Full post here. (Originally posted 08/20/2008)
Eric Posner joins the Volokh Conspiracy and suggests that the Russian invasion of Georgia is a sign of things to come; a Russia and China striving to achieve nationalistic goals (perhaps ruthlessly as the Georgia event demonstrates)…while the U.S. and Europe strive to achieve the pursuit of constitutional democracies and human rights respectively, through and perhaps beyond their own nationalistic goals.
“The United States won the battle of ideologies in 1989, but its global power was only a temporary thing, as is becoming clearer every day.”
Posner also adds:
“The irony is that liberal internationalism could advance only as long as the United States was the sole superpower and in the mood to advance it.”
Of course, the advancement of both liberal and conservative American ideologies through hard and soft American power relies on our political unity.
Addition: I think much of the Posner’s analysis has to do with the more mainstream acceptance of a few rounds of Western idealism into the U.S. these past decades. How much European concern for human rights and universalist ideals is being subsidized by American military support to some degree…for just as those ideals do not live in a vacuum in their own civilizations…nor do we live in a vacuum.
The Bear has many incentives to pursue its former footprint, work against us, be bellicose and rattle sabers.
