A Skilled Propagandist
To this day, Kagan remains a skilled propagandist, casting current events in ways most favorable to the neocon cause. For instance, in his New Republic essay, he portrays the complex case of Ukraine, where his wife played a central role, in the most simplistic terms, ignoring the right-wing coup in Kiev that overthrew an elected president and the overwhelming vote for secession in Crimea where thousands of Russian troops were already stationed under an agreement with Ukraine.
Stripping away all the nuance, Kagan simply wrote: "the signs of the global order breaking down are all around us. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea was the first time since World War II that a nation in Europe had engaged in territorial conquest."
Next, ignoring the fact that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Iran is not working on a nuclear bomb and leaving out that Israel is the one nation in the Middle East that has covertly amassed a nuclear arsenal, Kagan added: "If Iran manages to acquire a nuclear weapon, it will likely lead other powers in the region to do the same, effectively undoing the nonproliferation regime, which, along with American power, has managed to keep the number of nuclear-armed powers limited over the past half century."
Apparently forgetting his own role and that of the neocons in launching an aggressive war against Iraq and provoking the Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict that is ripping apart the Muslim world, Kagan continues: "If these trends continue, in the near future we are likely to see increasing conflict [and] greater ethnic and sectarian violence."
Kagan follows with a litany of alarmist warnings on par with the notion that the Sandinistas were about to march south and capture the Panama Canal in 1987 -- and reminiscent of the neocon claims that Saddam Hussein was about to launch remote-controlled planes to spray the U.S. mainland with chemical weapons in 2003.
Here is how Robert Kagan, Hillary Clinton's adviser and Barack Obama's lunch partner, portrayed the emerging apocalypse:
"Could the United States survive if Syria remains under the control of Assad or, more likely, disintegrates into a chaos of territories, some of which will be controlled by jihadi terrorists? Could it survive if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, and if in turn Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt acquire nuclear weapons? Or if North Korea launches a war on the South?"Could it survive in a world where China dominates much of East Asia, or where China and Japan resume their old conflict? Could it survive in a world where Russia dominates Eastern Europe, including not only Ukraine but the Baltic states and perhaps even Poland? Of course it could. From the point of view of strict 'necessity' and narrow national interest, the United States could survive all of this. It could trade with a dominant China and work out a modus vivendi with a restored Russian empire.
"Those alarmed by such developments will be hard-pressed ... to explain how each marginal setback would affect the parochial interests of the average American. As in the past, Americans will be among the last to suffer grievously from a breakdown of world order. And by the time they do feel the effects, it may be very late in the day."
A Path Toward Peace
There is, of course, a more realistic and less hysterical way of viewing these global situations.
If Obama could work with world leaders to stop Saudi Arabia and other Sunni oil sheikdoms from funding Sunni extremists in Syria, a peace settlement could be worked out that might have Assad remaining in power for some transitional period. The neocon preference of expanding the Syrian civil war is much more likely to lead precisely to what Kagan fears, an expansion of jihadist terror.
If Obama would jettison the neocon narrative about "Russian aggression" in Ukraine -- when it's clear that Putin was reacting defensively to Western intervention -- a peaceful resolution of that crisis also would be fairly easy to achieve along the lines of a cease-fire plan unveiled by the new President Petro Poroshenko and endorsed by Putin.
The notion that Russia is on the march to conquer the Baltic states is unsupported by any intelligence or other evidence. Russia's annexation of Crimea resulted from a unique set of circumstances, including the U.S.-backed overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president and a popular referendum in Crimea seeking membership in the Russian Federation. It is nutty to suggest that it was some template for a grander "Russian imperialism."
Indeed, Kagan is not only spinning conspiracy fantasies but -- as often is the case with neocons -- he is promoting schemes that could facilitate the outcome that he professes to abhor. Possibly the fastest way for the United States to lose its leadership role in the world is through overextension of its global power and overspending on its military might.
The more that Kagan and other neocons push for U.S. suppression of any imaginable threat to U.S. supremacy the more certain it is that America will slide into a precipitous decline -- and the more dangerous that collapse may be both for Americans and the rest of the world.
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