Hegemony

Academia has always been political. On some occasions, it has been appropriated and deployed to meet political ends while in other occasions it has modelled itself to challenge politicisation.

In the pages of Foreign Affairs, the indefatigable Robert Kagan recently weighed in with yet another fervent appeal on behalf of empire. Ever the true-blue American, Kagan avoids using the offensive E-word, of course.

The  history of the last hundred years is misleading because it presents Britain and the United States as allies, but in fact, they were never allies. They were competing Empires.

This confrontation between the United States and Britain has existed right from the onset of the founding of the United States in 1776. It became increasingly pervasive in the wake of the Civil War, 1865.

When continents began to interact between themselves, from approximately five centuries ago, slowly, they started to form, what is now called the "international system". It is an attempt to break the Islamic fence - which threatened to strangle strategically the small and divided Christian kingdoms of Europe -, Portugal and Castile launched their navigations through the Atlantic to Asia, bordering the Muslim power