This is a extract from Alan Johnson’s article in World Affairs Journal
In his influential 2003 book, the American foreign policy thinker Robert Kagan declared that “Europe is turning away from power” and “entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity” while the United States “remains mired in history.” It was, he wrote, as if Americans were from Mars and Europeans from Venus, so differently did they view the world, not least the value of projecting force to achieve foreign policy goals.
What if Israel is the only Martian state left? What if the US is now looking longingly at the Venusians and thinking about joining them? What if the international community, always a bit of a fiction, has decided that it is tired, seeks an exit from history, and thinks that it has found the ticket out: to start believing the unbelievable about Iran, Russia, and the United Nations?
If so, the conjuncture would be radically new and dangerous.
