, one of the interesting things about Kosovo, from the 1999 military intervention to the recent recognition of Kosovo as a state, was that it has not caused any serious international fallout or disagreement. Possibly China and Russia may not like what has happened to Kosovo, but they certainly have not appeared to be the slightest bit interested in creating any serious objections to the process. China and Russia’s defence of sovereignty is pragmatic, not ideological.

Kagan’s own example of Ukraine also shows an international scene markedly different to the one he depicts. Despite a fair amount of Western cash funnelled into the supposedly pro-Western parties (and no doubt plenty of Russian cash and influence elsewhere), the West showed little interest in what happened in the country afterwards. Indeed, in the 2006 elections when the West’s favoured candidate lost heavily, both the EU and the US pronounced that the elections had been free and fair (4). If Ukraine is an example of things to come, then what is of note is that ‘clashes’ have a limited and half-hearted character, and do not impact on wider international relations.

One of the problems then with Kagan’s polemic is that, as Fukuyama notes in his review, Kagan fails to engage with the world as it is today, preferring instead to go back to the future and to imagine that the template of 19th century Europe or the Cold War can be a guide for today. This is why Kagan dismisses Fukuyama’s key point in The End of History, which was not of course that things were going to stop happening, but that there was an end to ideological conflict and interpretation. ‘The end of ideology and history?’, scoffs Kagan: ‘you wish!’ It is Kagan who is indulging in wishful thinking, however, not Fukuyama, who understood that the end of ideological conflict would have serious effects. The end of the Cold War and the end of the ideological conflict which had shaped domestic and international relations since the Second World War has had a profound effect both domestically, by accelerating certain domestic political trends which the Cold War had masked (5), and internationally, in terms of giving states a new framework within which to act.

It is here that one can see some sense of continuity with the author’s previous works, and that is an underlying concern with the problem of legitimacy. Indeed, one can expand Fukuyama’s argument about Kagan’s nostalgia to much post-Cold War neoconservative thought, which sought to re-create the clear lines of the Cold War in order to legitimise America’s role in the world and rediscover moral coherence at home. The problems of contemporary international legitimacy and domestic malaise that the neoconservatives identified were real, but their proposed solution was in the realms of fantasy, relying on an attempt to create major divisions and dangers internationally where there were none. Kagan’s arguments for a ‘league of democracies’ suffers from the same limitations.

The most serious limitation underlying Kagan’s plan is not the exaggerated characterisation of the contemporary international order, but the enterprise itself. There is a limit to the extent to which the international sphere on its own can be a source of legitimacy for action or leadership. International legitimacy and leadership must, in a roundabout way, derive from domestic politics. It is true that to some extent foreign policy has had some constitutive role in terms of domestic politics, but the difference is that for much of the 20th century, there was a domestic political project which external policies could be linked to. American hegemony was accepted by Western capitalist political elites after the Second World War because they all had shared interest in defending their domestic political arrangements against Communism. With the demise of serious domestic political contestation in the late 1980s, and the subsequent shift in the West to more managerial, non-ideological governing programmes, American hegemony became more contentious. Like charity, international legitimacy must begin at home.

The end of ideological contestation has turned out to be a problem as much for the ‘victorious’ Western governments as for the ‘defeated’ (6). Kagan, and the neocons in general, are not of course the only group who have hoped to use the international sphere as an answer to contemporary problems. With the end of the domestic political contestation which gave content and direction to ideological programmes, political parties of all shades have been left floundering with no clear orientation. Lacking a meaningful political programme at home, post-Cold War British, American and European governments have attempted to skip straight to the international sphere, imagining that this can help them reforge a coherent domestic political identity as well as confer international legitimacy.

The trouble is, as has been shown throughout the 1990s and 2000s, action in the international sphere which is not linked to a coherent domestic political programme and values has only a limited effect, and cannot do the job that Western elites wish it to. Policies such as humanitarian intervention or the War on Terror have failed to cohere the West and to recreate the certainties of the Cold War (7). This is because (to paraphrase Etienne Balibar) in simply asserting shared values and new political divisions, these interventions propose as a solution what is in fact the very question at stake. Here ultimately lie the limits to Kagan’s proposal if McCain becomes president, and attempts to implement the ‘league of democracies’. International legitimacy cannot simply be willed into existence or created by talking up international dangers.

References
1) Edward Luce, The neocons’ black and white world, Financial Times, 2 June 2008.
2) Francis Fukuyama, The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan, The Sunday Times, May 25 2008
3) see for example, John J Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the Future, Instability in Europe After the Cold War’, International Security, Vol 15, No 1, Summer 1990
4) Tara McCormack, Whatever Happened to the Orange Revolution?, spiked, 4 April 2006
5) Frank Furedi (1992) Mythical Past, Elusive Future (London: Pluto)
6) Zaki Laidi (1998), A World Without Meaning (London:
7) Philip Hammond (2008), Framing post-Cold War Conflicts (Manchester: Manchester University Press).