Just reading Runciman article. Is great stuff, can only agree on all points.

"He goes on to clarify this distinction by arguing that 'one of the things that most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a philosophical, even metaphysical disagreement over where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the laws of the jungle and the laws of reason.' But this clarifies nothing, because the original distinction makes no sense."

[exactly, what Kagan is saying is about as logically consistent as: "My dad has a Mercedes, therefore, Mercedes are the best cars in the world."]

Kant is not from Venus and Hobbes is not from Mars. Both were, in their own terms, philosophers of what they each called 'Peace'. Indeed, to call the Hobbesian world anarchic is to make a mockery of everything Hobbes says.

[This is correct. To use Hobbes in order to produce the anarcho-realist outset on which PNAC argumentation lies is to contradict him. In any case, Hobbes' contribution to political thought doesn't lie in the mechanistic description of human nature (which is what Kagan uses and seems to misunderstand - anyone with a Political Philosophy 101 under their belt should recognize this) but in overcoming the anarchic state by contractualist means. I suspect that Hobbes cannot be applied to IR, and the game theory involved shouldn't be applied to sovereign entities, unless of course, you want to be a fascist aggressor. In that case, you may try and use Hobbes, turn words in his mouth and attempt to sell your legitimation for otherwise rationally unjustifiable ends.]

But more than this, the overriding problem with Kagan's account is that the real Hobbesians are the Europeans."

[Yeah... social contract, Westphalian peace? 'No, just Princeton, Planet USA. Hobbes. Kant.']

"'Germany was evil once, too. Might not an "indirect approach" work again, as it did in Europe?' Can there really be anyone in Europe or anywhere else who thinks like this, who thinks that the specific lesson of the defeat of Nazi Germany and the subsequent reconstruction and reunification of the German state is that an 'indirect approach' is always best? Kagan goes on to describe the 'integration and taming of Germany' as 'perhaps the greatest feat of international politics ever achieved'."

[Jesus... he couldn't possibly 'know' this, as much as he wants to sell the idea. Dirty. He doesn't really know very much at all really... if he can sell a book, then we definitely can too, a proper one even.]