Robert Kagan is concerned; Americans are losing appreciation for the world order established by the United States after World War II. Instead of its purpose – to prevent further collapse of the political order – they see only cost, according to the Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy in the Brookings Institution's project on international order and strategy.
Over the past 70 years, global democratization has progressed rapidly but “not by some evolution of the human spirit or because human beings have just gotten better”, says Kagan. The global revival of protectionism is responsible. Therefore, “if the United States is not in the business of supporting that order, then all elements of it that we've enjoyed will gradually go away and the world will return to normal.”
As Kagan explains in the video, peace is an aberration, and a return to “normal” would be disastrous:
On 21 January 2019, Robert Kagan will be speaking with Lord Adair Turner at the GDI event "Robot Capitalism and The Coming World Disorder" from 18:00 h.