Analysis Of Robert Kagan 's ' The Benevolent Empire '

Robert Kagan believes that American Hegemony is generous and charitable which will produce a better world for everyone. However, he deems Americans to be forgetting how important their dominance is to the preservation of a reasonable level of international security and prosperity. He defends this position in his article " The Benevolent Empire," in Foreign Policy summer of 1998. He begins with a quote from Samuel Huntington that declares " A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to influence than any other country shaping global affairs." Kagan then classified the U.S as having "unique" qualities, these qualities are: Generosity— In the after math of the World War II, the strength acquired by the U.S. was greater than any single nation has ever possessed. Also, very little budget went to protect national territory, most of it went to making goods with their allies. According to Kagan, their well being depends on well-being of others and America 's national security is impossible without a broad measure of international security. He admits that this is due to enlightened self-interest, also that America can be arrogant, selfish and clumsy in exercise of power. Nevertheless, deemed no other country comparable to the U.S. Declaring that the powers of the world including the French, China, Germany, Japan and especially Britain were less capable managers of world affairs. He then argues that the "World seeks today not genuine multipolarity but a false multipolarity, and honorary multipolarity" (Kagan, 1998:5). Acquiring this through pretense of equal partnership without the responsibility and price this partnersh...

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...ect imperial dominance, with which the leader state rules subordinate states, by the threat of intervention. This is the exact tactics that America uses in its conquest of world dominance, brought to light by Falk. Falk declares that " The Us Government is devoting huge resources to the monopolistic militarization of space, the development of more usable nuclear weapons, and the strengthening of its world-girdling ring of military bases and its global navy, as the most tangible way to discourage any strategic challenges to its pre-eminence" (Falk, 2003: 21). Ultimately, sparking the uprising of movements resistance to the American Empire. Whom will take advantage of the Americans growing tired of power and wanting it to mind its own, stop meddling and focus on their home issues. Allowing for an international actor to come in and take their place in global authority.