A book version of the essay that sparked a great debate on both sides of the Atlantic in 2002. In this tour de force, Kagan argues that today's conflict between the United States and Europe is not simply a result of passing policy disputes or the Bush administration's foreign policy style. Rather, it reflects a more profound estrangement rooted in American power and European weakness. The old Atlantic partners live today on different planets. America's preeminent global position has thrust it into a Hobbesian world of lurking threats and made it more willing to use force, whereas Europe seeks peace through law and diplomacy. Kagan is best in describing Europe's postwar project of taming the dangers and instabilities of power politics in a democratic, Kantian zone of peace. Thanks partly to the U.S. security guarantee, Europeans have devised a political order in which power is subdued and the use of force banished. Yet Europe has also made itself weak, Kagan charges, as its nations remain unable to confront the anarchical dangers of the wider world. Kagan argues that America's realpolitik view is not only a feature of Republican administrations but a deeper expression of American power (after all, Bill Clinton was willing to bomb Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan). The result is a growing divergence in strategic views and eroding solidarity.
"Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, ...the fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being govern'd, as the sea is, by the moon" [Henry IV, I.ii.31-33] HISTORY NEVER REPEATS ITSELF, BUT IT OFTEN RHYMES "There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America." Otto von Bismarck
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
US Realpolitik versus Euroweenie weasalhood
Robert Kagan is the author of an Xmas gift I'm going to enjoy Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. Here's one review:
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