“… global economic growth in the twenty-first century can be expected to create mass societies even more deluded than the ones we have now—the very actions necessary to protect human rights and democracy will become increasingly hard to explain to those who have never been deprived of them. The masses “show no concern for the causes and reasons” behind their own well-being, observed the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (1929), a book that was equally prescient about the Fascist rallies of the 1930s and the youth rebellion of the 1960s. Indeed, the peace demonstrators last February appeared to have no idea whatsoever that their very freedom to demonstrate had been won by war and conquest in the service of liberty—precisely what the U.S. and British governments were proposing to do in Iraq…”

I am not saying that Kaplan has changed a position or anything like that, but subsequent events have provided him with a lot of explaining to do, which just serves to highlight the need for the media and “the masses” to ask questions of those who are making policies for them.

Great article. And it begs the question of what happens when most of the world agrees that an empire is extracting too much from them. Moreover the existing international institutions can’t correct the imbalance.

The empire can of course argue it is exceptional and most of the world is irresponsible. However the hostility simply builds and builds.

Big states must surely be bound by international norms.