In this short book, the neoconservative Kagan claims the USA and Europe are diverging in important ways. Chief among these is in their respective views of power (its efficacy, morality, desirability). Europe, because of its history of abuse of and current lack of military power, is turning away from (they say moving beyond) it toward "a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical [he later terms it postmodern] paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanual Kant's 'perpetual peace.' Meanwhile, the United States remains mired in history, exercising power in an 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 ... military might" (3).
America and Europe have traded places in the last 200 years, partly as a result of the shifting balance of power. The American founders were idealists in that they wanted to avoid power politics and focus instead on international commerce, law and opinion. "They knew from their reading of Vattel that in international law, 'strength or weakness ... counts for nothing'" (10).
The Power Gap (12)
In this section, Kagan explores the historical reasons for the weakening of Europe and the strengthening of the USA over these 2 centuries. WWI "devastated 3 of the 5 European powers - Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia - ... [and] destroyed the will and spirit of Great Britain and France," "forcing them all into decades-long dependence on American bankers" (12). The League of Nations during the interwar years was Europe's first attempt to "move beyond power politics, to make a virtue out of weakness" (13). The attempt failed because America lacked the will and Europe lacked the power. "The appeasement of Nazi Germany was a strategy based on weakness" (14). "If WWI severely weakened Europe, WWII ... all but destroyed European nations as global powers. Their postwar inability ... to maintain colonial empires in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East forced them to retreat on a massive scale after more than 5 centuries of imperial dominance - perhaps the most significant retrenchment of global influence in human history" (16-7).
Since WWII, there has been an opportunity for Europe to increase its military strength to become a true partner of the USA, but it chose not to, instead spending heavily on social programs (contrary to Samuel Huntington's [and other 'realists'] prediction that they would rise to create a military counter-balance to the dominant USA). They have produced miracles in economic and political realms. The USA's hegemony has "had an entirely natural and predictable consequence: It [has] made the USA more willing to use force abroad" (26).
Psychologies of Power and Weakness (27)
The point here is that having/lacking power affects one's views about its use. Those with greater power will naturally tend to see force as a more useful tool, while those with less will naturally want to discourage its use (preferring commerce, seduction, patience, deception, subtlety, indirection, etc., i.e. working from a position of weakness. He notes that during Vietnam, American leaders believed they were working from such a position). Predictably, the USA takes the former view, while Europe (and the UN) the latter. Early America assumed (correctly) a position of weakness. "National insecurity formed the core of George Washington's Farewell Address" (30). The following story illustrates this simple truth:
A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling in the forest is a tolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative - hunting the bear armed only with a knife - is actually riskier than lying low and hoping the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn't have to? This perfectly normal human psychology has driven a wedge between the USA and Europe.
"The incapacity to respond to threats leads not only to tolerance ... [but] can also lead to denial" (32). Even the American focus on "threats" (vs. European "challenges") is based on capability to deal with them. Europe focuses on issues likely to be solvable by "political engagement and huge sums of money" (i.e. European strengths). However, undergirding European economic and political strengths is US military power. Europe now has a powerful self-interest in "building a world where military strength and hard power matter less than economic and soft power, an international order where international law and institutions matter more than the power of individual nations, where unilateral action by powerful states is forbidden, where all nations regardless of their strength have equal rights and are equally protected by commonly agreed-upon international rules of behavior ... [and] of devaluing and eventually eradicating the brutal laws of an anarchic Hobbesian world where [military] power is the ultimate determinant of national security and success" (37). This is not a reproach and perfectly understandable. It has always been what weaker nations have wanted (including early America). Although the USA, contrary to popular opinion, does in fact have the power to "go it alone," the Europeans are trying, "in what may be the ultimate feat of subtlety and indirection, ... to control the behemoth by appealing to its conscience" (41). Its true that Americans don't subscribe to raison d'etat (by reason of force) or machtpolitik (power politics, i.e. might makes right), but they also don't believe having power necessarily means it will be used wrongly and they instinctively distrust collectivist schemes (same reason they favor individual liberty and reject socialism and communism).
Hyperpuissance (42)
This term was coined during the 1990s by France's foreign minister Hubert Vedrine to "describe an American behemoth too worryingly powerful to be designated merely a superpower ... [more like a] hectoring hegemon" (43). The divide was especially visible on Iraq, with Europe favoring the carrot ("rehabilitation and reintegration") and the US the stick (believing the former to be impossible). This is not just a Republican issue, since even Clinton resisted the ICC.
Kagan notes that, with military power, comes diplomatic power. In Bosnia, after it became clear that Europe could not do the job without US military power, the US also used "American doctrine" to fight the war (i.e. strike decisively and strategically at the regime, rather than pauses, gradual escalation, focus on "ethnic cleansing" areas) (same for Kosovo in 1999). While most agreed US national interest was not at stake in these conflicts, a primary goal was to preserve the NATO alliance and, more broadly (as in the Cold War), "the West" (50). After 9/11 (its vital interests at stake), Americans were no longer willing to be hobbled by European warmaking constraints. Although Europe has talked about a military buildup to balance America, it hasn't happened.
The Postmodern Paradise (53)
Although Europe has the wealth, education, productivity and technology to make itself a world military power, it ideologically distrusts power. The cynical views says Europe merely enjoys the free ride the US provides, prefering social to defense spending. But its more than that; they've rejected the power politics that brought them such misery in the past in favor of a more idealistic, internationalist approach ("rejection of force," "self-enforced rules of behavior," moral consciousness vs. balance of power). Its true that "the integration and taming of Germany ... [is] perhaps the greatest feat of international politics ever achieved" (56). However, rather than attribute this victory to [US] military power, most Europeans prefer to attribute it to their new understanding of collaborative politics (Kagan uses the term "postmodern" to describe this new approach).
"American realists might scoff at this idealism. Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan assumed only naive Americans succumbed to such 'Wilsonian' legalistic and moralistic fancies" (57). But Kagan says we can hardly blame Europe for taking this US-subsidized excursion, "step[ping] out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of perpetual peace" (57). Its just that we wish they'd give us more credit for making this possible for them (but not us)!
Kant saw the solution to power politics as world government. But he also saw the resulting threat of despotism. The US, by imposing peace from outside, allowed Europe to avoid this snare. Unfortunately, the US must continue to wrestle with it (to have enough power to enforce just peace but also avoid despotism).
For these reasons, Europeans see "America's power and its willingness to exercise that power - unilaterally if necessary" (61) as a threat, perhaps the greatest threat, to their new-found civilizating mission, an assault on their ideals (in the same way that 18th and 19th century European monarchies were once an affront to American republican ideals).
Although some expected the EU to develop into a militarily powerful counterweight to the US, this simply has not happened. EU foreign policy has been anemic at best, as Europeans turn inward to focus on issues of European concern.
The World America Made (70)
Here Kagan reminds us that "today's Europe ... is very much the product of American foreign policy stretching back over the better part of nine decades ... FDR's original wartime vision had been to make Europe strategically irrelevant" (70). Fueling this idea was "an old American view of Europe as corrupt and decadent" (71). FDR wanted both France's and Britain's (and obviously Germany's) imperial ambitions defanged. During the Cold War, in contrast, Dean Acheson "hoped to create in Europe a powerful partner against the Soviet Union" (71). This leaves us with today's double standard: civil society in the West and power politics elsewhere.
Is It Still "The West"? (76)
One of the main effects of the end of the Cold War was the decreased need to "preserve and strengthen the cohesion and unity of ... 'the West'" (77). As Europe has turned to its "postmodern paradise," America has turned "back toward a more traditional American policy of independence, toward that uniquely American form of universalistic nationalism" (76). The death of the USSR therefore makes "the West," NATO, the UN (indeed all multilateral institutions) less necessary to America. American Cold War policy [i.e. linking American success to that of other nations, even if not truly necessary for America], while self-interested [Acheson disparaged the "holy writ" of the UN as "nothing more than 'an aid to diplomacy'" 79], was "the most enlightened kind ... at times indistinguishable from idealism" (78). "Many aspects of American behavior during the Cold War that both Europeans and many Americans in retrospect find so admirable ... represented concessions made in the cause of Western unity" (79). And while "Muslim fundamentalism is an implacable enemy of the West, ... [it] does not present a serious challenge to the universal principles of Western liberalism ... it does not force 'the West' to prove itself unified and coherent, as Soviet communism once had" (81). So, "'the West,' as a functioning concept [or organizing principle] in [both American and European] foreign policy ha[s] become dormant" (84).
Adjusting to Hegemony (85)
Here Kagan reveals his neoconservative stripes. He claims that "for the better part of the past four centuries ... it is an objective fact that Americans have been expanding their power and influence in ever-widening arcs" (86) across the world. The Western Hemisphere in the 19th century, Europe and East Asia since WWII, and now the post-9/11 push further into the Islamic world, none of this has since been retracted. Rather the end of the Cold War has been taken as an opportunity "to expand the alliance they lead eastward toward Russia, to strengthen their relations among the increasingly democratic powers of East Asia, to stake out interests in parts of the world, like Central Asia, that most Americans never knew existed before" (86). Therefore, he claims, the idea of America's 'isolationist' tradition is merely a resilient myth. "The ambition to play a grand role on the world stage [i.e. national greatness] is deeply rooted in the American character" (86). There has been from the beginning a deep conviction that the principles and ideals upon which America was founded are superior to all others. "The proof of the transcendant importance of the American experiment would be found not only in the continual perfection of American institutions at home but also in the spread of American influence in the world" (88). Americans see legitimacy coming not from international bodies, but from the inherent superiority of their own system (I might add, seen in the light of a moral standard which applies to all times and places). Many have believed (and still do) that by advancing their own interests, they also advance the interests of humanity, that America's "cause is the cause of all mankind" (Ben Franklin, 88).
Short of some economic or military cataclysm big enough to undermine the very sources of American power, this American expansion (and hegemony) is likely to continue. He advises the world to get used to it. The main danger lies in the "moral tension" of the double standard, of America drifting away from the values of Western civilization. One solution would be for Europe to re-arm themselves and assume more of their own defense, but Kagan sees that as unlikely. Alternatively they could recognize the value of American hegemony. He notes paradoxically that "if the US could move past the anxiety engendered by this inaccurate sense of constraint [i.e. realize that Europe is not really capable of constraining the US], it could begin to show more understanding for the sensibilities of others, a little more ... generosity of spirit ... to show what the founders called a 'decent respect for the opinion of mankind,'" acting multilaterally when possible, unilaterally when necessary (102).
There is an interesting tie-in of this book's topic with a recent NR article on FBI vs. CIA strategies (Counter-Counterterrorism by Mark Riebling, 25 Nov 2002). Riebling contrasts the FBI's law-enforcement mindset and techniques with the CIA's (and Britain's MI5) intelligence ones and notes that while the two "had coexisted in a delicate equilibrium; Clinton pushed down hard on the law-enforcement side of the seesaw." This was a disaster for national security. International terrorism was redefined from "a form of political warfare" to "a form of global crime." Clinton often lumped terrorism with the drug and weapons trade, seeing all 3 as essentially law-enforcement issues. Riebling's book is about the "secret war between the CIA and FBI" and how it has comprimised US national security. Likewise, I think we can view Kagan's main point using this framework. The "world government" types like to see the world through an idealistic, international law-enforcement lens, with the UN as the enforcement agency. The other side realizes that CIA-like activities are still necessary (e.g. power politics, military muscle, rules of the jungle).
Another interesting observation is that this tension fuels the long-standing one between the State and Defense departments of the U.S. government. State tends to agree with the U.N. and European mindset of internationalism, etc. while Defense (naturally) sees a larger role for American military might.
Books by Kagan:
- Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (ed. w/Wm Kristol [fellow neocon])
- A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-90
- Of Paradise and Power, 2003
- Dangerous Nation, 2006
[F]or all its skill, erudition, and reasoned argument (not to mention ironic thrusts sure to delight American readers), Kagan's essay is ultimately unsatisfying. It obfuscates the core ideological issues facing the West: the problems of democracy and self-government, and the fate of the liberal-democratic nation-state.Kagan tells us that "the new Europe" (which is to say, the EU) is a "miracle," a "paradise," and a "reason for enormous celebration" by Americans as well as Europeans. But EU Europe is not a cause for American celebration on the grounds of either Realpolitik or Moralpolitik. The governing structure of the EU - with its universally recognized "democracy deficit" - is a mostly unaccountable, unrepresentative hybrid regime that is, in reality, a post-democratic form of governance. Whatever it is, it is not "government by consent of the governed," and it is morally inferior, not superior, to that great achievement of the West, the liberal democratic nation-state.
Fonte goes on to note that it was the liberal-democratic nation-states of Europe, not the post-national EU, that supported America in Iraq. "Pace Kagan, the political integration of Europe does not, necessarily, "benefit" American foreign policy ... Let us celebrate and give support to self-government, not bureaucratic collectivism." Both Europe and America are more divided that Kagan represents. Also, "he does not examine [i.e. he underestimates] the extent to which the American liberal-Left ... seeks to constrain America's power and manipulate its democracy by empowering transnational institutions" (e.g. ICC).
While Kagan states that "Americans, as good children of the Enlightenment, still believe in the perfectibility of man, and retain hope for the perfectibility of the world," Fonte counters "on the contrary, the American Founders did not believe in the "perfectibility of man." They created a constitutional republic based on the principles of federalism, the "separation of powers," and "checks and balances" precisely because they - unlike the French revolutionaries - knew that human nature was flawed and that human beings were not perfectible. They did, of course, believe in improvement, and, as Madison put it in Federalist 55, 'there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.'"
"Kagan's Hobbes-vs.-Kant metaphor abandons the moral high ground to the EU ideologues" and "fails to defend either the principles of America's democratic constitutionalism against the challenge of EU Europe's post-democratic governance ... or America's friends in Europe who prefer to act within the context of the democratic nation-state rather than the structures of Brussels." Fonte notes with irony that, although Kagan has spent his career scolding foreign policy "realists who emphasize the 'balance of power' at the expense of morality, ideology, and principle," in this book he mostly emphasizes "power, not morality or democracy. Thus, ironically, as the author of this text he is "objectively," as Marxists used to say, a realist. Unfortunately, this leaves the crucial philosophical-ideological divisions within the West (the great issues of Moralpolitik) that are central to the US-European controversy mostly unexplored."
I'd counter that, given the end of the Cold War and the worldwide spread of free-market capitalism (see Commanding Heights), there are plenty of other trading partners and economic allies in case France, Germany and Russia decide to oppose us in these areas. Granted, back in pre-WWI days this was not the case.
For libertarian counterpoint to Kagan and the other neocons, see TX congressman Ron Paul's article We've Been Neo-Conned.