Posts Tagged ‘Robert Kagan’

Labour should see the bigger picture on the UK in the EU

22/02/2016, 10:27:58 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“In 1941 there were only a dozen democracies in the world. Today there are over a hundred. For four centuries prior to 1950, global gross domestic product (GDP) rose by less than 1 percent a year. Since 1950 it has risen by an average of 4 percent a year, and billions of people have been lifted out of poverty. The first half of the twentieth century saw two of the most destructive wars in the history of mankind, and in prior centuries war among the great powers was almost constant. But for the past sixty years no great powers have gone to war with one another.”

These, according to Robert Kagan, in a book published at about the same time as Obama’s second term began, with the clear intension of dissuading the president from stepping back from global leadership, are American fruits. Since then, Kim Jong-un and Putin, Syria and the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, have brought into question America’s global reach. Nonetheless, Obama has held the international institutions that have held sway throughout much of the period venerated by Kagan – EU, NATO, IMF, UN, World Bank – in as much reverence as any modern US president.

We have our discontents with globalisation (and these are justified, notwithstanding its gains, which, in Kagan’s historic sweep, are considerable, even unprecedented). We have our grumbles with Obama (but it is hard not to feel that he has made a sincere attempt to recalibrate American strategy and recraft international institutions for ongoing transition to a more multipolar world). None of these discontents and grumbles, however, justify a retreat to nineteenth century statecraft.

John Kerry bemoans Putin playing by “19th century rules”, while Thomas Wright has chronicled Donald Trump’s “19th century foreign policy”. Trump – like Nigel Farage and George Galloway – holds Putin in high regard. The feeling is mutual. The Russian leader has said of Trump that he is a, “really brilliant and talented person”.

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