Night Waves - 22/05/2008

Rana Mitter talks to American writer and neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan about his new book The Return of History and the End of Dreams, which debates the issues facing liberal democracies today. A key advisor on foreign policy to Republican Party nominee John McCain, Kagan called for regime change in Iraq as far back as 1998 and is a vocal supporter of the war. He argues that it was wrong to assume the end of the Cold War would bring about global liberalism and that instead, the growing might of an autocratic China and Russia, along with the threat from Islamic fundamentalism, has created an ideologically unstable world in which liberal democracies will have to fight for survival and influence. Also on the programme, critic Gillian Reynolds and writer and broadcaster Tristram Hunt join Rana for a view of a new panoramic cityscape of Liverpool by the artist Ben Johnson. A vast painting three years in the making, the Panorama takes in Liverpool's skyline from a point high above the Mersey.