Kagan on American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine

Robert Kagan, Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is more helpful than Stephen Van Evera. Kagan challenges the common misconception that Bush represents a radical change from past American foreign policy. Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton, Democrats all, along with Bush, have maintained a consistent American policy since the end of World War II: a "preponderance of power," rather than a balance of power (Cf. Leffler, Melvyn P., National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford Universtiy Press, 1992).

For example, "regime change" characterized all presidential administrations of the past half-century, Kennedy in Cuba, and Clinton in Bosnia and Haiti. The Clinton administration bombed Iraq over the objection of UN Security Council permanent members, and went to war in Kosovo without UN authorization.

What has changed is the world. The world is a less secure place with the ongoing crisis that transnational rogue elements will deploy WMD; in addition, the fragility of the world's financial situation should be clear in the light of Wall Street's meltdown in the Fall of 20008. Previously, the world acquiesced with an American predominance as a security measure. That world is gone. The American Left will revel in an American fall from grace, and the unrealistic solution is only to offer a multi-polar Concert of the World (p. 49). The world no longer shares what the Concert of Europe could assume, a "common morality and shared principles of government" (p. 49). Kagan suggests a League of Democracies (p.50), to advance American interests in concert with similar nations, since deep-seated divisions already exist between intermational multi-polar powers. This League could exert and extend our influence to advance our security. A similar proposal was made during the McCain 2008 presidential campaign.