Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

Kagan’s Book Not Convincing on “Liberal World Order”

December 14, 2018 By Richard C. Young

Delegates listens as President Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 24, 2014. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

In a lengthy piece at The American Conservative, Naval Reserve officer and vice president for research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute, William Ruger, systematically dismantles Robert Kagan’s new book The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. Ruger’s tears down Kagan’s argument for a “liberal order” as not “truly necessary or desirable today.” He writes (abridged):

Kagan’s( Robert) newest book, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World, fits nicely into his corpus. It is a spirited defense of the “American-led liberal world order” by one of its most cogent and articulate advocates. It is part curated history, part philippic for his preferred strategic vision for the United States.

In this small volume, Kagan argues that the enlightened order America created after World War II has allowed for much progress in the world. But this order is not natural, and its great benefits have been “made possible by the protection afforded liberalism within the geographical and geopolitical space created by American power.”

To Kagan, this liberal order is “fragile and impermanent,” requiring constant care by its architect and beneficiary, the United States. He sees the liberal order as being “like a garden, artificial and forever threatened by the forces of nature.” Thus “preserving it requires a persistent, unending struggle against the vines and weeds that are constantly working to undermine it from within and overwhelm it from without.” Otherwise, the jungle will “grow back and engulf us all.”

But the most important problem with Kagan’s argument is that, regardless of whether the creation of the liberal order was necessary after World War II, he fails to convince that it is truly necessary or desirable today.

He also fails to seriously grapple with whether natural shifts in the world make such an order unreasonably difficult to maintain no matter how hard we try. Instead of a careful consideration of American interests and a tight and specific argument about how certain means meet those ends given today’s threat environment, we get general arguments about the need to be tough, to pay costs to uphold milieu goals, and ominous imagery about a jungle overcoming our nice but unnatural garden.

It doesn’t engage with the toughest arguments about whether a single people like us, with a small share of global population and wealth, can infinitely desire and afford to provide all these public goods in the system without undermining the things we are trying to protect and support in the first place: our safety, our financial health, and our way of life. In other words, it doesn’t handle the problem that our specific part of the garden could desiccate by the costs and efforts of pulling weeds and cutting down the jungle.

Read more here.

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • Death for America “A New World Order”
  • World Class Stock Market Performance
  • The Leader of the Free World
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Richard C. Young
Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.
Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)
  • SEN. KENNEDY: This Is How to Fix Biden’s Border Disaster - February 1, 2023
  • Can Ukraine Be Solved the Way Kennedy Solved the Cuban Missile Crisis? - February 1, 2023
  • What If Russia Does Fall Apart? - February 1, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • Florida: Enjoy Certain Freedoms and Individual Liberties
  • America’s States Rights Revolution
  • Richard Feynman Solved the Space Shuttle Disaster Mystery
  • The Simple, Elegant Power of the Retirement Compounders
  • Vermont Abandoned, Dairy Farm Economy Devastated
  • FARM AMERICA: New York City’s Finest Cheesemongers
  • TOP HEAVY: Focus on Big Indexing Could Cause Market Chaos
  • Rich Grandchild, Poor Grandchild
  • Democracy & Diversity: Not In the Constitution
  • Are You Prepared to Run Out of Water?

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine?
  • Warren Miller: If You Don’t Do It This Year, You’ll Be…
  • Europe Should Protect Itself
  • “I Will Veto Everything They Send Me”
  • How to Fight Wokism Idiocy
  • US Debt Now Exceeds Annual GDP?
  • The Neocon Russia-Hoaxers of Hamilton 68 Must Be Held Accountable
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • Why Don’t These Mayors Seem to Care?
  • Pfizer CEO Terrified of Real Questions About His Vaccines

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Reagan’s America Remembered by Your Survival Guy and More
  • What Happens if the “Fed Put” Is Over for Good?
  • Tom Brady Retires, Again. Should You?
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • Warren Miller: If You Don’t Do It This Year, You’ll Be…
  • Are the Realists Winning the Debate over the Future of EVs?
  • CATO: Global Freedom Is in Sharp Decline
  • Biden Administration Destroying Retiree Fiduciary Protections
  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Suddenly, Holding Cash Looks Good Again to Many

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Survive and Thrive February 2023: 4 Life Changing Words: “You Should Try This”
  • Tom Brady Retires, Again. Should You?
  • Reagan’s America Remembered by Your Survival Guy and More
  • America’s Unprecedented Debt Problem
  • Iran’s Ballistic Missiles Could Give Russia the Edge in Ukraine
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • Why Don’t These Mayors Seem to Care?
  • Tactical Laser Weapon Achieves “First Light”
  • Warren Miller: If You Don’t Do It This Year, You’ll Be…
  • Your Investment Focus Is the Foundation for Success

SEN. KENNEDY: This Is How to Fix Biden’s Border Disaster

Oh Yes! It Can Get Worse

Reagan’s America Remembered by Your Survival Guy and More

Can Ukraine Be Solved the Way Kennedy Solved the Cuban Missile Crisis?

What If Russia Does Fall Apart?

Don’t Expect Much from the GOP House

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives