Author(s): Robert Kagan

Hopes for a new peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War have been dashed by
sobering realities: Great powers are once again competing for honor and influence. Nation-states remain
as strong as ever, as do the old, explosive forces of ambitious nationalism. The world remains .unipolar,.
but international competition among the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Iran raise
new threats of regional conflict. Communism is dead, but a new contest between western liberalism and the
great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has reinjected ideology into geopolitics. Finally, radical
Islamists are waging a violent struggle against the modern secular cultures and powers that, in their
view, have dominated, penetrated, and polluted their Islamic world. The grand expectation that after the
Cold War the world would enter an era of international geopolitical convergence has proven wrong.

For the past few years, the liberal world has been internally divided and distracted by issues both
profound and petty. Now, in "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," Robert Kagan masterfully poses
the most important questions facing the liberal democratic countries, challenging them to choose whether
they want to shape history or let others shape it for them.

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