September 26th, 2008 by Jason

Yesterday afternoon the Wilson Center hosted Stephen Van Evera, Robert Kagan, Melvyn Leffler, and Jeffrey Legro to discuss the new anthology, To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine. The event was moderated by Robert Litwak, Director of International Security Studies at the Wilson Center.

Melvyn Leffler stressed the importance of creating a hierarchy of national security threats and challenges, as the solutions all have wildly divergent resource and strategy implications.

Stephen Van Evera believes the traditional era of great-power competition is over due to the levelling effect of the nuclear threat. He calls for the formation of a global concert of great nations to contain the threat of terrorism and WMD proliferation, as well as to manage common challenges such as energy and climate change.

Robert Kagan disagreed, and said each power will look at each discrete world problem and calculate its best move, irrespective of any appeal to our common shared interests. He noted that national tactics are once again governed by revanchist ambition, pride, resentment, and jealousy, and the U.S. cannot convince other great powers that what is good for America is good for the world.

For full POMED notes on this event, click here.

Posted in DC Event Notes, Democracy Promotion, Diplomacy, Military, Multilateralism, Terrorism, US foreign policy |