A Book Review : "Of Paradise and Power"
by Randy Mahoney
At the time of publication (2004), Robert Kagan was senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kagan served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988.
Kagan writes clearly, concisely and candidly. This is a short book; 103 pages. The Vintage Books paperback edition I read contains a fifty page afterword which expands on what he calls the "crisis of legitimacy" regarding American power.
The subtitle of the book is : America and Europe in the New World Order. I think Kagan would place the beginning of this "new world order" at the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Those events marked the beginning of a significant divergence of European and American perspectives on power.
At the beginning of the book, he writes : "One cannot generalize about Europeans." He then proceeds to generalize about Europeans (and Americans) throughout the rest of the book. This is not really a criticism, since Kagan must necessarily generalize to some extent to build his thesis that the Europeans have mostly abandoned the idea of the desirability of national power and entered "a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation."
How has this come about? Europe's long history of warfare and especially the two World Wars of the last century have exhausted Europe militarily, economically and psychically. It is as if they are expressing a collective "we deserve a break today." And the advent of the hyperpower status of the United States has, at least temporarily, given Europe that break.
After WW II, while Europe rebuilt and the Soviet threat became apparent, the U.S. capitalized on its head start in the nuclear arms race, countering the Soviets with a "nuclear umbrella" and maintaining a military presence in Europe. In the early 1990's, there was an expectation among many observers that a new, unified Europe would rise to superpower status, sharing with the U.S. the burden of defending the liberal democracies of the West and elsewhere. This didn't happen, or rather the military component failed to materialize. As Kagan puts it, "The American nuclear guarantee deprived Europeans of the incentive to spend the kind of money that would have been necessary to restore them to military great-power status."
The European Union has indeed become a formidable economic power, but without a correspondingly potent military capability, Europe remains dependent and has but little influence when crises erupt, even in its own backyard, as the war in Kosovo demonstrated. The United States not only dominated the military action, but also the international diplomacy surrounding that conflict.
The relative weakness of Europe has psychological consequences that affect its worldview. The perception of threats is significantly different among the Europeans compared to Americans. The strong opposition to the Iraq war by most Europeans may be an example of this. Americans generally had a much lower tolerance of the perceived threat posed by Saddam. Since America could do something about removing the threat, it seemed more than reasonable to many Americans that she should. Had the Europeans possessed power closer to parity with the U.S., the weight of their opinion may well have changed the nature of that conflict. It may not have prevented the war, but it may have provided a much larger coalition and therefore a greater legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
The question of legitimacy is a noticeable undercurrent throughout the book and is the subject of the long afterword. Kagan is quite open and honest about the growth of American power, economic and military, and how it has been used. He points out that the U.S. has, from time to time, engaged in clandestine interventions and overthrows of third world regimes "based on the sometimes dubious proposition that any [such] action taken by the U.S." ... "was by definition an act of collective defense of the 'free world' against an inherently aggressive international communism." These events are remembered by many around the world, even if Americans find them easy to forget, and contribute to a loss of credibility further aggravated by a couple of recent "intelligence failures" by what are presumably the best informed agencies on earth.
It should be noted that Robert Kagan is a well known neoconservative who is a strong supporter of the use of U.S. military power and diplomatic influence. He might even be fairly described as one of the architects of policies that resulted in the invasion of Iraq. He is justifiably concerned that if the U.S. is to maintain its preeminent position in world affairs, the crucial issue of international legitimacy must be faced. To quote British diplomat Robert Cooper, "The difficulty with the American monopoly of force in the world community is that it is American and will be exercised, necessarily, in the interests of the United States. This will not be seen as legitimate." Aside from American military adventurism of the past, perhaps the event most damaging to legitimacy was the end of the Cold War. America is the victim of its own success. As long as the balance of power existed with the Soviets, U.S. power was considered essential to keeping the free and the not-so-free world protected from domination.
Now even Europe, the prime beneficiary of American largesse for a century, is wary and distrustful. Some Americans may ask, "What's the big deal? Who cares if some foreign countries don't like us? What's new? Too bad!" I think this is really what this book is about. The crisis of legitimacy is important because although America is rich and powerful, she is not self-sufficient. Kagan points out that the very concept of "The West" is coming into doubt. The long legacy of liberal thought born in the Enlightenment that supports modern constitutional democracies could be in danger if the United States does not treat our allies and even our enemies with due respect. It has been said that all wars are economic. This may not be strictly true, but some wars certainly are. If some country with a resource perceived to be important to America were to stubbornly refuse to sell, will an arrogant United States simply take it? After all, who could stop the most powerful nation on earth? No one. That is the point. That is the fear.
Maybe the Europeans will once again acquire a taste for martial glory and build up their military might. The Chinese are growing rapidly, but any serious challenger for global power must climb an increasingly steep hill as the United States continues to add to its arsenal and its technological advantage. The imbalance of power, with all its risks, will persist for decades to come.
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