Cosmic Smoke and Mirrors

I encourage you to read Andrew Bacevich’s latest piece at The American Conservative, especially if you enjoy polemic. In it he takes on Thomas Friedman but most especially Robert Kagan. Here’s a snippet:

…Kagan’s insistence on assigning a common label to the regimes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Nicolas Maduro, Mohammed bin Salman, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, et al‚—suggesting that they are devoted to a common cause and subscribe to a common worldview—is sheer nonsense. Contemporary authoritarianism does not derive from or express anything remotely like an ideology. Its origins are as disparate as its manifestations. It is not one thing, but many things.

I have a question. Why do all of Mr. Kagan’s prescriptions rely on force of arms? However politically expedient it may be it’s a violation of both basic moral and basic liberal democratic principles. How can one coherently condemn authoritarianism and espouse it in the same breath?