The Jungle Grows Back

July 9, 2018
Kagan (The World America Made), senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues against the United States’ recent retreat from its global responsibilities in this brief, engaging call to arms. For Kagan, this retreat reflects a fundamental error: Americans believe that the “liberal world order”—peace throughout Europe, economic rather than military competition between nations, democracy as the rule rather than the exception—is the product of natural human evolution, when in fact it follows from decades of purposeful American effort, struggling against the grain of “both history and human nature.” Since WWII, he argues, the United States has used its power to guarantee security, cultivate prosperity, and encourage democracy in ever-growing portions of the globe. But this is an unceasing and exhausting task, and Americans of all political stripes have come to doubt its necessity, he writes. For Kagan, it is therefore all the more important to reinforce America’s commitment to “ideals of freedom and cosmopolitanism” around the world, as well as to recover the “will and determination” to prevent others from tearing down what has been so painstakingly built. The alternative, says Kagan, is to allow the “jungle” of international chaos to overgrow a leaderless world and “engulf us all.” Whether readers agree with his conclusions or not, they will find his argument accessible and well-constructed.

July 15, 2018
Why a strong, interventionist America remains the world's best hope against the return of international chaos.Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution senior fellow Kagan (The World America Made, 2012, etc.), who served in the State Department during the 1980s, sees the United States in retreat from its responsibility at a time when its leadership is needed most. "If Obama's policies put a dent in the liberal world order, Trump's statements and actions have been driving a stake through it," he writes. "For if the United States cannot be relied upon to provide the secure environment in which members of the liberal world order can flourish, and if in addition it is going to be jealous and spiteful and demand 'wins' when they do flourish, then the United States starts to look more like a rogue superpower than a nation defending any order of any kind." The 20th century elevated America into a unique position through a combination of the country's ideals and power and geography; to abdicate that position, argues Kagan, would be to fall from "a relative paradise" into a natural disorder of darkness and chaos. In the wake of Vietnam and Iraq, both of which the author sees as strategically sound if unfortunate in outcome, America is less likely to see its responsibilities extend beyond its borders. If America pulls back, Russia, Japan, China, Germany, or another nation might rush to fill that vacuum. Peace isn't a given, and neither is democracy; they must be guarded and defended. Kagan's argument should appeal to unrepentant Cold Warriors and to others who believe that might makes right where America's place in the world is concerned. Yet the metaphor for the title is unfortunate, implying (more strongly than the text does) that without the primacy of developed nations, the hordes of barbarians will infest the planet with their jungle ways.A provocative argument that runs counter to popular sentiment and conventional wisdom.

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September 1, 2018
For more than 70 years, Europe has avoided a war among the great powers; in East Asia, there has been a general peace for more than 60 years; and both regions have seen unprecedented economic growth. The blessings of prolonged peace and prosperity were not inevitable, according to Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a columnist for the Washington Post. Rather, history shows that the current era is a happy aberration. The normal condition of Europe for much of the past two thousand years was one of war and chaos. That jungle has been pushed back by the implementation and maintenance of the liberal world order, with the U.S. as its lodestone. That rule-based system commits nations involved in it to democratic principles, respect for national borders, independent judiciary, and relatively free movement of goods and ideas, and the U.S. has helped sustain it. Kagan perceives that weakness within the system now is exacerbated by Trump attacking both its military and economic bases, and that leads him to present a scary case for accelerated resurgence of the jungle. An eye-opening assessment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)