It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace." The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.
-Robert Kagan, Power and Weakness (Policy Review, June 2002)
This short book is an expansion--though, from looking it over in the bookstore, not all that much of one--of Mr. Kagan's influential essay of last year, Power and Weakness (Policy Review, June 2002). Therein, he argued that both a material power gap and an ideological gap had been developing for some time between Europe and America, that this divide is deep and deepening, and that it may not ever close. Put in its simplest form his case stated that Europe has become militarily weak and therefore pursues a strategy fit for the weak, one of endless negotiation, treaty making, etc., while America is become overwhelmingly powerful and therefore pursues policies that fit its strength, disregarding those weaker than itself, even traditional "allies" like those in Europe. His theses excited much comment on both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly in Europe, where EU Foreign Minister Javier Solana is reported to have handed copies around Brussels. Apparently for the first time the thought occurred to European leaders that the American dismissal of European concerns was not just some kind of function George W, Bush and cowboy diplomacy but of a recognition on our part that Europe is in a state of decline and doesn't much matter any more.
For my money, Mr. Kagan's analysis is a tad uneven. He is at his best when he makes the point that the Europeans have been able to develop a utopian world view, or at least one that does not require them to exercise power abroad, because America has been protecting them from the dangers of the real world for so long:
The United States, in short, solved the Kantian paradox for the Europeans. Kant had argued that the only solution to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the creation of a world government. But he also feared that the "state of universal peace" made possible by world government would be an even greater threat to human freedom than the Hobbesian international order, inasmuch as such a government, with its monopoly of power, would become "the most horrible despotism." How nations could achieve perpetual peace without destroying human freedom was a problem Kant could not solve. But for Europe the problem was solved by the United States. By providing security from outside, the United States has rendered it unnecessary for Europe's supranational government to provide it. Europeans did not need power to achieve peace and they do not need power to preserve it.This seems quite true. However, Mr. Kagan fails to follow through on this point. For what the umbrella of American protection has done is to create an internal political climate in Europe which allows for those monies that would otherwise be used on defense to be pumped into the already bloated social welfare systems. Europe is not just weak because it has been able to be weak, but is weak because a deliberate choice has been made to divert ever greater amounts of national wealth to entitlement programs. Nor is the decline in military strength the only problem that results from this decision to emphasize the self--in addition Europe has a rapidly declining population, decreased productivity, a need for massive immigration, etc., etc., etc., all problems that further weaken it. These structural problems do present real threats to the stability and eventually the endurance of European society, and yet they refuse to address them, so it can hardly be the case that an artificial and idyllic environment of America's making has led them astray. The reality on the ground in Europe is positively Hobbesian, but they are so much in the grip of their material desires and a dependence on the State that they refuse to reckon with that reality. Meanwhile, the implication of this for the future is that it will be impossible for them to address their military weakness and to reverse their retreat from engagement with the world, because their attention and their money will be tied down trying to fix what's wrong within Europe, never mind what's wrong outside.
The current situation abounds in ironies. Europe's rejection of power politics, its devaluing of military force as a tool of international relations, have depended on the presence of American military forces on European soil. Europe's new Kantian order could flourish only under the umbrella of American power exercised according to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important. And now, in the final irony, the fact that United States military power has solved the European problem, especially the "German problem," allows Europeans today to believe that American military power, and the "strategic culture" that has created and sustained it, are outmoded and dangerous.
Most Europeans do not see the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually as well as physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of "moral consciousness," it has become dependent on America's willingness to use its military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.
The other significant shortcoming of Mr. Kagan's treatment basically grows out of this neglect of Europe's current and pending internal crises. He shortchanges the discussion of the ideological, in particular the religious, differences that divide America and Europe. It is well-documented that America retains, almost alone in the West, an extraordinarily high level of religious belief, while even in Britain--the closest European nation ideologically to the U.S.--a leading cleric has described the nation as "post-Christian". This matters on issues ranging from the maintenance of churches as institutions to counter-balance the State to abortion, with its obvious effects on population growth. As regards Mr. Kagan's topic, it also matters in terms of Americans believing in universal ideas, applicable to all men. Just as a faith in God undergirds American freedom at home:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...so too do we carry this faith overseas, as witness President Bush's last State of the Union:
America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.In a Europe devoid of such faith, it's little wonder that power has become so concentrated in the State, at the cost of freedom, and that folk are unwilling to venture abroad to vindicate the freedom of others. This religious/moral/ideological divide warrants much greater consideration in any examination of the divergence between Europe and America.
Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.
One would hope that Mr. Kagan might return to this entire subject at some later date and further expand on the many excellent points he does make. The topic is nowhere near exhausted because it would appear probable that the Transatlantic divide will continue to grow, especially because the ideological changes in Europe, which make it in some sense not just post-Christian but post-Western, are certain to be enormously difficult to reverse and Europe will, therefore, continue to decline apace.
(Reviewed:16-Apr-03)
Grade: (A)
