The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

The book was written in 2018 by Robert Kagan who is a neoconservative and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. This book is dark and depressing, Kagan has a pessimistic Hobbesian worldview and sees enemies everywhere. He argues that after WW2 the US created an international system that has kept the peace and the result has been “amazing progress over the past seven decades.” He argues that the post-1945 order is “the world America made” and still depends largely on American power to underpin it. That much I agreed with. However, the ongoing debacle in Afghanistan may have changed America’s relationship with its allies and the rest of the world. Kagan wants a more macho foreign policy, but there is less appetite for more neocon adventurism. The country also lacks the economic clout to bend the world to its liking. Our share of world output was 30% in 1950, it is about 15% today. The U.S. is no longer the economic powerhouse it once was.Kagan claims that before 1945, the world was in a state of violent anarchy. Apparently, Hitler and Mussolini were the norms in Europe. He argues that the liberal world order is in jeopardy because humans and their institutions are deeply flawed. If left unchecked, the jungle — that place of chaos and disorder and war — will grow back: "History is returning. Nations are reverting to old habits and traditions.” The US must therefore be constantly vigilant to root out evildoers around the world. This is paranoid nonsense. If the White House listens to Kagan, the rest of the world may start to view the US as a threat to world peace, especially if it throws its weight around unilaterally.The book starts with a flawed and inaccurate history lesson and assumes that without American leadership the world will return to the 1930s. Kagan does not fully understand pre-war European history, because he foresees a return to totalitarianism. Modern European politics is unrecognizable from the 1930s. Modern societies are vastly more prosperous than they were. Trade, capital and people now flows across boundaries between the European democracies. There is free movement of people in the EU and they travel on vacation to other countries. The Germans and Italians are pacifists these days. The US is constantly complaining that the other NATO countries are not spending enough on defense. The reality is that Europe is no longer a military threat to anyone, they have outsourced their defense to the US.Another difference is that in recent times the world has not endured anything like WW1. This generated a sense of grievance for a generation of Europeans after 1918. The economic slump after 2008, which saw real GDP per capita fall by 6 per cent, is nothing like the depression after 1929, which saw a fall of nearly 30 per cent. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the economic depression which followed, with 35% unemployment, enabled Hitler to become chancellor. The world before 1914 is probably more relevant as a comparison to today, but many Americans also get that wrong. Harvard professor Graham Allison believes that WW1 was mainly a power struggle between Germany and Britain. However, Germany did not feel threatened by Britain, which has never been interested in invading mainland Europe. It had the world’s largest navy, but a small land army. Bismarck famously threatened to send the police to arrest if it ever landed in Europe. Germany was afraid of Russia, with whom it shared a long border. Both powers were competing for dominance in Central and Eastern Europe. Russia has always been an expansionist power. It had a huge army that was rapidly modernizing. The German army wanted to crush Russia before it became too powerful. Moltke, the head of the German army predicted that would happen in 1916-1917. France, Britain, and Belgium were just collateral damage. France was attacked because it was allied with Russia. Britain and Belgium were considered irrelevant.The US is in a similar situation to Germany in 1914. It is faced with a rapidly growing power in China that threatens its Asian hegemony. Xi talks of 'Asia for the Asians' and wants the US military to leave Asia. Does the US take out China before it gets too powerful? That is the make or break decision that the US faces. Americans are reluctant to admit it, but the US wants to remain the dominant power in the world, however, it is wasting blood and treasure in backwaters like Afghanistan which are not strategically important. Kagan is advocating more wars like Afghanistan. He seems to have forgotten what brought down the Soviet Empire.Kagan also assumes that the US knows what is good for the world and Americans are smarter and morally superior to everybody else. The current secretary of state wants to punish human rights violators. If the US invades and occupies a country, it does so for the right reasons and for the greater good. Kagan is straightforward about what the US should do next, more forever wars. The neocons also wrongly assumed that countries with a majority Muslim population could be Americanized. They rarely seem to understand the history and culture of the countries they want to invade. Americans are rarely treated as liberators.The American people seem to be against utopian failed adventures, like Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Iraq. In May, over 70% approved of pulling out of Afghanistan. The people, as opposed to the Washington elite, seem to realize that the relative power of the United States is in decline. Kagan wants the US to continue with the neocons' failed Sisyphean strategy, and it mustn’t be deterred by future failures and potential bankruptcy. The US government debt/GDP ratio is now 130%, before Reagan it was 30%. The US has a current account deficit of 3.5% of GDP (Q2 2020) and a net international investment position of nearly minus -$14 trillion. The war in Afghanistan has cost $2.3 trillion. The US can’t afford to keep fighting major wars in perpetuity.A war with Iran, Russia or China would be expensive. It could also signal the end of the American empire. Niall Ferguson, a Stanford professor, recently discussed the impact of a war with China in a recent article in Bloomberg. A lost war with China would seriously damage American prestige. He suggests that it could also be its Suez moment when it is revealed as a paper tiger. General Jim Mattis, when he was Defense Secretary, told Congress in 2017 that the US could no longer fight a two-front war. Following the US departure from Afghanistan, where the NATO allies were not consulted about the withdrawal, some European pundits on the left and right are starting to suggest that NATO is finished, and they cannot rely on the US to protect them. The former French prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve wrote an article in the London Times in March that suggested something similar. The US does seem more interested in cultivating its Asian relationships.Kagan's strategy of never-ending war will appear extremist to many Europeans, they will want no part of it post-Afghanistan. The US needs help if it is to successfully confront China. However, polls indicate that many Europeans believe that within 10 years China will become a more powerful country. The Europeans will therefore become increasingly detached from the US as they seek a better relationship with China and Russia. A GDP forecast for 2050 from PWC shows the US as the world’s third-largest economy, with Germany and Britain in ninth and tenth place. The economic center of the world is moving to Asia, and the US is probably tilting at windmills if it tries to reverse that trend or tries to assert dominance over the Asian region.Kagan urges persevering with liberal hegemony despite a quarter-century of failure and folly in nation-building and liberal democracy promotion. Ordinary Europeans and Asians look at Bush, Trump and Biden and they don’t believe they are very bright or very wise. The American world order may end because foreigners lose faith in American leadership. Kagan will have the US plowing its own path overthrowing governments it disapproves of and becoming increasingly friendless and isolated. I find it surprising that neocons like Kagan are still influential in Washington. What he is recommending just seems clueless and is based on a misunderstanding of history.

Some have argued that the progress towards a world of democratically elected governments with capitalistic economies is an inevitable evolutionary destination for the world order. Before reading this book, I might even have believed it. Having grown up inside the world order established after WWII, it is easy to take it for granted, to overlook just how remarkable the last seventy-five years have been in terms of human history.This book reminds us what the previous world order looked like. It was a multi-polar world, where the powerful nations looked upon each other with suspicion and/or hostility, and devoted significant resources in efforts to ensure their own security. This feeling of insecurity in the face of powerful neighbors motivated people to willingly accept authoritarian leadership, and resulted in arms races that led to war after war, each sowing the seeds for the next.This was the world order that the US and its allies intentionally tried to change in the aftermath of WWII. The strength of the US military provided security to all nations that were part of the order, allowing them to devote their energy and resources towards building stable economies and democratic governments. At the same time, the US (mostly) refrained from using its military strength to enforce economic conditions that were exclusively favorable to the US. Instead, the US allowed all nations to compete on a (mostly) level playing field, with the result being the most unprecedented economic growth the world has ever seen.But all of this runs counter to the natural flow of historical forces, and requires an ongoing commitment from the US to sustain it. It now appears that the US might not be willing to remain engaged in preserving this world order, and if the US pulls back, it will likely collapse, returning us to the old world order and the tensions, hostility, and violence that it generated.This book is a powerful argument for maintaining the US commitments to providing the security and support that allows the world order built since WWII to continue. This world order has resulted in the least violent period of human history, coupled with the largest period of economic growth ever seen. Only by maintaining this international order can we hope to see these trends continue...they won't happen on their own.

This short but prescient book has become all the more relevant since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He outlines the broad current context of the current international order led by the United States and the present degradation caused by administrations of both political parties. Indeed we are living in dangerous times. I recommend this to the general public. As a professor and practitioner of international relations, I recommend this to all students that study international relations. I also highly recommend this book to economists who are not political scientists but need to have a good grasp of international affairs.My only issue with this book is that it does not mention or gloss over the many sins American foreign policy has committed since World War II. Namely, the overthrow of fellow democratic governments during the cold war, including but not limited to, Chile, Iran, the Congo, Brazil, and Argentina, and our support for some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet in the name of 'stability.' For example, we can not talk about America upholding the international order when the United States brazenly violated that order when it invaded Iraq in 2003. Kagan leaves out that he supported the invasion in 2003. This is one of many examples where America created international instability and violated it's own principles. Weather it's Saudi Arabia, to Kagame in Rwanda and so forth. Overall I agree America is a force for stability and good in the world but we can not paper over our many mistakes if we hope not to repeat them. However realistically the alternative to American hegemony is far worse.

Ein gutes Buch. Kagan durchdenkt mögliche geo-und machtpolitische Konstellationen, die sich aus der Gegenwart heraus entwickeln könnten. Allerdings hebt er zu sehr auf ein nicht mehr europäisch eingebundenes, erstarktes Deutschland und die davon ausgehende Gefahr ab. Und er vernachlässigt unter seinen Fragestellungen das Gewicht Russlands und Chinas. Aber es lohnt sich sicher, es zu lesen.

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Excellent small volume on American liberalism and contribution to world order after the second wold war; and an assessment of the future of American involvement in world order.

A thoughtful and thought -provoking analysis of American power and its use (and misuse) in the 20th centur, and what it might mean for the world in the 21stcentury if America stands back.Would recommend to anyone interested in the balance of power in the world today.

Arrived on time and nothing wrong with the book