As stated clearly in the book,
But in today's world, a nation's form of government, not its 'civilization' or its geographic location, maybe the best predictor of its geopolitical alignment."
For instance, China and Japan both have shared Asian culture, but at the same time one is a democratic country while the other one follows an autocracy. Thus, Japan will have more in general with another democracy, even though it is not racially same, that it will with China.
He further discussed that the dictatorship are unsafe, not only because they have unfair internal policies, in fact they normally experiencing fast economic growth (Dejevsky, 2008). This permit them to support a more authoritative and threatening military with which to pressurize democracies: like, Russia's flourishing oil wealth had conflicts with the European Union and sent nuclear bombers on training trip on Western side, while China on the other hand makes more and more difficult demands on Taiwan (Dejevsky, 2008). In addition, economic success of China in the absence of democracy has led other countries to follow their dictatorial rule as a way of copying their success, and the response can be seen in places such as Venezuela (Dejevsky, 2008).
Kagan has admitted that there could be friction between autocracy such as Russia and China may mistrust each other over their common objective in Siberia. He also recognized that democracies can have friction with one another like the cynical exchanges between the United States and France on the evening of the Iraq war (Sanger, 2008). However, the author's point-of-view is that when push comes to heave, a democratic state would always take side with a democracy in clash with a dictatorship, while a dictatorship would always take side with a dictatorship in clash with a democratic state (Sanger, 2008).
One of the most controversial things according to Kagan is that the United Nations protects dictatorship in the name of independence. Besides, China and Russia both as permanent Security Council members with the veto protect other client dictatorship such as Sudan and Turkmenistan from United Nation action (Sanger, 2008). In order to resolve this, Kagan supports setting up a "League of Democracies," where countries following democracy could organize policies so as to deal with dictatorship that tribute the United Nation, as a substitute to it (Sanger, 2008).
However, the book is has some weak areas. The first weakness can be seen in the author's plan for a League of Democracies as unconvincing on two stages. First of all, it is quite difficult to see as to how a suggested structure is set up without being seen as a substitute to the United Nations rather than a tribute (Sanger, 2008). Second of all, democratic countries usually have competition and resistance with one another, like for instance France and America have a joint rivalry,...
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