by Maisie Allison
Ben Dunant has a profile in Robert Kagan's obliviousness. Kagan contends that "when we cut defense, then we enter decline":
With all this talk of “superpower suicide,” Kagan refused to entertain the notion that America might not, in fact, wish to remain a superpower – that it might think twice about maintaining indefinite military commitments overseas, and be periodically “obliged” to intervene in failed states and take sides in other people’s civil wars. American imperialism is, in Kagan’s discourse, something self-evident and inalienable – anything that threatens its reach and authority is a threat to America itself. Hence why cuts in the defense budget are synonymous with American decline.
Differently, what if America still wants to be a superpower, just not an overtly reckless one?
The Dish 