Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order

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Summary: Some sense but mostly bias
Review: This book claims that the reason Americans and Europeans act differently is that Americans are big and strong (and should force their might) whereas Europeans are relatively weak (militarily). While it is true that Europeans dont nearly have as great an army as the US and that much less of their GDP is spent on defense, do they not notice this? This is a stance Europe has been making for some time now and knowingly so. The author is obviously troubled by this, as this leaves America and its quest for global dominance alone. In the end, he claims America is much more technologically advanced and that it can attack safely other countries because it has the means to do so with technological warfare (ie. missiles by remote, etc. from a distance), and thus does so since it has this power in its hands. This I find quite troubling. In the end, were there ever WMD found in Iraq, was the US ever threatened by Iraq? Did IRaq even want to go to war? Do people in Iraq want to deal with this? The answers are all no, America forced a war. It is obvious America has other interests in Iraq (can you guess them?). America now is dying for good elections in Iraq so it can place its control over the country, and remove troops as quickly as possible since this war has cost a little more than desired, and America now knows although doesnt admit the trouble it made by taking over Iraq.

This book tries to justify reasons for goint to war by comparing military powers and saying Europeans have depended on Americans since the World Wars, and thus are used to it and so just sit back and let America take care of business. A reviewer below pointed out that the metaphor the author used in saying that if a man with a knife is in the jungle he wouldnt want to risk taking on a bear, and most probably want to sit and hide yet if it had a rifle it could rid itself of the trouble by shooting it, even though the bear does not show any sings of danger it simply is cruising its own habitat the jungle with a right to do so. To shoot and kill it preemptively, only shows how the author views Americas role in the world, He also claims, Europeans dont want to go to war simply because they dont have the power and are incapable? Well when we examine America now, the largest debtor in the world, we can see how paranoid a nation has become that its economy is struggling more and more everyday. Maybe if they would have taken to stance of the weaker Europeans then maybe just maybe neither 9/11 nor any wars killing thousands of innocent Iraqis and American soldiers would not have happened. If America like Europe got what it wanted through other more subtle means and economics, and not military strenght, people all over the world would not be so angry with us. America needs to understand there is no unilatiralism possible, the world has different civilizations and not surprisingly many American views and beliefs are not the same all over the world and never will be, countries and civilizations differ, this is a fact. In the end I guess it is good for America, it is buliding nation-states, it is securing its dependency on oil, for without it, it wouldnt have the resources to charge 1/3 of the price for gas as compared to Europe and other countries and all the oil required for the mighty military. Kind of a funny circle huh? Amusing? No, Troubling Yes.

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Summary: Of Myth and Omission
Review: Kagan is acutely and admirably aware of the myths surrounding U.S. and European attitudes towards foreign policy, and in his brief and well-edited essay, he makes a bold move by dismissing the idea that these attitudes are culturally innate. He attempts to de-mythologize the Euro/U.S. rift by pointing out that our differences are based more on pragmatic capabilities than essentialized philosophical traits. Kagan concludes that while the U.S. does not depend on Europe for material support, we do need to their support to gain legitimacy as the world's police officer, which is a generous concession for a neo-con.

While I agree de-mythologizing is the key to understanding U.S. foreign policy and legitimacy is mandatory for our foreign relations, I think Kagan's thesis concerning regime change is badly obscured by glaring omissions in his argument, foolish aphorisms and parables, and also present day events in Iraq.

In Dec. 2004, Kagan's argument starts to unravel almost anywhere you touch it, but it's especially interesting to look at his brief recap of European military decline. Why on earth does Kagan begin his little history with World War I rather than starting where most historians would start with the degradation of Europe's colonial empires. Surely Europe's "post-history" view of the world as a peacable kingdom, precious and convoluted as it may be, emanates from the disaster of colonialism, so why didn't Kagan engage that key point? Well, of course, any mention of the woes of imperialism and colonial occupation would incinerate Kagan's antiseptic concept of a New World Order wherein the U.S. exercises "power" as a pragmatic imperative.

As we have seen recently in Iraq, our military "power" is actually very limited in it's ability to reshape a society or political system. This is not a wishy-wash European avoidance tactic. Decapitating heads of state does not spread liberal democracy. France and Germany were not deterred from invading Iraq because they lacked the ability to topple Saddam, as Kagan suggests. (As an aside, Kagan's parable about the man with knife and the man with the gun reacting to bears demonstrates no psychological truth at all and competely detracts from the scholarship of his essay.) In reality, our industrial/military infrastructure is an extensively mythologized enigma. We are not set up to occupy and retool a foreign population any more than we are set up to deter Al Qaeda. Iraq has turned out to be a disaster with no possibility of either retreat or success. Europe learned the lesson we are learning now for 200 years as angry peoples with inferior militaries terrorized them and ejected them around the world. Europeans and Americans are not accepting the New World Order because they want to prevent what is happening right at this very moment in Iraq: a civil war and a humanitarian disaster.

What is "power"? Kagan characterizes it purely as military force, but you don't need to be a Foucault expert to know how naive that is. As products of the Enlighment, as Kagan says we are, we know Modern power is derived from economic leverage and the institutional capability that comes with it. The U.S. has 600+ military installations abroad, costing the taxpayer half a trillion dollars a year. Why are they there? They are there to protect, as best they can, a small handful of America's international business interests. Does Kagan really believe that worldwide military presence exists to establish an orderly international police force? We don't have the man power, the technology, the political influence or the domestic willingness to rebuild nations, hunt down terrorists or even prevent situations like the one in Darfur. We are failing in Iraq, double-talking at home, allying ourselves with dictators and monarchs around the world, and alienating our oldest allies. So what does Kagan really see beyond the myth-making and misunderstanding? He sees George W. Bush, a man people can trust, and the seductive equalizer of fundamentalist binary oppositions: Good/evil, Right/wrong, Home/abroad, Strong/weak, America/Europe. . . and the list goes on.

Yes, Europeans have no right to moralize at us about the use of military force in some situatioins, as they depend on us, but they are quite correct in being apprehensive about our decision to simultaneously destabilize and colonize a mideastern nation. We are creating new terrorists and undermining our own legitimacy.

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing and Contradictory
Review: One only needs to read the first few pages of Robert Kagan's book to discover a contradictory and troubling thesis.

On the one hand Kagan asserts an irreconcilable contrast between the US and Europe. He coins the phrase, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." (p. 3)

And on the other hand he tells us that Americans today are no different from the Europeans of two centuries ago: "Two centuries later, Americans and Europeans have traded places - and perspectives." (p. 10)

If Americans today are behaving consistently with the Europeans of two hundred years past, then how are the two different?

Kagan, a columnist for The Washington Post, posits a most discouraging proposition wherein it is "natural" (p. 26) for the powerful to abuse power.

"Why should [a man armed with a rifle] risk being mauled to death [by a bear]?" (p. 31).

Note that in Kagan's scenario the bear is merely "prowling the forest" and presents no direct danger to the man in question.

It is also worth observing that although the bear is situated in its own habitat, Kagan regards the bear, rather than the man, as "prowling the forest."

The author tries in vain to convince his readers that Europe favors diplomacy only because it is militarily weak. As he himself acknowledges, Europe is militarily weak not because it can't afford to build up its military power but because it *chooses* (p. 21) to spend its money on worthier causes.

Those harboring hope for a magnanimous world superpower will find that Kagan shares neither their vision nor their optimism.

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Summary: Americans Read Hobbes, Europeans Kant
Review: Actually, they both read very little. The point of the pun and the book is that America and Europe, despite sharing the common goals of Western liberal democracies, have sharply different - and diverging - views of the role of government and the uses of force in international politics. After centuries of power politics and warfare culminating in World War II, Europeans have chosen peace. According to Kagan, they have created a post-historical paradise, a Kantian realm of "perpetual peace." Their tools for dealing with crises and threats are negotiation, cooperation, treaties, and mutual security. The United States, meanwhile, remains rooted in history and power politics. Americans live in a Hobbesian world anarchy and constant conflict, which requires the use of power and military force.

Kagan sees the merits of both sides of the argument, and gives a fairly balanced account of both perspectives. Ultimately, however, he tilts towards the American point of view.

Many neoconservatives view the European Union, and supranational forms of government in general, as a bureaucratic quagmire and weakening of state power. Europeans, however, are weak because they have chosen to be - so they would no longer be threatening to each other. Neoconservatives will note that this paradise that has been created was done under the protective umbrella of American power.

Europeans believe - and rightly so - that they have a civilizing mission. Their role is to serve as a model for other nations and regions. Cooperation and mutual security are the preferred means to resolve conflicts. When looking at regional conflicts such as Pakistan and India or, say, China and Taiwan, we should all hope they take the European path to conflict resolution.

Towards the end of the book, Kagan calls for better mutual understanding between Europeans and Americans. Who wouldn't? Kagan seems to be suggesting that Americans would do well to be a little more European.

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Summary: Can American & EU Differences Be Only About Power?
Review: This is a fairly well balanced book that articulates a clear set of reasons as to what separates the European and American governments, and to a lesser degree, our respective cultures when it comes to political action and worldview. Kagan is a fellow of a neo-conservative think tank (Project for a New American Century) that advocated before the Bush-43 Administration took office the invasion of Iraq as a belief in the need and appropriate technique for a establishing a reshaped Middle East. This book stops short of specific discussions on the value and rightness of this idea, and instead focuses on the role of power in the development of American and EU ideologies. The book takes for granted that someone needs to be in a powerful position globally in order to preserve order. His thesis is that since the United States is currently in that position, we should be comfortable in the position and think seriously about the responsibility that goes with it. What Kagan misses, I believe, is the belief that what is good for the preservation of US power is good for others. This is a subtle point that his book overlooks.

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Summary: The Unipolar Predicament and the Logic of Pax Americana
Review: The crises in US-Europe relations over the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq is only the latest outburst in a wider scale conflict, according to senior Carnegie Endowment for International Peace associate Robert Kagan. Ever since the first world war, and in particular since the end of the Cold War, Europe and the US has been switching their traditional roles - Europe, the land of Machtpolitik, started to believe in International Law and soft power, and the United States, whose Founding Fathers wanted to start a new world order that was based on laws and not on power, became the new advocate of realpolitiks, international relations as a question of (mostly military) power.

The causes of these changes are three: first, the turn in ideology was caused by the shift in the balance of power between the United States and Europe. The United States rose and Europe declined. Second, the logic of European Unification dictates abandoning the nationalistic order and placing one's trust in international laws and institutions. Finally, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States as a unipolar world power has a much stronger incentive to act unilaterally, unconcerned with the need to display a common front of the "free west" against the "totalitarian east".

Probably the most controversial assessment in Robert Kagan's study is his claim that the perfect security that Europe currently enjoys is the product of the US's power politics. It was certainly true during World War 2, and probably true during the cold war, but is it true now? I think that one of the reasons for the split between European and American views of the world is that Europeans no longer feel that they benefit from US actions.

In the Afterward, Kagan makes a convincing case that European's insistence of the Security Council's sanction of the Iraqi war was disingenuous - in Kosovo, Europe and the United States went to war as a 'humanitarian intervention', in complete disregard to the Security Council, were the Russians were sure to block any initiative for War. Yet chief critic of US's unilateralism, the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, was in favor of the Kosovo invasion, even though it was not authorized by the UN. (p. 129).

One can reasonably assume, with Robert Kagan, that when Europeans argue against US unilateralism, what they mean is that they want to influence its decision making. Kagan argues that the US should take Europe's desires into account - 'because American do care [about European opinion], the steady denial of international legitimacy by fellow democracies will over time become debilitating and perhaps even paralyzing' (p. 152).

The United States, according to Kagan, should return to the course perused before Bush Jr.'s administration - of defining the national interest broadly, taking into account Europe's wishes. Without that, it cannot achieve the legitimacy it requires.

If the US will thus enlarge its definition of national interest, there is still a "rub. For even with the best of intentions, the United States cannot enlist the cooperation of Europeans if there is no common assessment of the nature of global threats today, and of the means that must be employed to meet them." (p. 156). Kagan fears that the Europe will be to concerned with US power to see the threats in the world (p. 158).

But is Europe less attentive to threats in the world? The debacle about the Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is proof that the United States does not always perceive threats properly. In the 1980s, Iraq was a partner of the US (watch Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 for a video of a smiling Hussein shaking hands with a youthful Dick Cheney). Even if you think the US was alert to Saddam now, it was clearly oblivious to the threat he was back then.

As the bombing in Spain testifies, international terrorism is not a threat to the US alone. If there will be compelling case for use of force - like the first gulf war, Afghanistan and Kosovo - it's not unreasonable to expect Europe to approve of American Military intervention.