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The Paradox "Of Paradise and Power": Soft-Power Wilsonian Europe vs. Hard-Power Jacksonian America
Review by James L. Abrahamson
*
Of Paradise and Power. By Robert Kagan. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Pp. 103. $18 cloth.)
"Since World War II, Europeans and Americans have traded places. Whereas Europeans believe that global politics are 'moving beyond power' into a Kantian world of perpetual peace based upon 'laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation,' they charge that the United States has become 'mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world' having little respect for law and, in which, military force provides the only sure defense of the nation and its liberal values."
An expanded version of a 2002 Policy Review article quickly circulated to a wider audience via internet and copy machine, Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power illuminates the diplomatic clashes currently threatening to rend both the UN and NATO. Kagan, a former State Department official and now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, travels widely in Europe from his base in Brussels, where his wife serves the US delegation to NATO. In addition to writing a monthly column for the Washington Post, he is co-editor of Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy.
Kagan contends that Americans and Europeans now have sharply different views of the world and the international role of power. Europeans, he writes, believe that global politics are "moving beyond power" into a Kantian world of perpetual peace based upon "laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation." To their mind, the United States remains "mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world" that has little respect for law and in which military force provides the only sure defense of the nation and its liberal values. Europe and the United States, it seems, have adopted the other's nineteenth-century perspective.
How does Kagan account for that transformation? In part it extends from Europe's military weakness, but only in part. During the Cold War, Europeans relied on the US nuclear umbrella to deter Soviet aggression, and such forces as they maintained were suited only for Continental defense. Containment required more of the United States, and it built forces capable of projecting military power onto any of the world's threatened points.
With the end of the Cold War, Europeans, though possessing wealth and population comparable to the United States, took a peace dividend. They fell further behind when the US led the way in development of highly accurate weapons capable of killing at a great distance rather than in close combat. Superlatively well armed and no longer fearing a Soviet challenge, unmatched power made the United States more willing to risk war just as the poorly armed Europeans found the human and material price of doing so more than they would contemplate. Though occasionally offering peacekeepers, Europeans expected to commit troops only with American support and after the US had restored the peace. Simply put, in the 1990s Europe refused to make the shift from helping defend the Continent to equipping forces capable of acting militarily on the world stage. Too weak to act alone and feeling less vulnerable than the United States, Europe became tolerant of danger and relied on persuasion to influence rogue states. It also advocated multilateralism as a means to place limits on the world's new, but benevolent, "hyperpower." The failed European response to the collapse of Yugoslavia demonstrates that the inevitable tension flowing from the clash of strategic perspectives had become apparent long before George Bush put Iraq on the table.
Following that analysis, Kagan asks why Europe has chosen to remain militarily second rate. Europeans, he concludes, have made it their mission is to oppose power and somehow "multilateralize" the United States. Having solved Europe's "German problem" by moving from confrontation, through economic cooperation, to integration within the European Union, the nations of Europe want to apply that approach to all world problems, at least those to which they are willing to attend. Consciously rejecting power as a response to international problems, Europeans seek security through "emphasis on negotiation, diplomacy, and commercial ties, on international law over the use of force, on seduction over coercion, on multilateralism over unilateralism."
Idealistically committed to imposing their vision on the world, Europe can hardly dare arming to match American power. Doing so might rouse Germany and renew interest in the power politics of Europe's past. Should the United States triumph in Iraq, its success might call into question Europe's uneasy commitment to its global mission of peace through political integration. Increasingly inward looking, Europeans focus on regional issues and resent American efforts to rouse them in response to international threats.
Kagan finds it ironic that the Europe's unity and new strategic perspective only emerged because of America's Cold War commitment to the Continent. The presence of American forces made the risk of Germany's integration into Europe acceptable, and the European Union emerged with American encouragement and under its mantle. "American power," he wrote, "made it possible for Europe to believe that power was no longer important." The paradox is that Europe now lacks both the will and the capacity "to guard its own paradise." Even as Europe condemns the United States, it remains dependent upon America "to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics."
With Europeans fearful of a "double standard"—cooperation within Europe but reliance on power politics abroad—the United States, no less committed than Europe to the laws of civilized society, is left alone to man the ramparts against the world's Kim Jong Ils, Saddam Husseins, and Iranian ayatollahs. The inevitable results are either increasing American unilateralism or defeat for the West and global rejection of its liberal values.
Kagan anticipates that the United States will remain the world's dominant power. Demographics and economics are on its side. America, he believes, will retain its two-century commitment to the spread of liberal values and institutions, behave multilaterally when it can, and act unilaterally when it must.
Though Kagan's insights may not apply to all of Europe, they may prove helpful in America's relations with the Continent, even as the United States of necessity often reacts unilaterally in response to states that threaten the world's peace. After World War I Americans learned that unsupported idealism like that now common in Europe cannot keep the peace, and the last half century has demonstrated that supranational organizations have done so only when riding on the shoulders of American power. The 21st may truly be the American century. If it ends with universal acceptance of the nation's values, the entire world may enter Europe's postmodern paradise, still secured by American power.
July 21, 2004
Endnotes
Note *: The reviewer, Dr. James L. Abrahamson, is a retired army colonel who previously taught history and government at the United States Military Academy, the Army War College, and Campbell University. The author of works on military reform, the impact of war on society, and the coming of the Civil War, his most recent is Vanguard of American Atomic Deterrence: The Sandia Pioneers, 1946-1949 (Praeger, 2002). Back