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The Details

The World America Made

By Robert Kagan, $21

Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan set the bar way high with Of Paradise and Power, an easily readable, highly informative book on American/European relations. Kagan failed to clear the bar with his most recent mini-book, The World America Made.

Kagan writes, “The lesson of the 20th century, perhaps forgotten in the 21st, is that if one wants a more liberal order, there may be no substitute for powerful liberal nations to build and defend it.” And those liberal nations, he says, are America and … the U.S. Kagan argues that for the past couple decades, we’ve single-handedly held the world’s liberal order in place. If we go down, the order comes down with us.

Kagan’s book is filled with bold, unprovable claims, but that doesn’t make them untrue. One thing’s for sure: The guy knows what he’s talking about.