OF PARADISE

AND PowER
America and Europe
in the New World Order

ROBERT KAGAN

Alfred A. Knopf
NEW YORK 2003
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 Euro-
pean 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 Immanuel 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 the possession and use of
military might. That is why on major strategic and inter-
national 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 Anierican
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 5

election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the such as the United Nations, less likely to work coopera-
transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and tively with other nations to pursue common goals, more
likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priori- skeptical about international law, and more willing to
ties, determining threats, defining challenges, and fash- operate outside its strictures when they deem it necessary,
ioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the or even merely useful.1
United States and Europe have parted ways. Europeans insist they approach problems with greater
It is easier to see the contrast as an American living in nuance and .sophistication. They try to influence others
Europe. Europeans are more conscious of the growing dif- through subtlety and indirection. They are more toler-
~'
ferences, perhaps because they fear them more. European ant of failure, more patient when solutions don't come
intellectuals are nearly unanimous in the conviction that quickly. They generally favor peaceful responses to prob-
Americans and Europeans no longer share a common lems, preferring negotiation, diplomacy, and persuasion
"strategic culture:' The European caricature at its most to coercion. They are quicker to appeal to international
extreme depicts an America dominated by a "culture of law, international conventions, and international opinion
death;' its warlike temperament the naturafproduct of a to adjudicate disputes. They try to use commercial and
violent society where every man has a gun and the death economic ties to bind nations together. They often empha-
penalty reigns. But even those who do not make this crude size process over result, believing that ultimately process
link agree there are profound differences in the way the can become substance.
United States and Europe conduct foreign policy. This European portrait is a dual caricature, of course,
The United States, they argue, resorts to force more with its share of exaggerations and oversimplifications.
quickly and, compared with Europe, is less patient with One cannot generalize about Europeans: Britons may
diplomacy. Americans generally see the world divided have a more ''American" view of power than many Euro-
between good and evil, between friends and enemies, peans on the Continent. Their memory of empire, the
while Europeans see a more complex picture. When con- "special relationship" with the United States forged in
fronting real or potential adversaries, Americans generally World War II and at the dawn of the Cold War, and their
favor policies of coercion rather than persuasion, empha- historically aloof position with regard to the rest of Eu-
sizing punitive sanctions over inducements to better rope tend to set them apart. Nor can one simply lump
behavior, the stick over the carrot. Americans tend to seek
1
finality in international affairs: They want problems solved, One representative French observer describes "a U.S. mindset"
that "tends to emphasize military, technical and unilateral solutions to
threats eliminated. And, of course, Americans increasingly
international problems, possibly at the expense of co-operative and
tend toward unilateralism in international affairs. They political ones:' See Gilles Andreani, "The Disarray of U.S. Non-
are less inclined to act through international institutions Proliferation Policy;' Survival41 (Winter 1999-2000 ): 42-61.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 7

French and Germans together: the first proud and inde- done so and were, indeed, appalled at American mili-
pendent but also surprisingly insecure, the second min- tarism. Whether Europeans even would have bombed
gling self-confidence with self-doubt since the end of the Belgrade in 1999 had the United States not forced their
Second World War. Meanwhile, the nations of Eastern and hand is an interesting question. 2 This past October, a
Central Europe have an entirely different history from majority of Senate Democrats supported the resolution
their Western European neighbors, a historically rooted authorizing President Bush to go to war with Iraq, while
fear of Russian power and consequently a more American their political counterparts in France, Germany, Italy,
view of the Hobbesian realities. And, of course, there are Belgium, and even the United Kingdom looked on in
differing perspectives within nations on both sides of the amazement and some horror.
Atlantic. French Gaullists are not the same as French What is the source of these differing strategic perspec-
Socialists. In the United States, Democrats often seem tives? The question has received too little attention in
more "European" than Republicans; Secretary of State recent years. Foreign policy intellectuals and policymakers
Colin Powell may appear more "European" than Secretary on both sides of the Atlantic have denied the existence of
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Many Americans, especially genuine differences or sought to make light of present dis-
among the intellectual elite, are as uncomfortable with the agreements, noting that the transatlantic alliance has had
"hard" quality of American foreign policy as any Euro- moments of tension in the past. Those who have taken the
pean; and some Europeans value power as much as any present differences more seriously, especially in Europe,
American. have been more interested in assailing the United States
Nevertheless, the caricatures do capture an essential than in understanding why the United States acts as it
truth: The United States and Europe are fundamentally does-or, for that matter, why Europe acts as it does. It is
different today. Powell and Rumsfeld have more in com- past time to move beyond the denial and the insults and to
mon than do Powell and the foreign ministers of France, face the problem head-on.
Germany, or even Great Britain. When it comes to the use Despite what many Europeans and some Ameri-
of force, most mainstream American Democrats have cans believe, these differences in strategic culture do not
more in common with Republicans than they do with 2
The case of Bosma in the early 1990s stands out as an instance
most Europeans. During the 1990s even American liberals where some Europeans, chiefly British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were
were more willing to resort to force and were more at times more forceful in advocating military action than first the Bush
Manichean in their perception of the world than most of and then the Clinton administration. (Blair was also an early advocate
of using air power and even ground troops in the Kosovo crisis.) And
their European counterparts. The Clinton administration Europeans had forces on the ground in Bosnia when the United States
bombed Iraq as well as Afghanistan and Sudan. Most did not, although in a UN peacekeeping role that proved ineffective
European governments, it is safe to say, would not have when challenged.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 9

spring naturally from the national characters of Ameri- years of the republic were more faithful apostles of
cans and Europeans. What Europeans now consider their its creed. At its birth America was the great hope of
more peaceful strategic culture is, historically speaking, Enlightenment Europeans, who despaired of their own
quite new. It represents an evolution away from the very continent and viewed America as the one place "where
different strategic culture that dominated Europe for hun- reason and humanity" might "develop more rapidly than
dreds of years-at least until World War I. The European anywhere else:'4 The rhetoric, if not always the practice,
governments-and peoples-who enthusiastically launched of early American foreign policy was suffused with the
themselves into that continental war believed in Macht- principles of the Enlightenment. American statesmen of
politik. They were fervent nationalists who had been will- the late eighteenth century, like the European statesmen
ing to promote the national idea through force of arms, as of today, extolled the virtues of commerce as the sooth-
the Germans had under Bismarck, or to promote egalite ing balm of international strife and appealed to interna-
and fraternite with the sword, as Napoleon had attempted tional law and international opinion over brute force. The
earlier in the century, or to spread the blessings of liberal young United States wielded power against weaker peo-
civilization through the cannon's mouth, as the British ples on the North American continent, but when it came
had throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nine- to dealing with the European giants, it claimed to abjure
teenth centuries. The European order that came into being power and assailed as atavistic the power politics of the
with the unification of Germany in 1871 was, "like all its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European empires.
predecessors, created by war."3 While the roots of the pres- Some historians have gleaned from this the mistaken
ent European worldview, like the roots of the European view that the American founding generation was utopian,
Union itself, can be traced back to the Enlightenment, that it genuinely considered power politics "alien and
Europe's great-power politics for the past three hundred repulsive" and was simply unable to "comprehend the
years did not follow the visionary designs of the philo- importance of the power factor in foreign relations." 5 But
sophes and the Physiocrats. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams,
As for the United States, there is nothing timeless and even Thomas Jefferson were not utopians. They were
about the present heavy reliance on force as a tool of inter- well versed in the realities of international power politics.
national relations, nor about the tilt toward unilateralism They could play by European rules when circumstances
and away from a devotion to international law. Americans permitted and often wished they had the power to play the
are children of the Enlightenment, too, and in the early
4 Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Politi-
cal History ofEurope and America, 1760-18oo (Princeton, 1959 ), 1:242.
3 Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace (New Haven, 2001), 5 Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: Ideas of Early American
P-47· Foreign Policy (Princeton, 1961), p. 17.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 11

game of power politics more effectively. But they were States is powerful, it behaves as powerful nations do.
realistic enough to know that they were weak, and both When the European great powers were strong, they believed
consciously and unconsciously they used the strategies of in strength and martial glory. Now they see the world
the weak to try to get their way in the world. They deni- through the eyes of weaker powers. These very different
grated power politics and claimed an aversion to war and points of view have naturally produced differing strate-
military power, all realms in which they were far inferior gic judgments, differing assessments of threats and of the
to the European great powers. They extolled the virtues proper means of addressing them, different calculations of
and ameliorating effects of commerce, where Americans interest, and differing perspectives on the value and mean-
competed on a more equal plane. They appealed to inter- ing of international law and international institutions.
national law as the best means of regulating the behavior But even the power gap offers only part of the explana-
of nations, knowing well they had few other means of tion for the broad gulf that has opened between the United
constraining Great Britain and France. They knew from States and Europe. For along with these natural conse-
their reading ofVattel that in international law, "strength quences of the transatlantic disparity of power, there has
or weakness ... counts for nothing. A dwarf is as much a also opened a broad ideological gap. Europeans, because
man as a giant is; a small Republic is no less a sovereign of their unique historical experience of the past century-
State than the most powerful Kingdom:' 6 Later genera- culminating in the creation of the European Union-have
tions of Americans, possessed of a great deal more power developed a set of ideals and principles regarding the util-
and influence on the world stage, would not always be as . ity and morality of power different from the ideals and
enamored of this constraining egalitarian quality of inter- principles of Americans, who have not shared that experi-
national law. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen- ence. If the strategic chasm between the United States and
turies, it was the great European powers that did not Europe appears greater than ever today, and grows still
always want to be constrained. wider at a worrying pace, it is because these material and
Two centuries later, Americans and Europeans have ideological differences reinforce one another. The divisive
traded places-and perspectives. This is partly because in trend they together produce may be impossible to reverse.
those two hundred years, and especially in recent decades,
the power equation has shifted dramatically: When the
United States was weak, it practiced the strategies of indi-
rection, the strategies of weakness; now that the United

6 Quoted in Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of

Republican Government (Stanford, 1970), p.134.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 13

ston Churchill's was a lonely voice warning of the "awful

THE POWER GAP danger" of "perpetually asking the French to weaken
themselves:'?
Some might ask, what is new? It is true that Europe has The interwar era was Europe's first attempt to move
been declining as a global military power for a long time. beyond power politics, to make a virtue out of weakness.
The most damaging blow to both European power and Instead of relying on power, as they had in the past, the
confidence fell almost a century ago, in the world war that European victors in World War I put their faith in "collec-
broke out in 1914. That horrendous conflict devastated tive security" and in its institutional embodiment, the
three of the five European powers-Germany, Austria- League of Nations. "Our purpose;' declared one of the
Hungary, and Russia-that had been key pillars of the league's leading statesmen, was "to make war impossible,
continental balance of power since 1871. It damaged to kill it, to annihilate it. To do this we had to create a sys-
European economies, forcing them into decades-long tem:'8 But the "system" did not work, in part because its
dependence on American bankers. But most of all, the war leading members had neither the power nor the will. It is
destroyed the will and spirit of Great Britain and France, ironic that the driving intellectual force behind this effort
at least until the British rallied under Churchill in 1939, to. solve Europe's security crisis through the creation of a
when it was too late to avoid another world war. In the supranational legal institution was an American, Wood-
1920s, Britain reeled from the "senseless" slaughter of a row Wilson. Wilson spoke with the authority of what had
whole generation of young men at Passchendaele and in recent decades become one of the world's richest and
other killing fields, and the British government began at most powerful countries, and whose late entry into World
war's end the rapid demobilization of its army. A fright- War I had significantly aided the Allied victory. Unfor-
ened France had struggled to maintain adequate military tunately, Wilson spoke for America at a time when it, too,
force to deter what it considered the inevitable return of was running away from power, and, as it turned out, he
German power and revanchism. In the early 1920s, France did not actually speak for his country. The American
was desperate for an alliance with Great Britain, but the refusal to .participate in the institution Wilson created
Anglo-American guarantee to defend France stipulated destroyed whatever small chance it may have had to suc-
in the Versailles Treaty vanished into thin air when the ceed~ As Churchill wryly recalled, "We, who had deferred
U.S. Senate refused to ratify it. Meanwhile, the trauma- so much to [Wilson's] opinions and wishes in all this busi-
tized British, somehow convincing themselves against all
reason that France, not Germany, was the greatest threat
7 Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston, 1948), p. 94.
to European peace, proceeded to insist, as late as 1934, 8 Edvard Benes quoted in E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis,

that France disarm itself to the level of Germany. Win- 1919-1939 (London, 1948), p. 30.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 15

ness of peacemaking, were told without much ceremony man politics had turned angry and revanchist. When
that we ought to be better informed about the Ameri- Hitler complained about the mistreatment of ethnic Ger-
can Constitution:'9 The Europeans were left to them- mans in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, the Western de-
selves, and when confronted by the rising power of a mocracies were prepared to concede the point. Nor did
rearming, revisionist Germany in the 1930s, "collective the other European powers want to believe that an ideo-
security" melted away and was replaced by the policy of logical rift made compromise with Hitler and the Nazis
appeasement. impossible. In 1936 the French prime minister, Leon Blum,
At its core, the appeasement of Nazi Germany was a told a visiting German minister, "I am a Marxist and a
strategy based on weakness, which derived less from genu- Jew;' but "we cannot achieve anything if we treat ideologi-
ine inability to contain German power than from the cal barriers as insurmountable:'n Many convinced them-
understandable fear of another great European war. But selves that although Hitler seemed bad, the alternatives to
built on top of this foundation was an elaborate structure him in Germany were probably worse. British and French
of sophisticated arguments about the nature of the threat officials worked to gain Hitler's signature on agreements,
posed by Germany and the best means of addressing it. believing he alone could control what were assumed to be
British officials, in particular, consistently downplayed the the more extreme forces in German society.12
threat, or insisted that it was not yet serious enough to The purpose of appeasement was to buy time and
require action. "If it could be proved that Germany was hope that Hitler could be satisfied. But the strategy proved
rearming;' the British Conservative leader Stanley Bald- disastrous for Britain and France. Every passing year allowed
win said in 1933, then Europe would have to do something. Germany to exploit its latent economic and industrial
"But that situation had not yet arisen:'10 Proponents of superiority and to rearm, to the point where the demo-
appeasement produced many reasons why the application cratic European powers were incapable of deterring or
of power was unnecessary or inappropriate. Some argued defeating Hitler when he finally struck. In 1940, Hitler's
that Germany and its Nazi government had legitimate minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, looked back on
grievances that had to be taken into account by the West-
ern powers. The Versailles Treaty, as John Maynard Keynes 11
Quoted in Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), p. 307.
explained, had been harsh and counterproductive, and 12
As one French official stationed in Berlin put it, "If Hitler is sin-
Britain and France had only themselves to blame if Ger- cere in proclainling his desire for peace, we will be able to congratulate
ourselves on having reached agreement; if he has oilier designs or if he
has to give way one day to some fanatic we will at least have postponed
9 Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 12. tlle outbreak of a war and tllat is indeed a gain:' Quoted in Antllony
10Quoted in A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War Adamtllwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936-
(New York, 1983), pp. 73-74. 1939 (London, 1977), p. 30; Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 294.
 I:
! :

OF PARADISE AND POWER

17
the previous two decades of European diplomacy with on a massive scale after more than five centuries of impe-
some amazement. rial dominance-perhaps the most significant retrench-
ment of global influence in human history. Less than a
In 1933 a French premier ought to have said (and if decade into the Cold War, Europeans ceded both colonial
I had been the French premier I would have said holdings and strategic responsibilities in Asia and the
it): "The new Reich Chancellor is the man who Middle East to the United States, sometimes willingly and
wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that This sometimes under American pressure, as in the Suez crisis.
man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity. Either he At the end of World War II, many influential Ameri-
disappears or we march!" But they didn't do it. cans had hoped that Europe could be reestablished as a
They left us alone anQ. let us slip through the risky "third force" in the world, strong enough to hold its own
zone, and we were able to sail around all dangerous against the Soviet Union and allow the United States to
reefs. And when we were done, and well armed, bet- pull back from Europe. Franklin Roosevelt, Dean Ache-
ter than they, then they started the war/ 13 son, and other American observers believed Great Britain
would shoulder the burden of defending much of the
The sophisticated arguments of appeasement might world against the Soviet Union. In those early postwar
conceivably have been more valid had they been applied days, President Harry Truman could even imagine a world
to a different man and a different country under different where London and Moscow competed for influence, with
circumstances-for instance, to the German leader of the the United States serving as "an impartial umpire:' 14 But
1920s, Gustav Stresemann. They had been misapplied to then the British government made clear that it could not
Hitler and the Germany of the 1930s. But then, in truth, continue the economic and military support to Greece
the appeasement strategy had been a product not of and Turkey it had been providing since the end of the war.
analysis but of weakness. By 1947, British officials saw that the United States would
If World War I severely weakened Europe, the Sec- soon be "plucking the torch of world leadership from
ond World War that resulted from this failure of Euro- our chilling hands:'15 Europe was now dependent on the
pean strategy and diplomacy all but destroyed European United States for its own security and for global security.
nations as global powers. Their postwar inability to pro- France and Britain did not even like the idea of an inde-
ject sufficient force overseas to maintain colonial empires pendent European bloc, a "third force;' fearing it would
in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East forced them to retreat provide the excuse for American withdrawal from Europe.

1
3 Quoted in Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the 1
4 John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace (New York, 1987), p. 55·
Twenties to the Eighties (New York, 1983), p. 341. 151bid.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 19

Once again they would be left alone facing Germany, and Europeans took a different view of the most desirable
now the Soviet Union as well. As one American official form of deterrence. They were content to rely on the pro-
put it, "The one faint element of confidence which [the tection offered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, hoping that
French] cling to is the fact that American troops, how- Europe's safety could be preserved by the U.S.-Soviet bal-
ever strong in number, stand between them and the Red ance of terror and the doctrine of mutually assured
Army;''I6 destruction. In the early years of the Cold War, European
From the end of World War II and for the next fifty economies were too weak to build up sufficient military
years, therefore, Europe fell into a state of strategic depen- capacity for self-defense anyway. But even when European
dence on the United States. The once global reach of the economies recovered later in the Cold War, the Europeans
European powers no longer extended beyond the Conti- were not especially interested in closing the military gap.
nent. Europe's sole, if vital, strategic mission during the The American nuclear guarantee deprived Europeans of
Cold War was to stand firm and defend its own terri- the incentive to spend the kind of money that would have
tory against any Soviet offensive until the Americans been necessary to restore them to military great-power sta-
arrived. And Europeans were hard pressed to do even that. tus. This psychology of dependence was also an unavoid-
European unwillingness to spend as much on their mili- able reality of the Cold War and the nuclear age. A proud
tary as American administrations believed necessary was a Gaullist France might try to escape it by leaving NATO
constant source of transatlantic tension, from the estab- and building its own small nuclear force. But the force de
lishment of NATO to the days of Kennedy, whose doc- frappe was little more than symbolism; it relieved neither
trine of "flexible response" depended on a significant France nor Europe from strategic dependence on the
increase in European conventional forces, to the Reagan United States.
years, when American congressmen clamored for Europe If Europe's relative weakness appeared less of a prob-
to do more to "share the burden" of the common defense. lem in transatlantic relations during the Cold War, it was
But the circumstances of the Cold War created a per- partly because of the unique geopolitical circumstances of
haps unavoidable tension between American and Euro- that confltct. Although dwarfed by the two superpowers
pean interests. Americans generally preferred an effective on its flanks, a weakened Europe nevertheless served as
European military capability-under NATO control, of the central strategic theater of the worldwide struggle
course-that could stop Soviet armies on European soil between communism and democratic capitalism, and this,
short of nuclear war and with the bulk of casualties suf- along with lingering habits of world leadership, allowed
fered by Europeans, not Americans. Not surprisingly, many Europeans to retain international influence and interna-
tional respect beyond what their sheer military capabili-
16 Quoted in ibid., p. 65 ties might have afforded. America's Cold War strategy was
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 21

built around the transatlantic alliance. Maintaining the mixed emotions, agreed that superpower Europe was the
unity and cohesion of "the West" was essential. Naturally, future. Harvard University's Samuel P. Huntington pre-
this elevated the importance of European opinion on dicted that the coalescing of the European Union would
global matters, giving both Europeans and Americans a be "the single most important move" in a worldwide reac-
perhaps exaggerated estimation of European power. tion against American hegemony and would produce a
The perception persisted into the 1990s. The Balkan "truly multipolar" twenty-first centuryP
conflicts of that decade forced the United States to con- Had Europe fulfilled this promise during the 1990s,
tinue attending to Europe as a strategic priority. The the world would probably be a different place today. The
NATO alliance appeared to have found a new, post-Cold United States and Europe might now be negotiating the
War mission in bringing peace to that part of the Con- new terms of a relationship based on a rough equality of
tinent still prone to violent ethnic conflict, which, though power, instead of struggling with their vast disparity. It
on a smaller scale, appeared not unlike the century's ear- is possible that the product of that mutual adjustment
lier great conflicts. The enlargement of the NATO alliance would have been beneficial to both sides, with Europe
to include former members of the Soviet bloc-the com- taking on some of the burdens of global security and
pletion of the Cold War victory and the creation of a the United States paying greater deference to European
Europe "whole and free" -was another grand project of interests and aspirations as it formulated its own foreign
the West that kept Europe in the forefront of American policies.
political and strategic thinking. But the "new" Europe did not fulfill this promise. In
''
And then there was the early promise of the "new" the economic and political realms, the European Union !
Europe. By bonding together into a single political and produced miracles. Despite the hopes and fears of skeptics
economic unit-the historic accomplishment of Maas- on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe made good on the
tricht in 1992-many hoped to recapture Europe's old promise of unity. And the united Europe emerged as an
greatness in a new political form. "Europe" would be the economic power of the first rank, able to hold its own with
next superpower, not only economically and politically the United States and the Asian economies and to negoti-
but also militarily. It would handle crises on the European ate matters of international trade and finance on equal
continent, such as the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, and terms. If the end of the Cold War had ushered in an era
it would reemerge as a global player of the first rank. where economic power mattered more than military
In the 1990s, Europeans could still confidently assert that power, as many in both Europe and the United States had
the power of a unified Europe would restore, finally, the
global "multipolarity" that had been destroyed by the 1
7 Samuel P. Huntington, "The Lonely Superpower;' Foreign Affairs
Cold War and its aftermath. And most Americans, with 78 (March/April1999): 35-49.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 23

expected it would, then the European Union would indeed military mission and stabilized the situation. As some
have been poised to shape the world order with as much Europeans put it, the real division oflabor consisted of the
influence as the United States. But the end of the Cold United States "making the dinner" and the Europeans
War did not reduce the salience of military power, and "doing the dishes:'
Europeans discovered that economic power did not nec- A greater American propensity to use military force
essarily translate into strategic and geopolitical power. did not always mean a greater willingness to risk casual-
The United States, which remained both an economic and ties. The disparity in military capability had nothing to
a military giant, far outstripped Europe in the total power do with the relative courage of American and European
it could bring to bear on the international scene. soldiers. If anything, French and British and even Ger-
In fact, the 1990s witnessed not the rise of a European man governments could sometimes be less troubled by
superpower but the further decline of Europe into rela- the risks to their troops than were American presidents.
tive military weakness compared to the United States. The During the Balkan crisis in the mid-1990s and later in
Balkan conflict at the beginning of the decade revealed Kosovo, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was more will-
European military incapacity and political disarray; the ing to put forces on the ground against Serbia than was
Kosovo conflict at decade's end exposed a transatlantic President Bill Clinton. But in some ways this disparity,
gap in military technology and the ability to wage modern too, worked against the Europeans., The American desire
warfare that would only widen in subsequent years. Out- to avoid casualties and the American willingness to spend
side of Europe, by the close of the 1990s, the disparity was heavily on :qew military technologies provided the United
even more starkly apparent as it became clear that the States with a formidable military capability that gave it
ability and will of European powers, individually or col- deadly accuracy from great distances with lower risk to
lectively, to project decisive force into regions of conflict forces. European militaries, on the other hand, were less
beyond the Continent were negligible. Europeans could technologically advanced and more dependent on troops
provide peacekeeping forces in the Balkans-indeed, they fighting in closer quarters. The effect of this techno-
eventually did provide the vast bulk of those forces in logical gap, which opened wide over the course of the
Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia-and even in Afghani- 1990s, when the U.S. military made remarkable advances
stan and perhaps someday in Iraq. But they lacked the in precision-guided munitions, joint-strike operations,
wherewithal to introduce and sustain a fighting force in and communications and intelligence gathering, only
potentially hostile territory, even in Europe. Under the made Americans even more willing to go to war than
best of circumstances, the European role was limited to Europeans, who lacked the ability to launch devastating
filling out peacekeeping forces after the United States had, attacks from safer distances and therefore had to pay a
largely on its own, carried out the decisive phases of a bigger price for launching any attack at all.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 25

These European military inadequacies compared to forces designed for passive territorial defense with forces
the power of the United States should have come as capable of being delivered and sustained far from home.
no surprise, since these were characteristics of European Clearly, European voters were not willing to make such
forces during the Cold War. The strategic challenge of the a revolutionary shift in priorities. Not only were they
Cold War and of a containment doctrine that required, unwilling to pay to project force beyond Europe, but, after
in George Kennan's famous words, "adroit and vigilant the Cold War, they would not pay for sufficient force to
counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographi- conduct even minor military actions on their own continent
cal and political points" had compelled the United States without American help. Nor did it seem to matter whether
to build a military force capable of projecting power into European publics were being asked to. spend money to
several distant regions at once. 18 Europe's strategic role strengthen NATO or an independent European foreign and
had been entirely different, to defend itself and withstand -~ ,' - defense policy. Their answer was the same. Rather than
0

the onslaught of Soviet forces, not to project power.19 For viewing the collapse of the Soviet Union as an opportu-
most European powers, this required maintaining large nity to expand Europe's strategic purview, Europeans took
land forces ready to block Soviet invasion routes in their it as an opportunity to cash in on a sizable peace dividend.
own territory, not mobile forces capable of being shipped For Europe, the fall of the Soviet Union did not just elimi-
. '
to distant regions. Americans and Europeans who pro- nate a strategic adversary; in a sense, it eliminated the
posed after the Cold War that Europe should expand its need for geopolitics. Many Europeans took the end of the
strategic role beyond the Continent were asking for a revo- Cold War as a holiday from strategy. Despite talk of estab-
lutionary shift in European strategy and capability. It was lishing Europe as a global superpower, therefore, average
unrealistic to expect Europeans to return to the interna- European defense budgets gradually fell below 2 percent
tional great-power status they had enjoyed prior to World of GDP, and throughout the 1990s, European military
War II, unless European peoples were willing to shift sig- capabilities steadily fell behind those of the United States.
nificant resources from social to military programs and The end of the Cold War had a different effect on the
to restructure and modernize their militaries to replace other side of the Atlantic. For although Americans looked
for a peace dividend, too, and defense budgets declined or
18 X [George F. Kennan], "The Sources of Soviet Conduct;' Foreign remained flat during most of the 1990s, defense spend-
Affairs, July 1947, reprinted in Jan1es F. Hoge Jr. and Fareed Zakaria, ing still remained above 3 percent of GDP. Fast on the heels
eds., The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the of the Soviet empire's demise came Iraq's invasion of
Modern World (New York, 1997), p. 165.
19 The United Kingdom and France had the greatest capability to
Kuwait and the largest American military action in a quar-
project force overseas, but their capacity was much smaller than that of ter century-the United States deployed more than a half
the United States. million soldiers to the Persian Gulf region. Thereafter
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 27

American administrations cut the Cold War force, but not began during the first Bush administration with the inva-
as dramatically as might have been expected. In fact, suc- sion of Panama in 1989, the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and
cessive American administrations did not view the end the humanitarian intervention in Somalia in 1992, and
of the Cold War as providing a strategic holiday. From continued during the Clinton years with interventions in
the first Bush administration through the Clinton years, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. While many American politi-
American strategy and force planning continued to be cians talked of pulling back from the world, the reality was
based on the premise that the United States might have to an America intervening abroad more frequently than it
fight and win two wars in different regions of the world had throughout most of the Cold War. Thanks to the new
almost simultaneously. This two-war standard, though technologies, the United States was also freer to use force
often questioned, was never abandoned by military and around the world in more limited ways through air and
civilian leaders who believed the United States did have to missile strikes, which it did with increasing frequency. The
be prepared to fight wars on the Korean Peninsula and in end of the Cold War thus expanded an already wide gulf
the Persian Gulf. The fact that the United States could between European and American power.
even consider maintaining such a capability set it far apart
from its European allies, who on their own lacked the
capacity to fight even one small war close to home, let PSYCHOLOGIES OF POWER
alone two large wars thousands of miles away. By histori- AND WEAKNESS
cal standards, America's post-Cold War military power,
particularly its ability to project that power to all corners How could this great and growing disparity of power fail
of the globe, remained unprecedented. to create a growing gap in strategic perceptions and stra-
Meanwhile, the very fact of the Soviet empire's col- tegic "culture"? Strong powers naturally view the world
lapse vastly increased America's strength relative to the differently than weaker powers. They measure risks and
rest of the world. The sizable American military arsenal, threats differently, they define security differently, and
once barely sufficient to balance Soviet power, was now they have different levels of tolerance for insecurity. Those
deployed in a world without a single formidable adver- with great military power are more likely to consider force
sary. This "unipolar moment" had an entirely natural and a useful tool of international relations than those who
predictable consequence: It made the United States more have less military power. The stronger may, in fact, rely
willing to use force abroad. With the check of Soviet power on force more than they should. One British critic of
removed, the United States was free to intervene practi- America's propensity to military action recalls the old saw
cally wherever and whenever it chose-a fact reflected in "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like
the pr~liferation of overseas military interventions that nails." This is true. But nations without great military
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 29

power face the opposite danger: When you don't have a Soviet Union. The European approach may have reflected,
hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail. The too, Europe's memory of continental war. Americans,
perspectives and psychologies of power and weakness when they were not themselves engaged in the subtleties
explain much, though certainly not all, of what divides the of detente, viewed the European approach as a new form
United States and Europe today. of appeasement, a return to the fearful mentality of the
The problem is not new. During the Cold War, Ameri- 1930s. Europeans viewed it as a policy of sophistication, as
can military predominance and Europe's relative weakness a possible escape from what they regarded as Washing-
produced important and sometimes serious disagree- ton's excessively confrontational approach to the Cold War.
ments over the U.S. -Soviet arms race and American inter- During the Cold War, however, these were more tac-
ventions in the third world. Gaullism, Ostpolitik, and the tical than philosophical disagreements. They were not
various movements for European independence and unity arguments about the purposes of power, since both sides
were manifestations not only of a European desire for of the Atlantic clearly relied on their pooled military
honor and freedom of action. They also reflected a Euro- power to deter any possible Soviet attack, no matter how
pean conviction that America's approach to the Cold War remote the chances of such an attack might seem. The end
was too confrontational, too militaristic, and too danger- of the Cold War, which both widened the power gap and
ous. After the very early years of the Cold War, when removed the common Soviet enemy, not only exacerbated
Churchill and others sometimes worried that the United the difference in strategic perspectives but also changed
States was too gentle in dealing with Stalin, it was usually the nature of the argument.
the Americans who pushed for tougher forms of contain- For much of the 1990s, nostalgic policymakers and
ment and the Europeans who resisted. The Europeans analysts on both sides of the Atlantic insisted that Ameri-
believed they knew better how to deal with the Soviets: cans and Europeans mostly agreed on the nature of these
through engagement and seduction, through commercial threats to peace and world order; where they disagreed
and political ties, through patience and forbearance. It was on the question of how to respond. This sunny analy-
was a legitimate view, shared at times by many Americans, sis overlooked the growing divide. More and more over the
especially during and after the Vietnam War, when Ameri- past decade, the United States and its European allies have
can leaders believed they, too, were working from a posi- had rather substantial disagreements over what constitute
tion of weakness. But Europeans' repeated dissent from intolerable threats to international security and the world
the harder American approach to the Cold War reflected order, as the case of Iraq has abundantly shown. And these
Europe's fundamental and enduring weakness relative to disagreements reflect, above all, the disparity of power.
the United States: Europe simply had fewer military options One of the biggest transatlantic disagreements since
at its disposal, and it was more vulnerable to a powerful the end of the Cold War has been over which "new"
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 31

threats merit the most attention. American administra- more often preferred to kill than to tolerate each other;
tions have placed the greatest emphasis on so-called rogue nor have the past two centuries shown all that much
states and what President George W. Bush a year ago mutual tolerance between French and Germans. Some
called the "axis of evil:' Most Europeans have taken a Europeans argue that precisely because Europe has suf-
calmer view of the risks posed by these regimes. As a fered so much, it has a higher tolerance for suffering than
French official once told me, "The problem is 'failed America and therefore a higher tolerance for threats.
states; not 'rogue states: " More likely the opposite is true. The memory of the First
Why should Americans and Europeans view the same World War made the British and French publics more
threats differently? Europeans often argue that Ameri- fearful of Nazi Germany, not more tolerant, and this atti-
cans have an unreasonable demand for "perfect" security, tude contributed significantlyto·the appeasement strategy
the product of living for centuries shielded behind two of the 1930s.
oceans. 20 Europeans claim they know what it is like to live A better explanation of Europe's greater tolerance for
with danger, to exist side by side with evil, since they've threats today is its relative weakness. The differing psy-
done it for centuries-hence their greater tolerance for chologies of power and weakness are easy enough to
such threats as may be posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, understand. A man armed only with a knife may decide
the ayatollahs' Iran, or North Korea. Americans, they that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, inas-
claim, make far too much of the dangers these regimes much as the alternative-hunting the bear armed only
pose. with a knife-is actually riskier than lying low and hoping
But there is less to this cultural explanation than meets the bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle,
the eye. The United States in its formative decades lived in however, will likely make a different calculation of what
a state of substantial insecurity, surrounded by hostile constitutes a tolerable risk. Why should he risk being
European empires on the North American continent, at mauled to death if he doesn't have to? This perfectly nor-
constant risk of being torn apart by centrifugal forces that mal human psychology has driven a wedge between the
were encouraged by threats from without: National inse- United States and Europe. The vast majority of Europeans
curity formed the core of George Washington's Farewell always believed that the threat posed by Saddam Hus-
Address. As for the Europeans' supposed tolerance for sein was more tolerable than the risk of removing him.
insecurity and evil, it can be overstated. For the better part But Americans, being stronger, developed a lower thresh-
of three centuries, European Catholics and Protestants old of tolerance for Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction, especially after September n. Both assess-
2
° For that matter, this is also the view commonly found in ments made sense, given the differing perspectives of a
American textbooks. powerful America and a weaker Europe. Europeans like
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 33

to say that Americans are obsessed with fixing prob- makes solutions elusive. If Europe's strategic culture today
lems, but it is generally true that those with a greater places less value on hard power and military strength
capacity to fix problems are more likely to try to fix them and more value on such soft-power tools as economics
than those who have no such capability. Americans could and trade, isn't it partly because Europe is militarily
imagine successfully invading Iraq and toppling Sad- weak and economically strong? Americans are quicker
dam, and therefore by the end of 2002 more than 70 per- to acknowledge the existence of threats, even to perceive
cent of Americans favored such action. Not surprisingly, them where others may not see any, because they can con-
f·
; Europeans found the prospect both unimaginable and ceive of doing something to meet those threats.
II. frightening. The differing threat perceptions in the United States
~I
The incapacity to respond to threats leads not only to and Europe are not just matters of psychology, how-
I, tolerance. It can also lead to denial. It is normal to try to ever. They are also grounded in a practical reality that is
I,,
I
'I
put out of one's mind that which one can do nothing another product of the disparity of power and the struc-
II about. According to one student of European opinion, ture of the present international order. For while Iraq and
!
even the very focus on "threats" differentiates American , I other rogue states have posed a threat to Europe, objec-
policymakers from their European counterparts. Ameri- tively they have not posed the same level of threat to
cans, writes Steven Everts, talk about foreign "threats" Europeans as they have to the United States. There is, first
such as "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of all, the American security guarantee that Europeans
terrorism, and 'rogue states: " But Europeans look at enjoy and have enjoyed for six decades, ever since the
"challenges;' such as "ethnic conflict, migration, organized United States took upon itself the burden of maintain-
crime, poverty and environmental degradation:' As Everts ing order in far-flung regions of the world-from East
notes, however, the key difference is less a matter of cul- Asia to the Middle East-from which European power
ture and philosophy than of capability. Europeans "are had largely withdrawn. Europeans have generally believed,
most worried about issues ... that have a greater chance of whether or not they admit it to themselves, that whenever
being solved by political engagement and huge sums of Iraq or some other rogue nation emerged as a real and
moneY:' 21 In other words, Europeans focus on issues- present danger, as opposed to merely a potential danger,
"challenges"-where European strengths come into play, then the United States would do something about it. If
but not on those "threats" where European weakness during the Cold War Europe by necessity made a major
contribution to its own defense, since the end of the Cold
21
War Europeans have enjoyed an unparalleled measure of
Steven Everts, "Unilateral America, Lightweight Europe?: Man-
aging Divergence in Transatlantic Foreign Policy;' working paper, ·"free security" because most of the likely threats emanate
Centre for European Reform, February 2001 • from regions outside Europe, where only the United States

. l'i
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 35

can project effective force. In a very practical sense-that pecms worried about the threat posed not only by Iraq,
is, when it comes to actual strategic planning-Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, but also by China, Russia, the India-
North Korea, Iran, or any other rogue state in the world Pakistan confrontation, and even the conflict between
has not been primarily a European problem. Nor, cer- Israel and the Arab states-on almost all these issues
tainly, is China. Both Europeans and Americans agree that significantly more Americans than Europeans expressed
I
these are primarily American problems. concern.23 But why should Americans, "protected by two
This is why Saddam Hussein was never perceived to be oceans;' be more worried about a conflagration on the Jlf

"

the threat to Europe that he was to the United States. The Asian subcontinent or in the Middle East or in Russia
logical consequence of the transatlantic disparity of power than the Europeans, who live so much closer? The answer '
i
i
!
has been that the task of containing Saddam Hussein
always belonged primarily to the United States, not to
is that Americans know that when international crises
erupt, whether in the Taiwan Strait or in Kashmir, they are lt
Europe, and everyone agreed on this22-including Sad- likely to be the first to become involved. Europeans know
i!
dam, which was why he always considered the United this, too. Polls that show Americans worrying more than il
[j,

States, not Europe, his principal adversary. In the Persian Europeans about all nature of global security threats and il
~I
Gulf, the Middle East, and most other regions of the world Europeans worrying more about global warming demon-
(including Europe), the United States plays the role of strate that both sets of publics have a remarkably accurate
ultimate enforcer. "You are so powerful," Europeans often sense of their nations' very different global roles.
say to Americans. "So why do you feel so threatened?" But Americans are "cowboys;' Europeans love to say. And
it is precisely America's great power and its willingness there is truth in this. The United States does act as an
to assume the responsibility for protecting other nations international sheriff, self-appointed perhaps but widely
that make it the primary target, and often the only target.
Most Europeans have been understandably content that it 2 3 The poll, sponsored by the German Marshall Fund and the

should remain so. Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, was taken between June 1 and
A poll of European and American opinion taken in the July 6, 2002. Asked to identify which "possible threats to vital interests"
summer of 2002 nicely revealed this transatlantic gap in were "extremely important;' 91 percent of Americans listed "interna-
tional terrorism" as opposed to 65 percent of Europeans. On "Iraq
perceptions of threat. Although widely reported as show- developing weapons of mass destruction;' the gap was 28 points, with
ing American and European publics in rough agreement, 86 percent of Americans identifying Iraq as an "extremely important"
the results indicated many more Americans than Euro- threat compared to 58 percent of Europeans. On "Islamic fundamental-
ism:' 61-49; on "military conflict between Israel and Arab neighbors;'
67-43; on "tensions between India and Pakistan:' 54-32; on "develop-
22
Notwithstanding the sizable British contribution to military ment of China as a world power:' 56-19; on "political turmoil in
operations in Iraq. Russia;' 27-15.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 37

welcomed nevertheless, trying to enforce some peace and Osama bin Laden and AI Qaeda to broader strategic goals
justice in what Americans see as a lawless world where in the "war on terrorism;' Europeans recoiled.
outlaws need to be deterred or destroyed, often through Differing perceptions of threats and how to address
the muzzle of a gun. Europe, by this Wild West analogy, is them are in some ways only the surface manifestation of
more like the saloonkeeper. Outlaws shoot sheriffs, not more fundamental differences in the worldviews of a
saloonkeepers. In fact, from the saloonkeeper's point of strong United States and a relatively weaker Europe. It is
view, the sheriff trying to impose order by force can some- not just that Europeans and Americans have not shared
times be more threatening than the outlaws, who, at least the same view of what to do about a specific problem such
for the time being, may just want a drink. as Iraq. They do not share the same broad view of how the
When Europeans took to the streets by the millions world should be governed, about the role of international
after September 11, most Americans believed it was out institutions and international law, about the proper bal-
of a sense of shared danger and common interest: The ance between the use of force and the use of diplomacy in
Europeans knew they could be next. But Europeans by international affairs.
and large did not feel that way. Europeans have never Some of this difference is related to the power gap.
really believed they are next. They could be secondary Europe's relative weakness has understandably produced
targets-because they are allied with the United States- a powerful European interest in building a world where
but they are not the primary target, because they no military strength and hard power matter less than eco-
longer play the imperial role in the Middle East that might nomic and soft power, an international order where inter-
have engendered the same antagonism against them as is national law and international institutions matter more
aimed at the United States. When Europeans wept and than the power of individual nations, where unilateral
waved American flags after September 11, it was out of action by powerful states is forbidden, where all nations
genuine human sympathy. It was an expression of sorrow regardless of their strength have equal rights and are
and affection for Americans. For better or for worse, equally protected by commonly agreed-upon interna-
European displays of solidarity were a product more of tional rules of behavior. Because they are relatively weak,
fellow feeling than of careful calculations of self-interest. Europeans have a deep interest in devaluing and eventu-
Europeans' heartfelt sympathy, unaccompanied by a sense ally eradicating the brutal laws of an anarchic Hobbesian
of shared risk and common responsibility, did not draw world where power is the ultimate determinant of national
Europeans and Americans together in strategic partner- security and success.
ship. On the contrary, as soon as Americans began look- This is no reproach. It is what weaker powers have '!
ing beyond the immediate task of finding and destroying wanted from time immemorial. It was what Americans
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 39

wanted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, consistently show that Americans support multilateral
when the brutality of a European system of power politics action in principle. They even support acting under the
run by the global giants of France, Britain, and Russia left rubric of the United Nations, which, after all, Americans
Americans constantly vulnerable to imperial thrashing. created. But the fact remains that the United States can act
It was what the other small powers of Europe wanted in unilaterally and has done so many times with reasonable
those years, too, only to be sneered at by Bourbon kings success. The facile assertion that the United States cannot
and other powerful monarchs, who spoke instead of rai- "go it alone" is more a hopeful platitude than a descrip-
son d'etat. The great proponent of international law on tion of reality. Americans certainly prefer to act together
the high seas in the eighteenth century was the United with others, and American actions stand a better chance
States; the great opponent was Britain's navy, the "mistress of success if the United States has allies. But if it were liter-
of the seas." In an anarchic world, small powers always fear ally true that the United States could not act unilaterally,
they will be victims. Great powers, on the other hand, we wouldn't be having a grand transatlantic debate over
often fear rules that may constrain them more than they American unilateralism. The problem today, if it is a prob-
do anarchy. In an anarchic world, they rely on their power lem, is that the United States can "go it alone;' and it is
to provide security and prosperity. hardly surprising that the American superpower should
This natural and historic disagreement between the wish to preserve its ability to do so. Geopolitical logic dic-
stronger and the weaker manifests itself in today's trans- tates that Americans have a less compelling interest than
atlantic dispute over the issue of unilateralism. Europeans Europeans in upholding multilateralism as a universal
generally believe their objection to American unilateral- principle for governing the behavior of nations. Whether
ism is proof of their greater commitment to principles of unilateral action is a good or a bad thing, Americans
world order. And it is true that their commitment to those objectively have more to lose from outlawing it than any
ideals, although not absolute, is greater than that of most other power in today's unipolar world. Indeed, for Ameri-
Americans. But Europeans are less willing to acknowledge cans to share the European perspective on the virtues of
another truth: that their hostility to unilateralism is also multilateralism, they would have to be even more devoted
self-interested. Since Europeans lack the capacity to under- to the ideals and principles of an international legal order
take unilateral military actions, either individually or col- than Europeans are. For Europeans, ideals and interests
lectively as "Europe;' it is natural that they should oppose converge in a world governed according to the principle of
allowing others to do what they cannot do themselves. For multilateralism. For Americans, they do not converge as
Europeans, the appeal to multilateralism and interna- much.
tionallaw has a real practical payoff and little cost. It is also understandable that Europeans should fear
The same cannot be said of the United States. Polls American unilateralism and seek to constrain it as best
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 41

they can through such institutions as the United Nations. they do not consider even a unilateralist United States a
Those who cannot act unilaterally themselves naturally sufficient threat to make them increase defense spending
want to have a mechanism for controlling those who can. to contain it. Nor are they willing to risk their vast trade
From the European perspective, the United States may be with the United States by attempting to wield their eco-
a relatively benign hegemon, but insofar as its actions nomic power against the hegemon. Nor are they willing
delay the arrival of a world order more conducive to the to ally themselves with China, which is willing to spend
safety of weaker powers, it is objectively dangerous. This money on defense, in order to counterbalance the United
is one reason why in recent years a principal objective of States. Instead, Europeans hope to contain American power
European foreign policy has become, as one European without wielding power themselves. In what may be the
observer puts it, the "multilateralising" of the United ultimate feat of subtlety and indirection, they want to
States. 2 4 It is why Europeans insist that the United States control the behemoth by appealing to its conscience.
act only with the approval of the UN Security Council. It is a sound strategy, as far as it goes. The United States
The Security Council is a pale approximation of a genuine is a behemoth with a conscience. It is not Louis XIV's
multilateral order, for it was designed by the United States France or George III's England. Americans do not argue,
to give the five "great powers" of the postwar era an exclu- even to themselves, that their actions may be justified by
sive authority to decide what was and ~as not legitimate raison d' lHat. They do not claim the right of the stronger
international action. Today the Security Council contains or insist to the rest of the world, as the Athenians did at
only one "great power;' the United States. But the Security Melos, that "the strong rule where they can and the weak
Council is nevertheless the one place where a weaker suffer what they must:' Americans have never accepted
nation such as France has at least the theoretical power to the principles of Europe's old order nor embraced the
control American actions, ifthe United States can be per- Machiavellian perspective. The United States is a liberal,
suaded to come to the Security Council and be bound by progressive society through and through, and to the
its decisions. For Europeans, the UN Security Council is a extent that Americans believe in power, they believe it
substitute for the power they lack. must be a means of advancing the principles of a liberal
Indeed, despite the predictions of Huntington and civilization and a liberal world order. Americans even
many realist theorists, the Europeans have not sought share Europe's aspirations for a more orderly world sys-
to check the rising power of the American colossus by tem based not on power but on rules-after all, they were
amassing a countervailing power of their own. Clearly striving for such a world when Europeans were still
extolling the laws of Machtpolitik. But while these com-
2
4 Everts, "Unilateral America, Lightweight Europe?" mon ideals and aspirations shape foreign policies on both
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 43

sides of the Atlantic, they cannot completely negate the pean security, but at the same time it was hostile to
very different perspectives from which Europeans and European aspirations to take on the task themselves. 2 5
Americans view the world and the role of power in inter- Europeans complained about American perfidy, and
national affairs. Americans complained about European weakness and
ingratitude.
Today many Europeans view the Clinton years as a
HYPERPUISSANCE time of transatlantic harmony, but it was during those
years that Europeans began complaining about American
The present transatlantic tensions did not begin with the power and arrogance in the post-Cold War world. It was
inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001, nor did during the Clinton years that then-French foreign minis-
they begin after September 11. While the ham-handed ter Hubert Vedrine coined the term hyperpuissance to
diplomacy of the Bush administration in its early months describe an American behemoth too worryingly powerful
certainly drew a sharper line under the differing European to be designated merely a superpower. And it was during
and American perspectives on the issues of international the 1990s that Europeans began to view the United States
governance, and while the attacks of September 11 shone as a "hectoring hegemon:' Such complaints were directed
the brightest possible light on the transatlantic gulf in especially at Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, whom
strategic perceptions, those divisions were already evident one American critic described, a bit hyperbolically, as "the
during the Clinton years and even during the first Bush first Secretary of State in American history whose diplo-
administration. As early as 1992, mutual recriminations matic specialty ... is lecturing other governments, using
had been rife over Bosnia. The first Bush administration threatening language and tastelessly bragging of the
refused to act, believing it had more important strategic power and virtue of her country:' 26
obligations elsewhere. Europeans declared they would Even in the 1990s the issue on which American and
act-it was, they insisted, "the hour of Europe"-but the European policies began most notably to diverge was Iraq.
declaration proved hollow when it became clear that Europeans were appalled when Albright and other admin-
Europe could not act even in Bosnia without the United istration officials in 1997 began suggesting that the eco-
States. When France and Germany took the first small
steps to create something like an independent European 2 5 Charles Grant, "European Defence Post-Kosovo?," working

defense force, the Bush administration scowled. From paper, Centre for European Reform, June 1999, p. 2.
2 6 The comment was by former State Department adviser Charles
the European point of view, it was the worst of both worlds. Maechling Jr., quoted in Thomas W. Lippman, Madeleine Albright and
The United States was losing interest in preserving Euro- the New American Diplomacy (Boulder, CO, 2000 ), p. 165.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 45
J
il
nomic sanctions placed on Iraq after the Gulf War could ing a new missile defense system designed to protect the
not be lifted while Saddam Hussein remained in power. United States from nuclear-armed rogue states such as
They believed, in classically European fashion, that Iraq North Korea. Such a system threatened to undo the
should be offered incentives for better behavior, not Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the doctrine of mutually
threatened, in classically American fashion, with more assured destruction that Europeans had long valued as
economic or military coercion. The growing split between central to their own strategic security. It also threatened to
the United States and its allies on the Iraq question came protect American soil while leaving Europeans still vul-
into the open at the end of 1997, when the Clinton admin- nerable to nuclear attack, which Europeans understand-
istration tried to increase the pressure on Baghdad to ably considered undesirable. The Clinton administration
cooperate with UN arms inspectors, and France joined negotiated the Kyoto protocol to address global climate
Russia and China in blocking the American proposals change but deliberately did not submit it to the Sen-
in the UN Security Council. When the Clinton adminis- ate, where it was certain to be defeated. And it was' the
tration finally turned to the use of military force and Clinton administration, prodded by Secretary of Defense
bombed Iraq in December 1998, it did so without a UN William Cohen and senior military officials at the Pen-
Security Council authorization and with only Great Britain tagon, that first demanded that American troops be
by its side. In its waning months, the Clinton administra- immune from prosecution by the new International Crimi-
tion continued to believe that "Iraq, under Saddam Hus- nal Court-which had become the quintessential symbol
sein, remains dangerous, unreconstructed, defiant, and of European aspirations to a world in which all nations
isolated:' It would "never be able to be rehabilitated or were equal under the law. In taking this tack away from
reintegrated into the community of nations" with Saddam the European multilateralist consensus, President Clin-
in power. 2 7 This was not the view of France or most of the ton was to some extent bowing to pressures from a hos-
rest of Europe. The rehabilitation and reintegration of tile Republican-dominated Congress. But the Clinton
Saddam Hussein's Iraq were precisely what they sought. administration itself believed those treaties were flawed;
It was during the 1990s, too, that some of the con- even Clinton was not as "European" as he would later be
tentious issues that would produce transatlantic storms depicted. In any case, the growing divergence between
during the second Bush administration made their first American and European policies during the Clinton years
appearance. Clinton took the first steps toward construct- reflected a deeper reality. The United States in the post-
Cold War era was becoming more unilateral in its approach
2
7 Address by Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk to the
to the rest of the world at a time when Europeans were
Council on Foreign Relations, April22, 1999, quoted in ibid., p. 183. embarking on a new and vigorous effort to build a more
 OF PARADISE AND POWER
47
comprehensive international legal system precisely to that even in a region as close as the Balkans, Europe's
restrain such unilateralism. "ability to deploy force" was but "a meager fraction" of
The war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 gave an inter- America's. 2 9
esting hint of the future. Although the allied military cam- More troubling still .was that European dependence
paign against Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic was a success, on American military power gave the United States domi-
'1·:.;
1'
and represented the first occasion in its fifty-year history nant influence not only over the way the war was fought
that NATO had ever undertaken military action, the con- but also over international diplomacy before, during, and
flict also revealed subtle fissures in the post-Cold War after the war. Europeans had favored a pause in the bomb-
alliance-fissures that survived Kosovo but might not ing after a few days, for instance, to give Milosevic a
withstand the greater pressures of a different kind of war chance to end the crisis. But the United States and the
under different international circumstances. American NATO commander, General Wesley K. Clark,
The conduct of the war reflected the severe trans- refused. Most Europeans, especially the French, wanted to
atlantic military imbalance. The United States flew the escalate the bombing campaign gradually, to reduce the
majority of missions, almost all of the precision-guided damage to Serbia and give Milosevic incentive to end the
munitions dropped in Serbia and Kosovo were made in conflict before NATO destroyed everything he valued. But
America, and the unmatched superiority of American Clark disagreed. "In U.S. military thinking;' he explains,
technical intelligence-gathering capabilities meant that "we seek to be as decisive as possible once we begin to use
99 percent of the proposed targets came from American force!'3° Many Europeans wanted to focus the bombing
intelligence sources. The American dominance of the war on Serbian forces engaged in "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo.
effort troubled Europeans in two ways. On the one hand, But as Clark recalls, "Most Americans believed that the
it was a rather shocking blow to European honor. As two best and most rapid way to change Milosevic's views was
British analysts observed after the war, even the United to strike at him and his regime as hard as possible!'31
;·'.
Kingdom, "which prides itself on being a serious military Whether the Americans or the Europeans were right
power, could contribute only 4 per cent of the aircraft and about the way that war or any war should be fought, for
4 per cent of the bombs dropped." 2 8 To Europe's most Europe the depressing fact remained that because the
respected strategic thinkers in France, Germany, and
Britain, the Kosovo war had only "highlighted the impo- 2
9 Christoph Bertranr, Charles Grant, and Frans;ois Heisbourg,
tence of Europe's armed forces!' It was embarrassing "European Defence: The Next Steps," Centre for European Reform,
CER Bulletin 14 (October/November 2000 ).
3° Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War (New York, 2001), p. 449.
28
Tim Garden and John Roper, "Pooling Forces:' Centre for 31 Americans also didn't want their pilots flying at low altitudes
European Reform, December 1999. where they were more likely to be shot down. Ibid.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER
49

Kosovo war was fought with "American equipment;' it Clark's view, "We paid a price in operational effectiveness
was fought largely according to ''American doctrine."32 by having to constrain the nature of the operation to fit
For all Europe's great economic power and for all its suc- within the political and legal concerns of NATO member
cess at achieving political union, Europe's military weak- nations."35 The result was a war that neither Europeans
ness had produced diplomatic weakness and sharply nor Americans liked. In a meeting of NATO defense min-
diminished its political influence compared to that of the isters a few months after the war, one minister remarked
United States, even in a crisis in Europe. that the biggest lesson of the allied war in Kosovo was that
The Americans were unhappy, too. General Clark "we never want to do this again:'3 6
and his colleagues complained that the laborious effort Fortunately for the health of the alliance in 1999, Clark
to preserve consensus within the alliance hampered the and his superiors in the Clinton administration believed
fighting of the war and delayed its successful conclusion. the price for allied unity was worth paying. But American
Before the war, Clark later insisted, "we could not pre- willingness to preserve transatlantic cohesion even at the
sent an unambiguous and clear warning to Milosevic;' cost of military effectiveness owed a great deal to the spe-
partly because many European countries would not cial, if not unique, circumstances of the Kosovo conflict.
threaten action without a mandate from the UN Secu- For the United States, preserving the cohesion and viabil-
rity Council-what Clark, in typically American fashion, ity of the alliance was not just a means to an end in
called Europe's "legal issues:' For the Americans, these Kosovo; it was among the primary aims of the American
"legal issues" were "obstacles to properly planning and intervention, just as saving the alliance had been a pri-
preparing" for the war.33 During the fighting, Clark and mary motive for America's earlier intervention in Bosnia,
his American colleagues were exasperated by the need and just as preserving the cohesion of the alliance had
constantly to find compromise between American military been a primary goal of American strategy during the
doctrine and what Clark called the "European approach:'34 Cold War.
"It was always the Americans who pushed for the escala- American abstention from the Balkan conflict during
tion to new, more sensitive targets ... and always some of the first Bush administration and in Clinton's first term
the Allies who expressed doubts and reservations:' In had seemed to threaten NATO itself. When Secretary of
State James Baker referred to the Balkan war as a strictly
32 Garden and Roper, "Pooling Forces:' "European conflict" and declared that the United States
33 Clark, Waging Modern War, pp. 420, 421. "The lack of legal
did not have "a dog in that fight;' such sentiments, widely
authority;' Clark recalls, "caused almost every NATO government ini-
tially to reject Secretary Cohen's appeal to authorize a NATO threat"
prior to the outbreak of war in early 1999. 35 Ibid., p. 426.
34 Ibid., p. 449·
36 As Clark wryly reports, "No one laughed." Ibid., p. 417.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 51

shared among his colleagues, including especially then- the future. Would Clark or any future American com-
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, had mander make the same calculation in different circum-
raised troubling questions about America's role in Europe stances? Would he be willing to sacrifice operational
in the post-Cold War world. Was the United States still effectiveness, rapid escalation, "American military doc-
committed to European security and stability? Could trine;' and the use of decisive force in a war whose pri-
NATO meet what were then considered to be the new mary goal was not the cohesion and preservation of
challenges of the post-Cold War era, ethnic conflict and NATO and Europe? In fact, the Kosovo war showed how
the collapse of states? Or had the American-led alliance difficult it was going to be for the United States and its
outlived its usefulness to the point where it could not stop European allies to fight any war together. What if they had
aggression and ethnic cleansing even on the European to fight a war not primarily "humanitarian" in nature?
continent? What if Americans believed their vital interests were
American involvement in Kosovo or Bosnia was not directly threatened? What if Americans had suffered hor-
based on calculations of a narrow American "national rendous attacks on their own territory and feared more
interest;' at least as most Americans understood the term. attacks were coming? Would Americans in such circum-
While Americans had a compelling moral interest in stop- stances have the same tolerance for the clumsy and con-
ping genocide and ethnic cleansing, especially in Europe, strained NATO decision-making and war-fighting process?
American realist theorists insisted the United States had Would they want to compromise again with the "Euro-
no "national interest" at stake in the Balkans. When Clin- pean approach" to warfare, or would they prefer to "go it
ton officials and other supporters of American interven- alone"? The answer to those questions came after Sep-
tion defended American military action on the grounds of tember n. With almost three thousand dead in New York
the national interest, it was as a means of preserving the City, and Osama bin Laden on the loose in Afghanistan,
alliance and repairing the frayed bonds of the trans- the U.S. military and the Bush administration had little
atlantic relationship. As in the Cold War, America fought interest in working through NATO. This may have been
in the Balkans ultimately to preserve "the West:' And that unfortunate from the perspective of transatlantic relations,
goal determined American military strategy. As General but it was hardly surprising.
Clark puts it, "No single target or set of targets was more The fact is that by the end of the 1990s the dispar-
important than NATO cohesion:'37 ity of power was subtly rending the fabric of the trans-
Such an approach to fighting the war may have been atlantic relationship. The Americans were unhappy and
sound in Kosovo and Bosnia. But it raised questions about impatient about constraints imposed by European allies
who brought so little to a war but whose concern for "legal
37 Ibid., p. 430. issues" prevented the war's effective prosecution. The
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 53

Europeans were unhappy about American dominance pean military power and strategic self-reliance. In De-
and their own dependence. The lesson for Americans, cember 2001 the Belgian foreign minister suggested that
including the top officials in the Clinton administration, the EU military force should simply "declare itself opera-
was that even with the best intentions, multilateral action tional without such a declaration being based on any true
could not succeed without a significant element of Ameri- capability:'38 In fact, the effort to build a European force
can unilateralism, an American willingness to use its over- has so far been· an embarrassment to Europeans. Today,
whelming power to dominate both war and diplomacy the European Union is no closer to fielding an indepen-
when weaker allies hesitated. The Clinton administration dent force, even a small one, than it was three years ago.
had come into office talking about "assertive multilateral- And this latest failure raises the question that so many
ism"; it ended up talking about America as "the indispens- Europeans and so many "transatlanticists" in the United
able nation:' States have been unwilling even to ask, much less to
The lesson for many Europeans was that Europe answer: Why hasn't Europe fulfilled the promise of the
needed to take steps to release itself at least partially from European Union in foreign and defense policy, or met the
a dependence on American power that, after the Cold promptings of some of its most important leaders to build
War, seemed no longer necessary. This, in turn, required up even enough military power to tilt the balance, just a
that Europe create some independent military capability. little, away from American dominance?
At the end of 1998, that judgment prompted no less a
friend of the United States than Tony Blair to reach across
THE POSTMODERN PARADISE
the Channel to France with an unprecedented offer to add
Britain's weight to hitherto stalled efforts to create a com-
The answer lies somewhere in the realm of ideology, in
mon European Union defense capability independent of
European attitudes not just toward defense spending but
NATO. Together, Blair and Jacques Chirac won Europe-
toward power itself. Important as the power gap has been
wide approval for building a force of 6o,ooo troops that
in shaping the respective strategic cultures of the United
could be deployed far from home and sustained for up to
States and Europe, if the disparity of military capabili-
a year.
ties were the only problem, the solution would be fairly
Once again, had this Anglo-French initiative borne
straightforward. With a highly educated and productive
fruit, the United States and Europe might today be in the
population of almost 400 million people and a $9 trillion
process of establishing a new relationship based on a
economy, Europe today has the wealth and technological
greater European military capability and greater inde-
pendence from American power. But this initiative is 38 John Vinocur, "On Both War and Peace, the EU Stands Divided,"
headed the way of all other proposals to enhance Euro- International Herald Tribune, December 17, 2001.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 55
capability to make itself more of a world power in military American War, acquire the Philippines, and become a
terms if Europeans wanted to become that kind of world world power. Late-nineteenth-century Americans did not
power. They could easily spend twice as much as they are take comfort from their security; they were ambitious for
currently spending on defense if they believed it necessary more power.
to do so.39 And closing the power gap between the United Europeans today are not ambitious for power, and
States and Europe would probably go some way toward certainly not for military power. Europeans over the past
closing the gap in strategic perceptions. half century have developed a genuinely different per-
There is a cynical view current in American strategic spective on the role of power in international relations, a
circles that the Europeans simply enjoy the "free ride" they perspective that springs directly from their unique histori-
have gotten under the American security umbrella over cal experience since the end of World War II. They have
the past six decades. Given America's willingness to spend rejected the power politics that brought them such misery
so much money protecting them, Europeans would rather over the past century and more. This is a perspective on
spend their own money on social welfare programs, long power that Americans do not and cannot share, inasmuch
vacations, and shorter workweeks. But there is more to the as the formative historical experiences on their side of the
transatlantic gulf than a gap in military capabilities, and Atlantic have not been the same.
while Europe may be enjoying a free ride in terms of Consider again the qualities that make up the Euro-
global security, there is more to Europe's unwillingness pean strategic culture: the emphasis on negotiation, diplo-
to build up its military power than comfort with the pres- macy, and commercial ties, on international law over the
ent American guarantee. After all, the United States in use of force, on seduction over coercion, on multilateral-
the nineteenth century was the beneficiary of the British ism over unilateralism. It is true that these are not tradi-
navy's dominance of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. But tionally European approaches to international relations
that did not stop the United States from engaging in its when viewed from a long historical perspective. But they
own peacetime naval buildup in the 188os and 1890s, a are a product of more recent European history. The mod-
buildup that equipped it to launch and win the Spanish- ern European strategic culture represents a conscious
rejection of the European past, a rejection of the evils of
39 Europeans insist that there are certain structural realities in their European Machtpolitik. It is a reflection of Europeans'
national budgets, built-in limitations to any significant increases in ardent and understandable desire never to return to that
defense spending. But if Europe were about to be invaded, would its past. Who knows better than Europeans the dangers that
politicians insist that defense budgets could not be raised because this
would violate the terms of the EU's growth and stability pact? If
arise from unbridled power politics, from an excessive
Germans truly felt threatened, would they insist nevertheless that their reliance on military force, from policies produced by
social welfare programs be left untouched? national egoism and ambition, even from balance of
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 57

power and raison d'etat? As German Foreign Minister moved beyond the old system of power politics and dis-
Joschka Fischer put it in a speech outlining his vision of covered a new system for preserving peace in international
the European future, "The core of the concept of Europe relations-is widely shared across Europe. As senior British
after 1945 was and still is a rejection of the European diplomat and EU official Robert Cooper has argued,
balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions Europe today lives in a "postmodern system" that does not
of individual states that had emerged following the Peace rest on a balance of power but on "the rejection of force"
of Westphalia in 1648:'4° The European Union is itself the and on "self-enforced rules of behavior:' In the "postmod-
product of an awful century of European warfare. ern world;' writes Cooper," raison d'etat and the amorality
Of course, it was the "hegemonic ambitions" of one of Machiavelli's theories of statecraft ... have been replaced
nation in particular that European integration was meant by a moral consciousness" in international affairs.41
to contain. And it is the integration and taming of Ger- American realists might scoff at this idealism. Hans
many that is the great accomplishment of Europe-viewed Morgenthau and George Kennan assumed that only na'ive
historically, perhaps the greatest feat of international poli- Americans succumbed to such "Wilsonian" legalistic and
tics ever achieved. Some Europeans recall, as Fischer does, moralistic fancies, not those war-tested, historically minded
the central role the United States played in solving the European Machiavels. But, really, why shouldn't Euro-
"German problem." Fewer like to recall that the military peans be idealistic about international affairs, at least
destruction of Nazi Germany was the prerequisite for the as they are conducted in Europe's "postmodern system"?
European peace that followed. Instead, most Europeans Within the confines of Europe, the age-old laws of inter-
like to believe that it was the transformation of the Euro- national relations have been repealed. Europeans have
pean mind and spirit that made possible the "new order:' pursued their new order, freed from the laws and even the
The Europeans, who invented power politics, turned mentality of power politics. Europeans have stepped out
themselves into born-again idealists by an act of will, leav- of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world
ing behind them what Fischer called "the old system of bal- of perpetual peace.
ance with its continued national orientation, constraints of In fact, the United States solved the Kantian paradox
coalition, traditional interest-led politics and the perma- for the Europeans. Kant had argued that the only solution
nent danger of nationalist ideologies and confrontations:' to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the
Fischer stands near one end of the spectrum of Euro- creation of a world government. But he also feared that
pean idealism. But this is not really a right -left issue in the "state of universal peace" made possible by world gov-
Europe. Fischer's principal contention-that Europe has ernment would be an even greater threat to human free-

4° Fischer speech at Humboldt University in Berlin, May 12, 2000. 41 Robert Cooper, The Observer, April7, 2002.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 59

dom than the Hobbesian international order, inasmuch as then political sovereignty with its old German enemy as
such a government, with its monopoly of power, would the best means of preventing future conflicts. Germany,
become "the most horrible despotism."42 How nations in turn, ceded its own great power within Europe in the
could achieve perpetual peace without destroying human interest of reintegration.
freedom was a problem Kant could not solve. But for The integration of Europe was not to be based on mili-
Europe the problem was solved by the United States. By tary deterrence or the balance of power. To the contrary,
providing security from outside, the United States ren- the miracle came from the rejection of military power and
dered it unnecessary for Europe's supranational govern- of its utility as an instrument of international affairs-at
ment to provide it. Europeans did not need power to least within the confines of Europe. During the Cold War,
achieve peace, and they do not need power to preserve it. few Europeans doubted the need for military power to
European life during the more than five decades since deter the Soviet Union. But the end of the Cold War, by
the end of World War II has been shaped not by the brutal removing even the external danger of the Soviet Union,
laws of power politics but by the unfolding of a geopoliti- allowed Europe's new order, and its new idealism, to blos-
cal fantasy, a miracle of world-historical importance: The som fully into a grand plan for world order. Freed from
German lion has lain down with the French lamb. The the requirements of any military deterrence, internal or
conflict that ravaged Europe ever since the violent birth of external, Europeans became still more confident that their
Germany in the nineteenth century has been put to rest. way of settling international problems now had universal
The means by which this miracle has been achieved have application. Their belief in the importance and relevance
understandably acquired something of a sacred mystique of security organizations like NATO diminished by equal
for Europeans, especially since the end of the Cold War. measure.
Diplomacy, negotiations, patience, the forging of eco- "The genius of the founding fathers;' European Com-
nomic ties, political engagement, the use of inducements mission President Romano Prodi explained, "lay in trans-
rather than sanctions, compromise rather than confronta- lating extremely high political ambitions ... into a series
tion, the taking of small steps and tempering ambitions of more specific, almost technical decisions. This indirect
for success-these were the tools of Franco-German rap- approach made further action possible. Rapprochement
prochement and hence the tools that made European took place gradually. From confrontation we moved to
integration possible. France, in particular, took the leap willingness to cooperate in the economic sphere and
into the unknown, offering to pool first economic and then on to integration:'43 This is what many Europeans

:;;, 42 See Thomas L. Pangle and Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Justice Among

' Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace (Lawrence, KS, 1999 ), 43 Speech by Romano Prodi at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in
pp. 200-201. Paris, May 29, 2001.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 61

believe they have to offer the world: not power, but the cost and risk than war. And Europe would apply its lesson
transcendence of power. The "essence" of the European to Israelis and Palestinians as well, for, after all, as EU
Union, writes Everts, is "all about subjecting inter-state Commissioner Chris Patten argues, "European integration
relations to the rule of law;' and Europe's experience of shows that compromise and reconciliation is possible after
successful multilateral governance has, in turn, produced generations of prejudice, war and suffering:'45 The trans-
an ambition to convert the world.44 Europe "has a role to mission of the European miracle to the rest of the world
play in world 'governance: " says Prodi, a role based on has become Europe's new mission civilisatrice. Just as
replicating the European experience on a global scale. In Americans have always believed that they had discovered
Europe "the rule of law has replaced the crude interplay of the secret to human happiness and wished to export it to
power ... power politics have lost their influence:' And by the rest of the world, so Europeans have a new mission
"making a success of integration we are demonstrating to born of their own discovery of perpetual peace.
the world that it is possible to create a method for peace:' Thus we arrive at what may be the most important
No doubt there are Britons, Germans, French, and oth- reason for the divergence in views between Europe and
ers who would frown on such exuberant idealism. But the United States. America's power and its willingness to
many Europeans, including many in positions of power, exercise that power-unilaterally if necessary-constitute
routinely apply Europe's experience to the rest of the world, a threat to Europe's new sense of mission. Perhaps it is the
and sometimes with the evangelic zeal of coiJ.Verts. The greatest threat. American policymakers have found it hard
general European critique of the American approach to to believe, but leading officials and politicians in Europe
rogue regimes is based on this special European insight. really have worried more about how the United States
Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya-these states may be dan- might handle or mishandle the problem of Iraq-by
gerous and unpleasant, and even, if simplistic Americans undertaking unilateral and extralegal military action-
insist, evil. But Germany was evil once, too. Might not an than they have ever worried about Iraq itself and Saddam
"indirect approach" work again, as it did in Europe? Might Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. And while it is
it not be possible once more to move from confrontation true that they haveJeared such action might destabilize
to rapprochement, beginning with cooperation in the eco- the Middle East and lead to the unnecessary loss of life,
nomic sphere and then moving on to peaceful integration? there has always been a deeper concern. 46 Such American
Could not the formula that worked in Europe work again
with Iran? Might it have even worked with Iraq? A great 45 Chris Patten, "From Europe with Support:' Yediot Ahronot,

many Europeans have insisted that it might, and at less October 28, 2002. .
46 The common American argument that European policy toward
Iraq and Iran has been dictated by financial considerations is only
44 Everts, "Unilateral America, Lightweight Europe?;' p. 10. partly right. Are Europeans greedier than Americans? Do American
 OF PARADISE AND POWER

action, even if successful, is an assault on the essence of mine the very principle Europeans are trymg to establish-
"postmodern" Europe. It is an assault on Europe's new that all nations, strong and weak, are equal under the law
ideals, a denial of their universal validity, much as the and all must abide by the law. If this principle can be
monarchies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe flouted, even by the benevolent superpower, then what
were an assault on American republican ideals. Americans happens to the European Union, which depends for its very
ought to be the first to understand that a threat to one's existence on common obedience to the laws of Europe?
beliefs can be as frightening as a threat to one's physical If international law does not reign supreme, is Europe
security. doomed to return to its past?
As Americans have for two centuries, Europeans speak And, of course, it is precisely this fear of sliding back-
with great confidence of the superiority of their global ward that still hangs over Europeans, even as Europe
understanding, the wisdom they have to offer other nations moves forward. Europeans, particularly the French and
about conflict resolution, and their way of addressing inter- the Germans, are not entirely sure that the problem once
national problems. But just as in the first decade of the known as the "German problem" really has been solved.
American republic, there is a hint of insecurity in the Neither France under Frans;ois Mitterrand nor Britain
European claim to success, an evident need to have their under Margaret Thatcher was pleased at the prospect of
success affirmed and their views accepted by other nations, German reunification after the end of the Cold War; each
particularly by the United States. After all, to deny the had to be coaxed along and reassured by the Americans,
validity of the new European idealism is to raise profound just as British and French leaders had been coaxed along
doubts about the viability of the European project. If to accept German reintegration four decades before. As
international problems cannot, in fact, be settled the Euro- their various and often very different proposals for the
pean way, wouldn't that suggest that Europe itself may future constitution of Europe suggest, the French are
eventually fall short of a solution, with all the horrors this still not confident they can trust the Germans, and the
implies? That is one reason Europeans were so adamant Germans are still hot sure they can trust themselves.
about preserving the universal applicability of the Inter- Nearly six decades after the end of World War II, a French
national Criminal Court. For the United States to demand official can still remark: "People say, 'It is a terrible thing
immunity, a double standard for the powerful, is to under- that Germany is not working.' But I say, 'Really? When
Germany is working, six months later it is usually march-
corporations not influence American policy in Asia and Latin America ing down the Champs Elysees.' "47 Buried not very deeply
as well as in the Middle East? The difference is that American strategic
judgments sometimes conflict with and override financial interests.
For the reasons suggested in this essay, that conflict is much less com- 47 See Gerard Baker, "Europe's Three Ways of Dealing with Iraq;'
mon for Europeans. Financial Times, October 17, 2002, p. 17.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER

beneath the surface of such jokes lies a genuine, lingering military capabilities relative to the United States. Turning
trepidation about a Germany that is still too big for the Europe into a global superpower capable of balancing the
European continent. Last summer, when German Chan- power of the United States may have been one of the origi-
cellor Gerhard Schroeder defied the Bush administration's nal selling points of the European Union-an indepen-
call for European support in Iraq, his insistence on dealing dent European foreign and defense policy was supposed
with such matters in "the German way'' was perhaps even to be one of the most important by-products of Euro-
more unsettling to his European neighbors than it was to pean integration. But, in truth, isn't the ambition for
the United States. Ironically, even German pacifism and European "power" something of an anachronism? It is an
neutralism can frighten Europeans when a German leader atavistic impulse, inconsistent with the ideals of post-
speaks of "the German way':' modern Europe, whose very existence depends on the
.Such fears can at times hinder progress toward deeper rejection of power politics. Whatever its architects may
integration, but they also have driven the European proj- have intended, European integration has proved to be the
ect forward despite innumerable obstacles. European enemy of European military power and, indeed, of an
integration is propelled forward in part by the Germans' important European global role.
fears about themselves. The European project must suc- This phenomenon has manifested itself not only in flat
ceed, Joschka Fischer warns, for how else can "the risks or declining European defense budgets, but in other ways,
and temptations objectively inherent in Germany's dimen- too, even in the realm of "soft" power. European leaders
sions and central situation" be overcome?48 Those historic talk of Europe's essential role in the world. Prodi yearns
German "temptations" play at the back of many a Euro- "to make our voice heard, to make our actions count."49
pean mind. And every time Europe contemplates the And it is true that Europeans spend a great deal of money
use of military force, or is forced to do so by the United on foreign aid-m2re per capita, they like to point out,
States, there is no avoiding at least momentary considera- than does the United States. Europeans engage in overseas
tion of what effect such a military action might have military missions, so long as the missions are mostly lim-
on the "German question" that seems never entirely to ited to peacekeeping. But while the EU periodically dips
disappear. its fingers into troubled international waters in the Middle
Perhaps it is not just coincidence, therefore, that the East or the Korean Peninsula, the truth is that EU foreign
amazing progress toward European integration in recent policy is probably the most anemic of all the products of
years has been accompanied not by the emergence of a European integration. As one sympathetic observer has
European superpower but by a diminishing of European noted, few European leaders "are giving it much time or

48 Fischer speech at Humboldt University, May 12, 2000. 49 Prodi speech at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, May 29, 2001.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER

energy:'5° EU foreign policy initiatives tend to be short- the so-called democracy deficit, the jostling of the large
lived and are rarely backed by sustained agreement on the European powers, the dissatisfaction of the smaller pow-
part of the various European powers. That is one reason ers, the establishment of a new European constitution-
they are so easily rebuffed. In the Middle East, where so all of these present serious and unavoidable challenges.
much European money goes to fund Palestinian and other The difficulties of moving forward might seem insupera-
Arab projects, it is still to the United States that Arabs and ble were it not for the progress the project of European
Israelis alike look for support, assistance, and a safe reso- integration has already demonstrated.
lution of their conflict, not to Europe. All of Europe's great American policies that have been unwelcome in
economic power seems not to translate into diplomatic substance-on a missile defense system and the ABM
influence, in the Middle East or anywhere else where crises Treaty, belligerence toward Iraq, support for Israel-have
have a military componentY been all the more unwelcome because for Europe they are
It is obvious, moreover, that issues outside of Europe a distraction from the questions that really concern them,
don't attract nearly as much interest among Europeans as namely, questions about Europe. Europeans often point
purely European issues do. This has surprised and frus- to American insularity and parochialism, but Europeans
trated Americans on all sides of the political and strategic themselves have turned intensely introspective. As Domi-
debate: Recall the profound disappointment of Ameri- nique Moisi has pointed out, last year's French presi-
can liberals when Europeans failed to mount an effective dential campaign saw "no reference ... to the events of
protest against Bush's withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. September n and their far-reaching consequences:' No
Nor did most Europeans, either among the elites or among one asked, "What should be the role of France and Europe
the common voters, give the slightest thought to Iraq before in the new configuration of forces created after Septem-
the Bush administration threatened to invade it. ber n? How should France reappraise its military budget
This European tendency to look inward is understand- and doctrine to take account of the need to maintain
able, however, given the enormous and difficult agenda of some kind of parity between Europe and the United
integration. The enlargement of the European Union to States, or at least between France and the UK?" The
more than two dozen member states, the revision of the Middle East conflict became an issue in the campaign
common economic and agricultural policies, the question because of France's large Arab and Muslim population, as
of national sovereignty versus supranational governance, the high vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen demonstrated. But Le
Pen is not a foreign policy hawk. And as Moisi noted, "For
5o Charles Grant, ''A European View of ESDP;' working paper,
most French voters . . . security has little to do with
Centre for European Policy Studies, April2001.
5' As Grant observes, "An EU that was less impotent militarily
abstract and distant geopolitics. Rather, it is a question
would have more diplomatic clout:' Grant, "European Defence;' p. 2. of which politician can best protect them from the crime
 OF PARADISE AND POWER

and violence plaguing the streets and suburbs of their Vedrine, who once complained about American hyper-
cities!'52 puissance, has stopped talking about counterbalancing the
Can Europe change course and assume a larger role on United States. Instead, he shrugs and declares there "is no
the world stage? There has been no shortage of European reason for the Europeans to match a country that can fight
leaders urging it to do so. Nor is the weakness of EU for- four wars at once!'54 It was one thing for Europe in the
eign policy today necessarily proof that it must be weak 1990s to try to increase its annual collective expenditures
tomorrow, given the EU's record of overcoming weak- on defense from $150 billion to $180 billion when the
nesses in other areas. And yet the political will to demand United States was spending $280 billion. But now that the
more power for Europe appears to be lacking, for the very United States is heading toward spending as much as
good reason that Europe does not see a mission for itself $400 billion per year, or perhaps even more in corning
that requires power. Its mission, if it has a mission beyond years, Europe has not the slightest intention of keeping
the confines of Europe, is to oppose power. It is reveal- up. Thus France might increase its defense budget by 6
ing that the argument most often advanced by Europeans percent, prodded by the Gaullisrn of President Jacques
for augmenting their military strength is not that it will Chirac. The United Kingdom might make an even greater
allow Europe to expand its strategic purview or even its commitment to strengthening and modernizing its mili-
global influence. It is merely to rein in and "rnultilateral- tary, guided by Tony Blair in an attempt to revive, if on a
ize" the United States. "America;' writes the pro-American much smaller scale, an older British tradition of liberal
British scholar Timothy Garton Ash, "has too much power imperialism. But what is "Europe" without Germany? And
for anyone's good, including its own!'53 Therefore Europe German defense buligets, today running at about the same
must amass power, but for no other reason than to save percentage of gross domestic product as Luxembourg's, are
the world and the United States from the dangers inherent destined to drop even further in corning years as the
in the present lopsided situation. German economy struggles under the weight of a stifling
Whether that particular mission is a worthy one or labor and social welfare system. European analysts may
not, it seems unlikely to rouse European passions. Only lament the Continent's "strategic irrelevance!' NATO Secre-
France and Great Britain so far have responded even mar- tary General George Robertson may call Europe a "military
ginally to this challenge. But France's proposed defense pygmy" in a noble effort to shame Europeans into spending
budget increase will prove, like the force de frappe, more more, and more wisely than they do now. But who honestly
symbolic than real. Former French foreign minister Hubert believes Europeans will fundamentally change their way
of doing business? They have many reasons not to.
2
5 Dominique Moisi, Financial Times, March u, 2002. 54 Quoted in David Ignatius, "France's Constructive Critic;' Wash-
53 Timothy Garton Ash, New York Times, Apri19, 2002. ington Post, February 22, 2002.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 71

preferred doing business with Stalin's Russia. ''After

THE WORLD AMERICA MADE Germany is disarmed;' FDR pointedly asked, "what is the
reason for France having a big military establishment?"
If Americans are unhappy about this state of affairs, they Charles de Gaulle found such questions "disquieting for
should recall that today's Europe-both the integrated Europe and for France;' as well he might have. Americans
Europe and the weak Europe-is very much the product of Roosevelt's era held an old American view of Europe as
of American foreign policy stretching back over the bet- corrupt and decadent, now mingled with a certain con-
ter part of nine decades. The United States abandoned tempt for European weakness and dependence. If the
Europe after World War I, standing aside as the Continent European powers were being stripped of their global reach
slipped into a war even more horrible than the first. Even by military and economic weakness following the destruc-
as World War II was ending, the initial American impulse tion of World War II, many Americans were only too
was to walk away again. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's origi- happy to hurry the process along. As FDR had put it,
nal wartime vision had been to make Europe strategically "When we've won the war, I will work with all my might
irrelevant.55 In the late 1930s and even during the war, the and main to see to it that the United States is not wheedled
common conviction of Americans was that "the European into the position of accepting any plan that will further
system was basically rotten, that war was endemic on that France's impel)ialistic ambitions, or that will aid or abet
continent, and the Europeans had only themselves to the British Empire in its imperial ambitions:'57
blame for their plight:'5 6 Europe appeared to be nothing When the Cold War dawned, Americans such as Dean
more than the overheated incubator of world wars that Acheson hoped to create in Europe a powerful partner
,..! cost America dearly. against the Soviet Union, and most Americans who came
1<.
During World War II, Americans like Roosevelt, look- of age during the Cold War have always thought of Europe
ing backward rather than forward, believed no greater almost exclusively in Achesonian terms-as the essential
service could be performed than to take Europe out of the bulwark of freedom in the struggle against Soviet tyranny.
global strategic picture once and for all. Roosevelt actually But a suspicious hostility toward Europe always played
around the edges of American foreign policy, even during
55 As the historian John Lamberton Harper has put it, FDR wanted
the Cold War. When President Dwight Eisenhower under-
"to bring about a radical reduction in the weight of Europe" and mined and humiliated Britain and France at Suez in 1956,
thereby make possible "the retirement of Europe from world politics." it was only the most blatant of many American efforts to
Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F.
Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge, UK, 1996), pp. 79, 3·
56 William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Iso- 57 Quoted in Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth-
lation, 1937-1940 (New York, 1952), p.14. Century Reaction (New York, 1957), p. 142; Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 396.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 73

cut Europe down to size and reduce its already weakened integration, beginning with economic links:' But, of course,
global influence. the latter could never have occurred without the former.
Nevertheless, for the most part the emerging threat France's willingness to risk the reintegration of Germany
of the Soviet Union compelled Americans to recalculate into Europe-and France was, to say the least, highly
their relationship with European security, and therefore dubious--depended on the promise of continued Ameri-
with the Europeans. And ultimately the more important can involvement in Europe as a guarantee against any
American contribution to Europe's current world-apart resurgence of German militarism. Nor were postwar Ger-
status stemmed not from anti-European but from essen- mans unaware that their own future in Europe depended
tially pro-European impulses. A commitment to Europe, on the calming presence of the American military.
not hostility to it, led the United States in the immediate The current situation abounds in ironies. Europe's
postwar years to keep troops on the Continent and to cre- rejection of power politics and its devaluing of military
ate NATO. The presence of American forces as a security force as a tool of international relations have depended
guarantee in Europe was, as it was intended to be, the on the presence of American military forces on Euro-
critical ingredient for beginning the process of European pean soil. Eurqpe's new Kantian order could flourish only
(

integration so that a cohesive "West" would be strong under the umbrella of American power exercised accord-
enough materially and spiritually to withstand the daunt- ing to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. American
ing challenge of what promised to be a difficult Cold War power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power
confrontation with the Soviet Union. was no longer important. And now, in the final irony, the
Europe's evolution into its present state occurred un- fact that U.S. military power has solved the European
der the mantle of the U.S. security guarantee and could problem, especially the "German problem;' allows Euro-
not have occurred without it. Not only did the United peans today, and Germans in particular, to believe that
States for almost half a century supply a shield against American military power, and the "strategic culture" that
such external threats as the Soviet Union and internal has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous.
threats posed by ethnic conflict in places like the Balkans. Most Europeans do not see or do not wish to see the
More important, the United States was the key to the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has
solution of the "German problem" and perhaps still is. depended on the United States not making the same pas-
Germany's Fischer, in his Humboldt University speech, sage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to
noted two "historic decisions" that made the new Europe guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun,
possible: "the USA's decision to stay in Europe" and spiritually as well as physically, by a world that has yet to
"France's and Germany's commitment to the principle of accept the rule of "moral consciousness;' it has become
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 75

dependent on America's willingness to use its military his Labour Party followers, has endorsed the idea of an
might to deter or defeat those around the world who still international double standard for power. He has tried to
believe in power politics. lead Britain into the rule-based Kantian world of the
Some Europeans do understand the conundrum. Brit- European Union. But as his solidarity with President Bush
ons, not surprisingly, understand it best. Robert Cooper on the question of Iraq has shown, Blair has also tried
writes of the need to address the hard truth that although to lead Europe back out into the Hobbesian world, where
"within the postmodern world [i.e., the Europe of today], military power remains a key feature of international
there are no security threats in the traditional sense;' relations.
nevertheless, throughout the rest of the world-what Coo- But Blair's attempt to bring Europe along with him has
j·,··

per calls the "modern and pre-modern zones"-threats been largely unsuccessful. Schroeder has taken his nation
abound. If the postmodern world does not protect itself, it "the German way;' and France, even under the more con-
can be destroyed. But how does Europe protect itself with- servative Gaullism of Jacques Chirac, has been a most
out discarding the very_ ideals and principles that under- resistant partner of the United States, more intent on con-
gird its pacific system? straining American power than in supplementing it with
"The challenge to the postmodern world;' Cooper French power.
argues, "is to get used to the idea of double standards." One suspects that what Cooper has really described,
Among themselves, Europeans may "operate on the basis therefore, is not Europe's future but America's present. For
of laws and open cooperative security:' But when dealing it is the United States that has had the difficult task of
with the world outside Europe, "we need to revert to the navigating between these two worlds, trying to abide by,
rougher methods of an earlier era-force, preemptive defend, and further the laws of advanced civilized society
attack, deception, whatever is necessary:' This is Cooper's while simultaneously employing military force against
principle for safeguarding society: ''Among ourselves, we those who refuse to abide by such rules. The United States is
keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we already operating according to Cooper's double standard,
must also use the laws of the jungle:' Cooper directs his for the very reasons he suggests. American leaders, too,
argument at Europe, and he couples it with a call for believe that global security and a liberal order-as well as
Europeans to cease neglecting their defenses, "both physi- Europe's "postmodern" paradise-cannot long survive
cal and psychological."58 unless the United States does use its power in the danger-
Cooper has also served as a close adviser to Tony Blair, ous Hobbesian world that still flourishes outside Europe.
and it is clear that Blair, perhaps a good deal more than What this means is that although the United States has
played the critical role in bringing Europe into this Kant-
58 Cooper, The Observer, April7, 2002. ian paradise, and still plays a key role in making that para-
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 77

dise possible, it cannot enter the paradise itself. It mans understood, for the common Soviet enemy and the conse-
the walls but cannot walk through the gate. The United quent need to act in concert for the common defense were
States, with all its vast power, remains stuck in history, left not all that disappeared after 1989. So, too, did a grand
to deal with the Saddams and the ayatollahs, the Kim Jong strategy pursued on both sides of the Atlantic to preserve
Ils and the Jiang Zemins, leaving most of the benefits to and strengthen the cohesion and unity of what was called
others. "the West." It was not just that the United States and
Europe had had to work together to meet the Soviet chal-
lenge. More than that, the continued unity and success of
IS IT STILL "THE WEST"! the liberal Western order was for many years the very defi-
nition of victory in the Cold War.
If this evolving international arrangement continues to Partly for this reason, American strategy during the
produce a greater American tendency toward unilateral- Cold War often cpnsisted of providing more to friends
ism in international affairs, this should not surprise any and allies than was expected from them in return. To a
objective observer. In return for manning the walls of remarkable degree, American governments measured the
Europe's postmodern order, the United States naturally success of their foreign policy not by how well the United
seeks a certain freedom of action to deal with the strategic States was doing by any narrow reckoning of the national
dangers that it alone has the means and sometimes the interest, but rather by how well America's allies were far-
will to address. This is the great problem for relations ing against the many internal and external challenges they
between the United States and Europe, of course. For just faced. Thus it was American economic strategy to raise up
at the moment when Europeans, freed of Cold War fears from the ruins of World War II powerful economic com-
and constraints, have begun settling into their postmod- petitors in Europe and Asia, even to the point where, by
ern paradise and proselytizing for their doctrines of inter- the last decades of the Cold War, the United States seemed
national law and international institutions, Americans to many to be in a state of relative decline compared to
have begun turning in the other direction, away from the its increasingly prosperous allies. It was American mili-
common solidarity with Europe that had been the central tary strategy to risk nuclear attack upon its otherwise
theme of the Cold War and back toward a more tradi- unthreatened homeland in order to deter both nuclear
tional American policy of independence, toward that and conventional attacks on European and Asian allies.
uniquely American form of universalistic nationalism. When one considers the absence of similarly reliable guar-
The end of the Cold War had an even more profound antees among the various European powers in the past,
effect on the transatlantic relationship than is commonly between, say, Great Britain and France in the 1920s and
'1

I OF PARADISE AND POWER 79

1930s, the willingness of the United States, standing in with Soviet troops massed in the heart of Europe, for any
relative safety behind two oceans, to link its very survival American foreign policy to succeed if it was not "multi-
to that of other nations was rather extraordinary. lateral" in its inclusion of Western European interests. On
America's strategic and economic "generosity;' if one the other hand, genuine idealistic multilateralism had
can call it that, was, of course, closely related to Ameri- been interred for most Americans along with Wilson and
can interests. As Acheson put it, "For the United States to the League of Nations Covenant. Dean Acheson, among
take steps to strengthen countries threatened with Soviet the leading architects of the postwar international order,
aggression or Communist subversion ... was to protect considered the UN Charter "impracticable" and the United
\
t the security of the United States-it was to protect free- Nations itself an example of a misguided Wilsonian "faith
I.~·
i. dom itsel£:'59 But this identification of the interests of in the perfectibility of man and the advent of universal
others with its own interests was a striking quality of peace and law:' 60 He and most others present at the crea-
American foreign and defense policy after World War II. tion of the postWar order were idealists, but they were
After Munich, after Pearl Harbor, and after the onset of practical idealists. They believed it was essential to present
the Cold War, Americans increasingly embraced the con- a common Western front to the Communist bloc, and if
viction that their own well-being depended fundamen- that meant swallowing what Acheson disparaged as the
tally on the well-being of others, that American prosperity "holy writ" of the UN Charter, they were prepared to play
could not occur in the absence of global prosperity, that along. For Acheson, support for the UN was nothing more
American national security was impossible without a than "an aid to diplomacy:' 61 This is important, because
broad measure of international security. This was a doc- many aspects of American behavior during the Cold War
trine of self-interest, but it was the most enlightened kind that both Europeans and many Americans in retrospect
of self-interest-to the point where it was at times almost find so admirable, and whose passing they so lament, rep-
indistinguishable from idealism. resented concessions made in the cause of Western unity.
Almost, but never entirely. Idealism was never the sole That unity was not always easy to maintain. Ameri-
source of American generosity or its propensity to seek to can hostility to de Gaulle's determined independence,
work in concert with its allies. American Cold War multi- American suspicion about British imperialism, arguments
lateralism was more instrumental than idealistic in its over Germany's Ostpolitik, strategic debates over arms
motives. After all, "going it alone" after 1945 meant going it agreements and arms buildups, especially during the Rea-
alone against the Soviet Union. Going it alone meant gan years, all threatened to open cracks in the alliance. But
shearing apart the West. Nor was it really conceivable, 60 Quoted in James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who
Created the American World (New York, 1998), p.107.
59 Quoted in Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 452. 61 Ibid., p. 108.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 8 1

the cracks were always healed, because everyone agreed that the West had ceased to exist. Nor was it that the West
that while disagreements were inevitable, fissures were had ceased to face enemies, for surely militant Muslim
dangerous. If "the West" was divided, it would fall. The fundamentalism is an implacable enemy of the West. But
danger was not only strategic; it was ideological, even psy- the central point of Francis Fukuyama's famous essay,
chological. "The West" had to mean something, otherwise "The End of History;' was irrefutable: The centuries-long
what were we defending? And, of course, during the Cold struggle among opposing conceptions of how mankind
War, "the West" did mean something. It was the liberal, might govern itself had been definitively settled in favor of
democratic choice of a large segment of humanity, stand- the Western liberal ideal. Muslim fundamentalism might
ing in opposition to the alternative choice that existed on have its following in the parts of the world where Muslims
the other side of the Berlin Wall. predominate. Nor can we doubt any longer its capacity to
This powerful strategic, ideological, and psychologi- inflict horrific damage on the West. But as Fukuyama and
cal need to demonstrate that there was indeed a cohesive, others have pointed out, Muslim fundamentalism does
unified West went down with the Berlin Wall and the not present a serious challenge to the universal principles
statues of Lenin in Moscow. The loss was partly masked of Western liberalism. The existence of Muslim funda-
during the 1990s. Many saw t.he struggles in Bosnia and mentalism may force Americans and Europeans to defend
Kosovo as a new test of the West. The enlargement of themselves against devastating attack, and even to cooper-
NATO to include former Warsaw Pact nations was an ate in providing a common defense. But it does not force
ingathering of peoples who had been forcibly excluded "the West" to prove itself unified and coherent, as Soviet
from the West and wanted to be part of it again. They saw communism once had.
NATO as not only or even primarily a security organiza- With less need to preserve and demonstrate the exis-
tion but simply as the one and only institution that tence of a cohesive "West;' it was inevitable that the gen-
embodied the transatlantic West. Certainly, the United erosity that had characterized American foreign policy
Nations was not "the West:' for fifty years would diminish after the Cold War ended.
But the very success of the transatlantic project, the This may be something to lament, but it is not some-
solution of the European security dilemma, the solution thing to be surprised at. The existence of the Soviet Union
of the German problem, the completion of a Europe and the international communist threat had disciplined
"whole and free;' the settlement of the Balkan conflicts, Americans and made them see that their enlightened self-
the creation of a fairly stable zone of peace and democracy interest lay in a relatively generous foreign policy, espe-
on the European continent-all these great and once cially toward Europe. After the end of the Cold War, that
unimaginable accomplishments had the inevitable effect discipline was no longer present. The end of the Cold War
of diminishing the significance of "the West." It was not subtly shifted the old equation between idealism and inter-
 OF PARADISE AND POWER

est. Indeed, those who decry the decline of American gen- of a rising Republican Right. Realist international rela-
erosity in the post-Cold War era must at least reckon with tions theorists and policymakers, the dominant intellec-
the logic of that decline. Since Americans objectively had tual force in the American foreign policy establishment,
less interest in a foreign policy characterized by generosity, also pushed the United States back in the direction of a
for the United States to have maintained the same degree more narrow nationalism. They decried what Michael
of generosity in its foreign policy as it had during the Cold Mandelbaum famously called the "international social
War, the same commitment to international institutions, work'' allegedly undertaken by the Clinton administration
the same concern for and deference to allies, the American in Bosnia and Haiti. They insisted that the United States
people would have had to become even more idealistic. return to a more iritent focus on the "national interest:'
In fact, Americans are no more or less idealistic than now more narrowly defined than it had been during the
they were fifty years ago. It is objective reality that has Cold War. American realists from Brent Scowcroft to
changed, not the American character. It was the changed Colin Powell to James Baker to Lawrence Eagleburger did
international circumstances after the Cold War that opened not believe the United States should take on the burden of
the way to political forces in Congress, chiefly though not solving the Balkan crisis or other "humanitarian" crises
exclusively Republican, which aimed to rewrite old multi- around the world. The Cold War was over, they argued,
lateral agreements and defeat new ones, to extricate the and it was therefore possible for American foreign policy
United States from treaty obligations now considered oner- to "return to normal:'
ous or excessively intrusive into American sovereignty. Post-Cold War "normalcy;' however, meant fewer con-
What was new was not the existence of such forces and cessions to international public opinion, less deference to
attitudes, for they had always been present in American allies, more freedom to act as the United States saw fit.
politics. They had dominated American politics through- These realists gave intellectual legitimacy to the forces in
out the 1920s and 1930s, a period ushered in by a Repub- Congress who coupled talk of the "national interest" with
lican president promising a "return to normalcy" after calls for reductions in overseas involvements of all kind. If
the ambitious idealism of the Wilson years. But during the "national interest" was to be narrowly conceived, many
the Cold War, and especially during the years domi- Republicans asked, why, exactly, was it still in the "national
nated by Republican presidents from Nixon to Reagan, the interest" for the United States to pay its comparatively
grand anti-communist strategy had overwhelmed such exorbitant UN dues? A case that had been easier to make
narrow nationalist sentiments and trumped concerns for when the preservation of Western unity against commu-
sovereignty. nism was the goal of American foreign policy was now
Nor was America's post-Cold War turn toward a more harder to make in the absence of such a far-reaching and
nationalist approach to foreign policy simply the product enlightened definition of the American "national interest:'
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 85

Even the Clinton administration, more idealistic and, transatlantic goal was no longer a unified West; the Euro-
perhaps ironically, more wedded to the Cold War foreign peans themselves no longer thought in such terms. In-
policy of generosity than the realists and Republicans, stead, Europeans spoke of "Europe" as another pole in
nevertheless could not escape the new post-Cold War a new multipolar world-a counterbalance to America.
reality. It was Clinton, after all, who ran for president in Europe would establish its own separate foreign policy
1992 on a platform declaring that the American economy and defense "identity" outside of NATO. The institutions
mattered and foreign policy did not. Clinton stepped in to Europeans revered were the European Union and the
try to repair "the West" only after trying desperately not to United Nations. But for Americans, as for Central and
take on that responsibility. When the administration of Eastern Europeans, the UN was not "the West;' and the
George W. Bush came to office in January 2001, bringing European Union was not "the West:' Only NATO was "the
with it the realist-nationalism of 1990s Republicanism, West;' and now Europeans were building an alternative to
"the West" as a functioning concept in American foreign NATO. Everything the Europeans were doing made sense
policy had become dormant. When the terrorists struck from a European perspective; and the project of European
the United States eight months later, the Cold War equa- integration was objectively of benefit to the United States,
tion was completely inverted. Now, with the threat brought at least insofar as it strengthened the peace. Nor was it the
directly to American soil, overleaping that of America's intention of most Europeans to raise a challenge to the
allies, the paramount issue was America's unique suffering United States, much less to the idea of"the West:' But how
and vulnerability, not "the West:' surprising was it that Americans no longer placed as high
The declining significance of "the West" as an organ- a priority on the unity of the West and the cohesion of the
izing principle of foreign policy was not just an American alliance as they once had? Europeans had undertaken an
phenomenon, however. Post-Cold War Europe agreed all-consuming project in which the United States by defi-
that the issue was no longer "the West." For Europeans, nition could have no part. The United States, meanwhile,
the issue became "Europe:' Proving that there was a has projects of its own.
united Europe took precedence over proving that there
was a united West. A European "nationalism" mirrored
the American nationalism, and although this was not ADJUSTING TO HEGEMONY
Europe's intent, the present gap between the United States
and Europe today may be traced in part to Europe's deci- America did not change on September n. It only became
sion to establish itself as a single entity apart from the more itself. Nor should there be any mystery about the
United States. course America is on, and has been on, not only over the
This effort impressed on American minds that the past year or over the past decade, but for the better part
 OF PARADISE AND POWER

of the past six decades, and, one might even say, for the independence and even before, Americans who disagreed
better part of the past four centuries. It is an objective on many things always shared a common belief in their
fact that Americans have been expanding their power nation's great destiny. Even as a weak collection ofloosely
and influence in ever-widening arcs since even before united colonies stretched out across the Atlantic Coast,
they founded their own independent nation. The hege- threatened on all sides by European empires and an
mony that America established within the Western Hemi- untamed wilderness, the United States had appeared to its
sphere in the nineteenth century has been a permanent leaders a "Hercules in the cradle;' "the embryo of a great
feature of international politics ever since. The expan- empire:' To the generation of the early republic, to
sion of America's strategic reach into Europe and East Asia Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and Jefferson, nothing
that came with the Second World War has never been was more certain than that the North American continent
retracted. Indeed, it is somewhat remarkable to reflect that would be subdued, American wealth and population
more than fifty years after the end of that war-a period would grow, and the young republic would someday come
that has seen Japanese and German enemies completely to dominate the Western Hemisphere and take its place
transformed into valued friends and allies-and more among the world's great powers. Jefferson foresaw the
than a decade after the Cold War-which ended in another establishment of a vast "empire of liberty:' Hamilton
stunning transformation of a defeated foe-the United believed America would, "erelong, assume an attitude cor-
States nevertheless remains, and clearly intends to remain, respondent with its great destinies-majestic, efficient, and
the dominant strategic force in both East Asia and Europe. operative of great things. A noble career lies before it:'62
The end of the Cold War was taken by Americans as an For those early generations of Americans, the promise
opportunity not to retract but to expand their reach, to of national greatness was not merely a comforting hope
expand the alliance they lead eastward toward Russia, to but an integral part of the national identity, inextricably
strengthen their relations among the increasingly demo- entwined with the national ideology. The United States
cratic powers of East Asia, to stake out interests in parts of must become a great power, and perhaps the greatest
the world, like Central Asia, that most Americans never power, they and many subsequent generations of Ameri-
knew existed before. cans believed, because the principles and ideals upon
The myth of America's "isolationist" tradition is which it was founded were unquestionably superior-
remarkably resilient. But it is a myth. Expansion of terri- superior not only to those of the corrupt monarchies of
tory and influence has been the inescapable reality of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, but to the
American history, and it has not been an unconscious ideas that had shaped nations and governments through-
expansion. The ambition to play a grand role on the world
stage is deeply rooted in the American character. Since 62 Quoted in Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton, p. 195.
~r··-,-----~---------~::--. ------------!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:t OF PARADISE AND POWER

out human history. The proof of the transcendent impor- faster and getting younger while the European population
tance of the American experiment would be found not declines and steadily ages. According to The Economist,
only in the continual perfection of American institutions if present trends continue, the American economy, now
at home but also in the spread of American influence in roughly the same size as the European economy, could
the world. Americans have always been internationalists, grow to be more than twice the size of Europe's by 2050.
therefore, but their internationalism has always been a Today the median age of Americans is 35.5; in Europe it is
by-product of their nationalism. When Americans sought 37·7· By 2050, the American median age will be 36.2. In
legitimacy for their actions abroad, they sought it not Europe, if present trends persist, it will be 52.7. That
from supranational institutions but from their own prin- means, among other things, that the financial burden
ciples. That is why it was always so easy for so many Ameri- of caring for elderly dependents will grow much higher
cans to believe, as so many still believe today, that by in Europe than in the United States. And that means
advancing their own interests they advance the interests of Europeans will have even less money to spend on defense
humanity. As Benjamin Franklin put it, America's "cause in the coming years and decades than they do today. As
is the cause of all mankind:'63 The Economist observes, "The long-term logic of demog-
This enduring American view of their nation's excep- raphy seems likely to entrench America's power and to
tional place in history, their conviction that their interests widen existing transatlantic rifts;' providing a stark "con-
and the world's interests are one, may be welcomed, trast between youthful, exuberant, multi-colouredAmerica
ridiculed, or lamented. But it should not be doubted. And and ageing, decrepit, inward-looking Europe."64
just as there is little reason to expect Europe to change its If America's relative power will not diminish, neither
fundamental course, there is little cause to believe the are Americans likely to change their views of how that
United States will change its own course, or begin to con- power is to be used. In fact, despite all the seismic geo-
duct itself in the world in a fundamentally different man- political shifts that have occurred since 1941, Americans
ner. Absent some unforeseen catastrophe-not a setback have been fairly consistent in their thinking about the
in Iraq or "another Vietnam;' but a military or economic nature of world affairs and about America's role in shap-
calamity great enough to destroy the very sources of ing the world to suit its interests and ideals. The founding
American power-it is reasonable to assume that we have document of the Cold War, Kennan's "Long Telegram;'
only just entered a long era of American hegemony. Demo- starkly set out the dominant perspective of America's
graphic trends show the American population growing postwar strategic culture: The Soviet Union was "imper-
vious to the logic of reason;' Kennan wrote, but would
63 Quoted in Edward Handler, America and Europe in the Political

Thought ofJohn Adams (Cambridge, MA, 1964), p. 102. 64 "Half a Billion Americans?;' The Economist, August 22, 2002.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 9 1

be "highly sensitive to the logic of force:' 65 A good lib- longer had full confidence in such a possibility. After Mu-
eral Democrat like Clark Clifford agreed that the "lan- nich and Pearl Harbor, and then, after a fleeting moment
guage of military power" was the only language that the of renewed idealism, the plunge into the Cold War, Ken-
Soviets understood, and that the Soviet empire had to be nan's "logic of force" became the operating assumption of
considered a "distinct entity with which conflict is not American strategy. Acheson spoke of building up "situa-
predestined but with which we cannot pursue common tions of strength" around the globe. The "lesson of Mu-
goals:' 66 Few Americans would put things that starkly nich" came to dominate American strategic thought, and
today, but many Americans would agree with the senti- although it was supplanted for a brief time by the "lesson
ments. Last year large majorities of Democrats and Repub- of Vietnam;' today it remains the dominant paradigm.
licans in both houses of Congress agreed that the "language While a small segment of the American elite still yearns
of military power" might be all that Saddam Hussein for "global governance" and eschews military force, Ameri-
understood. cans from Madeleine Albright to Donald Rumsfeld, from
\ It is not that Americans never flirted with the kind of Brent Scowcroft to Anthony Lake, still remember Munich,
ii;
:~

internationalist idealism that now permeates Europe. In figuratively if not literally. And for younger generations of
the first half of the twentieth century, Americans fought Americans who do not remember Munich or Pearl Har-
Wilson's "war to end all wars;' which was followed a bor, there is now September n. One of the things that
decade later by an American secretary of state putting his most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a
signature to a treaty outlawing war. In the 1930s, Franklin philosophical, even metaphysical disagreement over where
Roosevelt put his faith in nonaggression pacts and asked exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the
merely that Hitler promise not to attack a list of countries laws of the jungle and the laws of reason. Americans do
Roosevelt presented to him. Even after the Yalta confer- not believe we are as close to the realization of the Kantian
ence of 1945, a dying FDR could proclaim "the end of the dream as do Europeans.
system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the So where do we go from here? Again, it is not hard to
spheres of influence, the balances of power:' and to prom- see where America is going. The September 11 attacks
ise in their stead "a universal organization in which all shifted and accelerated but did not fundamentally alter a
peace-loving Nations will finally have a chance to join ... course the United States was already on. They certainly
a permanent structure of peace:' 67 But Roosevelt no did not alter but only reinforced American attitudes toward
power. Recall that even before September 11, Acheson's
successors were still, if somewhat distractedly, building
65 Quoted in Chace, Acheson, p. 150.
66 Quoted in ibid., p. 157. "situations of strength" around the world. Before Sep-
67 Quoted in Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 416. tember 11, and indeed, even before the election of George
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 93

W. Bush, American strategic thinkers and Pentagon plan- nity had begun to focus its attention on China. Few
ners were looking ahead to the next strategic challenges believed that a war with China was probable in the near
that seemed likely to arise. One of those challenges was future-unless as a result of some crisis over Taiwan-
Iraq. During the Clinton years, Congress had passed by a but many believed that some confrontation with China
nearly unanimous vote a bill authorizing military and would become increasingly likely within the coming two
financial support for Iraqi opposition forces, and the sec- decades, as China's military capacity and geopolitical
ond Bush administration was considering plans to desta- ambitions grew. This concern about China was one of the
bilize Iraq before the terrorists struck on September 11. driving forces behind the demand for technological mod-
The Clinton administration also laid the foundations for ernization of the American military; it was, quietly, one of
a new ballistic missile defense system to defend against the motives behind the push for a new missile defense
rogue states such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Had AI program; and in a broad sense it had already become an
Gore been elected, and had there been no terrorist attacks organizing principle of American strategic planning. The
on September 11, these programs-aimed squarely at view of China as the next big strategic challenge took hold
Bush's "axis of evil"-would still be under way. in the Clinton Pentagon, and was given official sanction
Americans before September 11 were augmenting, not by President Bush when he declared pointedly before and
diminishing, their military power. In the 2000 election after his election that China was not a strategic partner
campaign, Bush and Gore both promised to increase but a strategic competitor of the United States.
defense spending, responding not to any particular threat When the Bush administration released its new Na-
but only to the general perception that the American tional Security Strategy in September of last year, the
defense budget-then running at close to $300 billion ambitiousness of American strategy left many Europeans,
per year-was inadequate to meet the nation's strategic and even some Americans, breathless. The new strategy
requirements. American military and civilian leaders inside was seen as a response to September 11, and perhaps in the
and outside the Pentagon were seized with the need to minds of those who wrote it, it was. But the striking thing
modernize American forces, to take advantage of what about that document is that aside from a few references to
was and is regarded as a "revolution in military affairs" the idea of "pre-emption;' which itself was hardly a novel
that could change the very nature of the way wars are concept, the Bush administration's "new" strategy was lit-
fought. Behind this enthusiasm was a genuine concern tle more than a restatement of American policies, many
that if the United States did not make the necessary invest- going back a half century. The Bush strategy said noth-
ments in technological transformation, its forces, its secu- ing about the promotion of democracy abroad that had
rity, and the world's security would be at risk in the future. not been said with at least equal fervor by Harry Truman,
Before September 11, the American strategic commu- John F. Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan. The declaration of
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 95

America's intent to remain the world's pre-eminent mili- the challenge as "a test of the overall worth of the United
tary power, and to remain strong enough to discourage States as a nation among nations." He even suggested that
any other power from challenging American pre-eminence, Americans should express their "gratitude to a Providence
was merely the public expression of what had been an which, by providing [them] with this implacable chal-
unspoken premise of American strategic planning-if not lenge, has made their entire security as a nation depend-
of actual defense spending and military capability-since ent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the
the end of the Cold War. responsibilities of moral and political leadership that his-
The policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations, tory plainly intended them to bear." 69
well or ill designed, nevertheless rested on a common Americans are idealists. In some matters, they may be
and distinctly American assumption-that is, the United more idealistic than Europeans. But they have no experi-
States as the "indispensable nation:' Americans seek to ence of promoting ideals successfully without power.
defend and advance a liberal international order. But the Certainly, they have no experience of successful suprana-
only stable and successful international order Ameri- tional governance; little to make them place all their faith
cans can imagine is one that has the United States at its in international law and international institutions, much
center. Nor can Americans conceive of an international as they might wish to; and even less to let them travel, with
order that is not defended by power, and specifically by the Europeans, beyond power. Americans, as good chil-
American power. If this is arrogance, at least it is not a new dren of the Enlightenment, still believe in the perfectibil-
arrogance. Henry Kissinger once asked the aging Harry ity of man, and they retain hope for the perfectibility
Truman what he wanted to be remembered for. Truman of the world. But they remain realists in the limited sense
answered: "We completely defeated our enemies and made that they still believe in the necessity of power in a world
them surrender. And then we helped them to recover, that remains far from perfection. Such law as there
to become democratic, and to rejoin the community of may be to regulate international behavior, they believe,
nations. Only America could have done that:'68 Even the exists because a power like the United States defends it by
most hardheaded American realists have grown sentimen- force of arms. In other words, just as Europeans claim,
tal contemplating what Reinhold Niebuhr once called Americans can still sometimes see themselves in heroic
America's "responsibility" for "solving ... the world prob- terms-as Gary Cooper at high noon. They will defend
lem." George Kennan, setting forth his doctrine of the townspeople, whether the townspeople want them to
containment-which he foresaw would be a terribly diffi- or not.
cult strategy for a democracy to sustain-nevertheless saw Today, as a result of the September u terrorist attacks,

68 Quoted in Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 425. 69 X [George F. Kennan], "The Sources of Soviet Conduct,"p.169.
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 97

the United States is embarked on yet another expansion of as the crisis over Iraq and the greater Middle East-
its strategic purview. Just as the Japanese attack on Pearl a region where both American and European interests
Harbor, which should not really have come as such a sur- are great but where American and European differences
prise, led to an enduring American role in East Asia and in have proved especially acute. The next international crisis
Europe, so September n, which future historians will no could come in East Asia. Given its distance from Europe
doubt depict as the inevitable consequence of American and the smaller European interest there, and the fact that
involvement in the Muslim world, will likely produce a Europeans could bring even less power to bear in East Asia
lasting American military presence in the Persian Gulf than they can in the Middle East, thereby making them
and Central Asia, and perhaps a long-term occupation of even less relevant to American strategic planning, it is pos-
one of the Arab world's largest countries. Americans may sible that an Asian crisis would not lead to another trans-
be surprised to find themselves in such a position, just as atlantic divide of the magnitude of that which we have
Americans of the 1930s would have been stunned to find been experiencing.
themselves an occupying power in both Germany and In short, although it is difficult to foresee a closing of
Japan less than a decade later. But viewed from the per- the gap between American and European perceptions of
spective of the grand sweep of American history, a history the world, that gap may be more manageable than it cur-
marked by the nation's steady expansion and a seemingly rently appears. There need be no "clash of civilizations"
ineluctable rise from perilous weakness to the present within what used to be called "the West:' The task, for
global hegemony, this latest expansion of America's strate- both Europeans and Americans, is to readjust to the new
gic role may be less than shocking. reality of American hegemony. And perhaps, as the psy-
What does all this mean for the transatlantic relation- chiatrists like to claim, the first step in managing this
ship? Can Europe possibly follow where America leads? problem is to understand it and to acknowledge that it
And if it cannot, does that matter? exists.
One answer to these questions is that the crisis over Certainly Americans, when they think about Europe,
Iraq has cast the transatlantic problem in the harshest should not lose sight of the main point: The new Europe
possible light. When that crisis subsides, as in time it will, is indeed a blessed miracle and a reason for enormous
the questions of power that most divide Americans and celebration-on both sides of the Atlantic. For Europeans,
Europeans may subside a bit as well; the common political it is the realization of a long and improbable dream: a
culture and the economic ties that bind Americans and continent free from nationalist strife and blood feuds,
Europeans will then come to the fore-until the next from military competition and arms races. War between
international strategic crisis. But perhaps the next crisis the major European powers is almost unimaginable. After
will not bring out transatlantic disagreements as severely centuries of misery, not only for Europeans but also for
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 99

those pulled into their conflicts-as Americans were twice spending around 7 percent of its GDP on defense), believes
in the past century-the new Europe really has emerged the United States can sustain its current military spending
as a paradise. It is something to be cherished and guarded, levels and its current global dominance far into the future.
not least by Americans, who have shed blood on Europe's The United States can manage, therefore, at least in mate-
soil and would shed more should the new Europe ever fail. rial terms. Nor can one argue that the American people
This does not mean, however, that the United States can are unwilling to shoulder this global burden, since they
or should rely on Europe in the future as it has in the past. have done so for a decade already, and after September n
Americans should not let nostalgia for what may have they seem willing to continue doing so for a long time to
been the unusual circumstances of the Cold War mislead come. Americans apparently feel no resentment at not
them about the nature of their strategic relationship with being able to enter Europe's "postmodern" world. There is
the European powers in the post-Cold War era. no evidence that most Americans desire to. Partly because
Can the United States prepare for and respond to the they are so powerful, they take pride in their nation's mili-
strategic challenges around the world without much help tary power and their nation's special role in the world.
from Europe? The simple answer is that it already does. The dangers of the present transatlantic predicament,
The United States has maintained strategic stability in then, lie neither in American will nor capability, but in the
Asia with no help from Europe; In the various crises in the inherent moral tension of the current international situa-
Middle East and Persian Gulf over the past decade, includ- tion. As is so often the case in human affairs, the real ques-
ing the present one, European help, even when enthusias- tion is one of intangibles-of fears, passions, and beliefs.
tically offered, has been token. Whatever Europe can or The problem is that the United States must sometimes
cannot offer in terms of moral and political support, it has play by the rules of a Hobbesian world, even though in
had little to offer the United States in strategic military doing so it violates Europe's postmodern norms. It must
terms since the end of the Cold War-except, of course, refuse to abide by certain international conventions that
that most valuable of strategic assets, a Europe at peace. may constrain its ability to fight effectively in Robert
Today the United States spends a little more than 3 per- Cooper's jungle. It must support arms control, but not
cent of its GDP on defense. Were Americans to increase always for itself. It must live by a double standard. And it
that to 4 percent-meaning a defense budget in excess of must sometimes act unilaterally, not out of a passion for
$soo billion per year-it would still represent a smaller unilateralism but only because, given a weak Europe that
percentage of national wealth than Americans spent on has moved beyond power, the United States has no choice
defense throughout most of the past half century. Even but to act unilaterally.
Paul Kennedy, who invented the term "imperial over- Few Europeans admit, as Cooper does implicitly, that
stretch" in the late 1980s (when the United States was such American behavior may redound to the greater bene-
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 1 0 1

fit of the civilized world, that American power, even But leaving aside French amour propre, did not de Gaulle
employed under a double standard, may be the best means have a point? If Americans were to decide that Europe was
of advancing human progress-and perhaps the only no more than an irritating irrelevancy, would American
means. As Niebuhr wrote a half century ago, America's society gradually become unmoored from what we now
"inordinate power;' for all its "perils;' provides "some real call "the West"? It is not a risk to be taken lightly, on either
advantages for the world community:'7° Instead, many side of the Atlantic.
Europeans today have come to consider the United States So what is to be done? The obvious answer is that
itself to be the outlaw, a rogue colossus. The danger-if it Europe should follow the course that Cooper, Ash, Rob-
is a danger-is that the United States and Europe could ertson, and others recommend and build up its military
become positively estranged. Europeans could become capabilities, even if only marginally. There is not much
more and more shrill in their attacks on the United States. ground for hope that this will happen. But, then, who
The United States could become less inclined to listen, or knows? Maybe concern about America's overweening
perhaps even to care. The day could come, if it has not power really will create some energy in Europe. Perhaps
already, when Americans might no more heed the pro- the atavistic impulses that still swirl in the hearts of Ger-
nouncements of the EU than they do the pronounce- mans, Britons, and Frenchmen-the memory of power,
ments of ASEAN or the Andean Pact. international influence, and national ambition-can still
To those of us who came of age in the Cold War, the be played upon. Some Britons still remember empire;
strategic decoupling of Europe and the United States some Frenchmen still yearn for la gloire; some Germans
seems frightening. De Gaulle, when confronted by FDR's still want their place in the sun. These urges are now
vision of a world where Europe was irrelevant, recoiled mostly channeled into the grand European project, but
and suggested that this vision "risked endangering the they could find more traditional expression. Whether this
Western world:' If Western Europe was to be considered a is to be hoped for or feared is another question. It would
"secondary matter" by the United States, would not FDR be better still if Europeans could move beyond fear and
only "weaken the very cause he meant to serve-that of anger at the rogue colossus and remember, again, .the vital
civilization?" Western Europe, de Gaulle maintained, was necessity of having a strong, even predominant America-
"essential to the West. Nothing can replace the value, the for the world and especially for Europe. It would seem to
power, the shining example of the ancient peoples:' be an acceptable price to pay for paradise.
Typically, he insisted this was "true of France above all:'71 Americans can help. It is true that the Bush adminis-
tration came into office with something of a chip on its
7° Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York,
1962), p. 134 shoulder. The realist-nationalist impulses it inherited
71 Quoted in Harper, American Visions ofEurope, pp.u4-15. from the Republican Congress of the 1990s made it appear
 OF PARADISE AND POWER 103

almost eager to scorn the opinions of much of the rest of opinion of mankind:' This was always the wisest policy.
the world. The picture it painted in its early months was of And there is certainly benefit in it for the United States:
a behemoth thrashing about against constraints that only Winning the material and moral support of friends and
it could see. It was hostile to the new Europe-as to a allies, especially in Europe, is unquestionably preferable to
lesser extent was the Clinton administration-seeing it acting alone in the face of European anxiety and hostility.
not so much as an ally but as an albatross. Even after These are small steps, and they will not address the
September u, when the Europeans offered their very lim- deep problems that beset the transatlantic relationship
ited military capabilities in the fight in Mghanistan, the today. But, after all, it is more than a cliche that the United
United States resisted, fearing that European cooperation States and Europe share a set of common Western beliefs.
was a ruse to tie America down. The Bush administration Their aspirations for humanity are much the same, even if
viewed NATO's historic decision to aid the United States their vast disparity of power has now put them in very dif-
under Article sless as a boon than as a booby trap. An ferent places. Perhaps it is not too naively optimistic to
opportunity to draw Europe into common battle out in believe that a little common understanding could still go a
the Hobbesian world, even in a minor role, was thereby long way.
unnecessarily squandered.
But Americans are powerful enough that they need
not fear Europeans, even when bearing gifts. Rather than
viewing the United States as a Gulliver tied down by
Lilliputian threads, American leaders should realize that
they are hardly constrained at all, that Europe is not really
capable of constraining the United States. If the United
States could move past the anxiety engendered by this
inaccurate sense of constraint, it could begin to show
more understanding for the sensibilities of others, a lit-
tle more of the generosity of spirit that characterized
American foreign policy during the Cold War. It could pay
its respects to multilateralism and the rule of law, and try
to build some international political capital for those
moments when multilateralism is impossible and unilat-
eral action unavoidable. It could, in short, take more care
to show what the founders called a "decent respect for the
 A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for

International Peace, where he is director of the U.S. Leadership
Project. In addition to a monthly column in the Washington
Post, he is the author of A Twilight Struggle: American Power and
Nicaragua, 1971-1990, and coeditor, with William Kristol, of
Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and
Defense Policy. Kagan served in the State Department from 1984
to 1988.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

This book was set in Minion, a typeface produced by the Adobe

Corporation specifically for the Macintosh personal computer
and released in 1990. Designed by Robert Slimbach, Minion
combines the classic characteristics of old-style faces with the full
complement of weights required for modern typesetting.