Book
Reviews
|
|||
|
Go to Executive Times
Archives |
|||
|
Of
Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert
Kagan Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
|
||
|
Click on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
|
||
|
|
|||
|
John Wayne and the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys Reading Robert Kagan’s short new book, Of
Paradise and Power, made me wish I understood more about history and the
issues he raises. It’s like picking up a conversation mid-stream; you’re not
quite sure that understand the context, meaning, or impact of the latest
words spoken. Here’s an excerpt (pp. 54-59): There
is a cynical view current in American strategic circles that the Europeans
simply enjoy the "free ride" they have gotten under the American
security umbrella over the past six decades. Given America's willingness to spend
so much money protecting them, Europeans would rather spend their own money
on social welfare programs, long vacations, and shorter workweeks. But there
is more to the transatlantic gulf than a gap in military capabilities, and
while Europe may be enjoying a free ride in terms of global security, there
is more to Europe's unwillingness to build up its military power than comfort
with the present American guarantee. After all, the United States in the
nineteenth century was the beneficiary of the British navy's dominance of the
Atlantic and the Caribbean. But that did not stop the United States from
engaging in its own peacetime naval buildup in the i88os and i89os, a buildup
that equipped it to launch and win the Spanish-American War, acquire the Philippines,
and become a world power. Late-nineteenth-century Americans did not take
comfort from their security; they were ambitious for more power. Europeans
today are not ambitious for power, and certainly not for military power.
Europeans over the past half century have developed a genuinely different
perspective on the role of power in international relations, a perspective
that springs directly from their unique historical experience since the end
of World War II. They have rejected the power politics that brought them such
misery over the past century and more. This is a perspective on power that
Americans do not and cannot share, inasmuch as the formative historical
experiences on their side of the Atlantic have not been the same. Consider
again the qualities that make up the European strategic culture: the emphasis
on negotiation, diplomacy, and commercial ties, on international law over the
use of force, on seduction over coercion, on multilateralism over
unilateralism. It is true that these are not traditionally European
approaches to international relations when viewed from a long historical
perspective. But they are a product of more recent European history. The
modern European strategic culture represents a conscious rejection of the
European past, a rejection of the evils of European Machtpolitik. It
is a reflection of Europeans' ardent and understandable desire never to
return to that past. Who knows better than Europeans the dangers that arise
from unbridled power politics, from an excessive reliance on military force,
from policies produced by national egoism and ambition, even from balance of
power and raison d'6taft. As German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer put it in a speech outlining his vision of the European future, “The
core of the concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is a rejection of the
European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual
states that had emerged following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.” The
European Union is itself the product of an awful century of European warfare. Of
course, it was the “hegemonic ambitions” of one nation in particular that
European integration was meant to contain. And it is the integration and
taming of Germany that is the great accomplishment of Europe—viewed historically,
perhaps the greatest feat of international politics ever achieved. Some
Europeans recall, as Fischer does, the
central role the United States played in solving the “German problem.” Fewer
like to recall that the military destruction of Nazi Germany was the
prerequisite for the European peace that followed. Instead, most Europeans
like to believe that it was the transformation of the European mind and
spirit made possible the "new order." The
Europeans, who invented power politics, turned themselves into born-again
idealists by an act of will, leaving behind them what Fischer called
"the old system of balance with its continued national orientation,
constraints of coalition, traditional interest-led politics and the permanent
danger of nationalist ideologies and confrontations." Fischer
stands near one end of the spectrum of European idealism. But this is not
really a right-left issue in Europe. Fischer's principal contention—that
Europe has moved beyond the old system of power politics and discovered a new
system for preserving peace in international relations—is widely shared
across Europe. As senior British diplomat and EU official Robert Cooper has
argued, Europe today lives in a "postmodern system" that does not
rest on a balance of power but on "the rejection of force" and on
"self-enforced rules of behavior." In the "postmodern
world," writes Cooper, "raison d'etat and the
amorality of Machiavelli's theories of statecraft... have been replaced by a
moral consciousness" in international affairs. American
realists might scoff at this idealism. Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan
assumed that only naïve Americans succumbed to such "Wilsonian"
legalistic and moralistic fancies, not those war-tested, historically minded
European Machiavels. But, really, why shouldn't Europeans be idealistic about
international affairs, at least as they are conducted in Europe's
"postmodern system"? Within the confines of Europe, the age-old
laws of international relations have been repealed. Europeans have pursued
their new order, freed from the laws and even the mentality of power
politics. Europeans have stepped out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into
the Kantian world of perpetual peace. In
fact, the United States 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 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. European
life during the more than five decades since the end of World War II has been
shaped not by the brutal laws of power politics but by the unfolding of a
geopolitical fantasy, a miracle of world-historical importance: The German lion
has lain down with the French lamb. The conflict that ravaged Europe ever
since the violent birth of Germany in the nineteenth century has been put to
rest. The means by which this miracle has been achieved have understandably
acquired something of a sacred mystique for Europeans, especially since the
end of the Cold War. Diplomacy, negotiations, patience, the forging of
economic ties, political engagement, the use of inducements rather than
sanctions, compromise rather than confrontation, the taking of small steps
and tempering ambitions for success—these were the tools of Franco-German
rapprochement and hence the tools that made European integration possible.
France, in particular, took the leap into the unknown, offering to pool first
economic and then political sovereignty with its old German enemy as the best
means of preventing future conflicts. Germany, in turn, ceded its own great
power within Europe in the interest of reintegration. The integration of Europe was not to be based on military deterrence or the balance of power. To the contrary, the miracle came from the rejection of military power and of its utility as an instrument of international affairs—at least within the confines of Europe. During the Cold War, few Europeans doubted the need for military power to deter the Soviet Union. But the end of the Cold War, by removing even the external danger of the Soviet Union, allowed Europe's new order, and its new idealism, to blossom fully into a grand plan for world order. Freed from the requirements of any military deterrence, internal or external, Europeans became still more confident that their way of settling international problems now had universal application. Their belief in the importance and relevance of security organizations like NATO diminished by equal measure. Readers who are well versed in global
affairs will read Of
Paradise and Power with greater knowledge and understanding that I did. I
found it a useful introduction to the issues America faces with its long-time
friends in Europe. Steve Hopkins, May 27, 2003 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the June 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Of
Paradise and Power.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
|||
