'Power
and Weakness' or Challenge and Response?
Reflections
on the Kagan Thesis
By
Christopher J. Makins (1)
President of the Atlantic Council of the United
States
February 6, 2004
Introduction
The relationship between the United States and the
countries of Western Europe, like most relationships,
whether personal or international, is hard to capture in
writing. Few of the hundreds of articles devoted to it
succeed in presenting in a satisfactory or accurate
balance the elements of practice and psychology, of
reality and rhetoric, of action and ideology, that
compose the whole. There is a constant temptation to
exaggerate transatlantic differences or similarities,
whether to suit the argument or the prejudice of the
writer or merely to reduce the complexities of the true
picture to manageable scale for an essay, article or
short report. Nor is it easy to capture the dynamics of
attitudes on the two sides of the oceans as individual
leaders and the political systems and societies they
represent try to adapt to changing international
realities, including the changing balance of political,
military and economic strength within the transatlantic
relationship itself.
Robert Kagan's article 'Power and Weakness' (2)
struggles valiantly - and in considerable measure
successfully - with these challenges. The result is an
article that has been more widely discussed and commented
upon than any other on the subject in a very long while.
Many Europeans have reacted favorably on his article,
even though it is in many ways hardly a flattering
portrait of contemporary European leadership and policy.
And those Americans who are predisposed to think of
Europeans as reluctant to shoulder the strategic burdens
of an unsettled world, or would prefer that they not do
so, have found in it chapter and verse for their previous
opinions.
This very success, however, makes a close scrutiny of
Kagan's thesis essential. And such scrutiny, I will
argue, reveals an intriguing and insidious combination of
important insight, unnecessary innuendo (3), and
historical and analytical inexactitude. One difficulty
that his article presents to the commentator is precisely
that these elements are so tightly woven together in a
finely wrought argument that they are hard to separate.
But separated they must be in order to evaluate, and if
necessary revise, his conclusions.
The Insights
First the important insights. I would note four in
particular.
One of the fundamental pillars of the Kagan thesis is
that Europeans are tightly focused on the project of
constructing the European Union and that they see the
political and other processes they have evolved for this
purpose as of broad, if not universal, applicability to
other international problems. European pride in the
manner in which they have created the Union, often in the
face of both other Europeans' and Americans' skepticism,
and in its distinctive characteristics is a real feature
of contemporary Europe. Europeans generally believe two
distinct things. First, that the completion of the Union
by the accession of more members stretching to the limits
of 'Europe' broadly defined can have the benefits for
others that it has had for the existing members.
Secondly, that what they have learned may be applicable
by analogy both in other regions of historic rivalries
(such as South America) and more generally in working
towards a degree of pooled sovereignty in dealing with
some broader international issues. But the view that what
has been achieved in Europe is of universal application
is not by any means unanimous among European policy
makers, nor necessarily decisive in shaping European
policy towards problems outside Europe.
Kagan oscillates between ascribing to Europeans the
belief that their model is universally applicable and the
more limited view that it is applicable only in Europe.
Late in his article, Kagan admits, quoting the British
diplomat Robert Cooper, that Europeans may not really
believe that the principles on which they have
constructed what Cooper and Kagan describe as the Kantian
world of Europe (4) are applicable to the Hobbesian world
beyond. But he makes much of their supposed reluctance to
accept this lack of universality. Were they to do so, he
argues, they would have to admit that the European
project itself was threatened and that, as a result, the
old ghosts of European wars still walked in Europe. Some
Europeans may still have such nightmares (as Mrs.
Thatcher's much noted and little supported anxiety about
German reunification made clear). But there is little
reason to think that these concerns drive European
thinking in the manner Kagan claims. And logically there
is no reason why the fact that the European model may not
be applicable beyond Europe should undermine its validity
and power in the context of Europe itself.
Kagan's second key insight is that Europeans are more
inclined to look to engagement, diplomacy and
multilateral action as the first response to
international disputes and set great store by
international legitimacy and respect for international
norms. The question is how far this really sets them
apart from Americans. Many of the norms and international
institutions that Kagan is implicitly referring to were
adopted at the instigation of the United States, which in
the periods after both world wars, but most especially
the second, set out to create a world based more on law
and accepted norms and the institutions that would permit
this. Indeed much of U.S. policy today, with its emphasis
on human rights and democracy, has resonance in large
part because of the norms promulgated through those
international organizations over the years. And the
growing international tolerance for intervention in what
only recently would have been seen as the internal
affairs of states is set on the same foundation.
It was not on account of some unthinking attachment to
a misguided universalism such as that of which he accuses
Europeans that the United States promoted these
institutions and norms. Rather it did so out of a
broad-minded internationalism that was seen by its
practitioners as the best way to promote U.S. national
interests. There is no doubt scope for discussion as to
whether the great period of the 'creation' after World
War II led to excesses and imperfections that should now
be changed. Even Europeans would mostly be willing to
engage in such a discussion. And Kagan does, towards the
end of his article, recognize that many Americans - I
would suppose a large majority - are still looking
towards a more rule-based international system.
To be sure, these U.S. policies were set on a
foundation of U.S. - and allied - military and economic
strength. The point, however, is that successive U.S.
administrations have sought to move towards an
international order in which norms and laws play a
greater role and military force a lesser one. The
argument with what Kagan describes as the current
European approach is therefore one of proportions, not,
as he often appears to imply, one of absolutes.
Kagan's third important insight, and the proposition
on which more than any other his thesis rests, is that
military force is seen differently in European countries
than in the United States. Kagan discusses some of the
historical roots of this view. He notes, for example,
that in the aftermath of World War II, no European
country (nor indeed the United States) wanted to recreate
a situation in which Germany could project force outside
its borders for at least a considerable length of time.
The subsequent concentration of European military effort
on the territorial defense of Europe was a response to a
primarily U.S. design of how the new Atlantic Alliance
should work in order to deal with what by any measure was
the principal threat of the period.
There was, however, another aspect of the post-War
situation that Kagan does not mention. This is the
systematic U.S. pressure on those European countries that
were inclined to maintain military forces with
extra-European capabilities to abandon the imperial
commitments that made such forces necessary. One can
argue about the precise mix of U.S. motives that drove
this policy. For sure, one was a sense that all, and
more, of the effort that European economies and societies
were likely to be able and willing to put into defense
would be required to deal with the Soviet threat.
Nevertheless, for whatever reasons, the United States was
a prime mover in bringing about the concentration of
European military efforts on a static defense of Europe.
Meanwhile, as British and French power projection
capabilities atrophied, the United States willingly
assumed the burden of developing the only true power
projection forces in the free world. As an historian,
Kagan might well accept the validity of this point and
say that he was merely concerned with the legacy of the
earlier period. The problem is that his analysis does not
incorporate the dynamics of policies on both sides of the
Atlantic at that time and therefore misreads the
potential for change in the current situation.
The fourth key insight is that, especially since the
end of the Cold War, many European countries have
neglected their military establishments and, as a result,
are in a state of increasing military weakness by
comparison with a United States which, even though it
aggressively cashed a peace dividend, nonetheless
continued to work on the modernization of its forces more
than the allies.
Combining these four insights, Kagan makes his key
argument about the importance of power and the fact that,
lacking the power that derives from compelling military
capabilities, Europeans tend to dismiss military
solutions to international disputes. To the extent that
his insights have force, and as already noted they do
have considerable force, this conclusion cannot be
disregarded.
But if Kagan argues that Europeans have a certain
predisposition to non-military solutions, the latter can
legitimately respond that simply because one has the
capability to deal with a problem by force does not mean
that force is the right or, in the long run, the most
effective way to do so. Many would argue that the
experience of recent years in many different situations
has shown the importance of a broad range of instruments
for managing crises. The United States, in this view,
would be well advised to follow the European lead in
trying to build up some of those other instruments in
order to give itself a broader range of policy options
rather than to continue the sterile discussion of whether
it should or should not engage in 'nation-building.'
Kagan's argument has a certain air of might makes right -
or at least U.S. might makes all U.S. policy right - that
abstracts too much from an examination of the other
reasons for which there may be transatlantic policy
differences on some of the international disputes with
which he is concerned. For a country whose president was
elected proclaiming the importance of humility in U.S.
foreign policy, this is rather a strong position. And as
one surveys the problems that the application of U.S.
military force in Afghanistan has left behind after the
initial sweeping military success, a little more humility
and attention to the non-military dimensions of resolving
international crises would seem in order.
Snapshots vs.
Movies
One of the analytical difficulties of writing about
transatlantic differences is that the range of opinions
on any given issue in the United States is almost
precisely matched in most European countries. What
differs is the location of the center of gravity, or of
political salience, of those opinions. What matters,
therefore, in thinking about transatlantic differences is
the distance between the centers of gravity of U.S. and
European opinion at any given time or on any given issue.
But this is not a matter of a fixed distance between two
points. Rather it is a result of the interplay of many
factors within democratic political systems in which
policy is rarely the result of neat analysis or decision
making procedures.
Kagan acknowledges this fact. But he does not admit
its full significance for his argument and this failure
is at the root of the greatest weaknesses in his
conclusions. One of the strengths of his analysis is that
he embraces a broad historical range. But almost
inevitably, given the short compass of an article, he
bases his argument on a set of snapshots of European (and
U.S.) opinion and policy at different times, whereas in
the real world opinion and policy are part of a movie. A
different selection of photographs, chosen from another
analytical perspective, might have yielded a very
different view. In reality, only by capturing the
continual movement of opinions in response to changing
national and international circumstances can one
understand the dynamic of transatlantic relations and
their potential for the future.
Examples of this problem are scattered throughout
'Power and Weakness.' Among the more obvious are Kagan's
description of the 1990s, his view of Europe's assessment
of the threat posed by Iraq after the end of the UNSCOM
inspection system, his apparent view, despite the rapid
change in the evolution of German thinking in particular,
that European defense policies are irretrievably stuck in
the mode of territorial defense, his belief that no
Europeans share U.S. strategic concerns in Asia, and his
argument that the European Union is set on a new mission
civilisatrice to convince the world of the rightness of
its belief in non-military solutions. And on the U.S.
side, the same analytical weakness is evident in the
implicit assumption that the 'Hobbesian' ideas about
international policy characteristic of the current
leadership of the Department of Defense and its
intellectual supporters inside and outside the government
will remain the dominant influence on U.S. policy
indefinitely.
As has already been noted, U.S. policy has
historically been much more 'European' in Kagan's sense
than he would like to admit. And the argument about the
respective merits of military power and 'soft' power for
advancing U.S. interests in the early 21st century is
alive and well in the United States, with powerful voices
on both sides (5).
Moreover, contrary to Kagan's view, the 1990s were
something of a high water mark of transatlantic agreement
on a range of international issues. The decade opened
with extensive European military participation in the
Gulf War coalition. After a period of very 'European'
reticence on the part of the United States, made easier
by exaggerated European claims that Europeans could
manage the breakup of Yugoslavia on their own,
substantial agreement was reached on the need to deal
with successive Balkans crises and on the way in which
they should be dealt with. That agreement, of course,
underscored the lack of credible European military
capabilities needed for the purpose. But it also spurred
the European awareness of this shortcoming and the (still
unconsummated) effort to deal with it through the
creation of the European rapid reaction force. Finally,
in the late 1990s, Europeans and Americans achieved an
unusual commonality of approach towards the
Israeli-Palestinian problem that lasted until the
collapse of the Camp David/Taba process in late 2000 and
early 2001.
But the very same history - and much more that could
be brought forward - points to one of the problems that
European governments have historically had with U.S.
policy - its inconstancy. This is a problem inherent in
the relations between a strong country - and alliance
leader - and its smaller and weaker allies. But the
occasional rapidity and amplitude of the swings in U.S.
policy - most recently between the Clinton and Bush
administrations - needs to enter into any analysis such
as Kagan offers.
More importantly for the present purpose, Kagan
neglects the growing willingness of European governments
to engage their strategic responsibility outside Europe.
He presents the Gulf War as an exclusively U.S.
achievement (Mrs. Thatcher, at least, would have much to
say about that!). For much of his article he neglects the
willingness of Europeans to contribute to the war in
Afghanistan and to shoulder some of the most difficult
tasks there, although he does make a belated bow in their
direction by referring to their offers as a 'missed
opportunity.' The remarkable shift in German attitudes
and policy towards the use of their forces outside
Germany, first in the Balkans and then in Afghanistan,
goes completely unnoted. Some might interpret the recent
German election campaign as evidence of a relapse of the
Germans on this point. But the most immediate outcome is
likely to be an intensification of German involvement in
Afghanistan. German reservations about the use of
military force to achieve a change of regime in Iraq may
be stronger than those of other Europeans and Americans,
but Germans are certainly not alone in raising questions
about such a policy (6).
A more complete picture of the dynamics of the
relationship would show that thinking on both sides of
the Atlantic since the end of the Cold War has been in
rapid evolution. This evolution has been further
accelerated since the tragedy of September 11, 2001.
There is no question that European thinking started
further from the 'Hobbesian' analysis that Kagan asserts
to be typical of the United States (and is certainly
typical of a segment of U.S. opinion) and may have moved
more slowly than U.S. thinking. But move it has and it is
not certain that at the end of the day the gap between
the prevailing approaches in Europe and the United States
will be as great as his article implies.
What this will mean for the evolution of European
defense policies and capabilities is still difficult to
foresee. The obstacles that stand in the way of an
extensive European rearmament program are substantial.
But both Britain and France have recently started to move
in this direction. And developments within the Alliance
and the European Union suggest a greater willingness on
the part of key European governments to look for ways in
which they can contribute more extensively to combined
operations of the kind dear to the hearts of current
Pentagon thinkers. Kagan recognizes this possibility and
notes some European voices that are arguing for this. But
he does not apparently put much faith in such prospects
and, glued to one of his snapshots, allows for little
upside potential (7).
There Are More Things in
Heaven and Earth, Roberto
Almost as important as the flaws in the Kagan analysis
are the elements that he leaves out of consideration
altogether (8).
The most important of these is the role of economics,
and especially trade and investment, in post-World War II
U.S. policy. The central point for the present purpose is
that the United States has championed the development of
a rule-based international trade order because it
overwhelmingly benefited from it. Admittedly the domestic
U.S. consensus on this point has eroded in recent years,
starting in the 1970s, and we continue to witness
friction around this point (witness the steel issue and
the reluctance of the Congress to renew 'fast track'
trade negotiating authority). But this has been a
consistent and central purpose of U.S. policy - one
might, in the Cooper/Kagan parlance, say that the United
States has consistently promoted the creation of a
Lockean order in that aspect of international affairs on
which its superiority arguably depends even more than its
second-to-none military strength. Paradoxically, many of
those Americans who are the most inclined to urge the
need to apply the Kagan doctrine to the world outside
Europe are also the most inclined to advocate the
critical importance of a liberal, though strictly
enforced, trading and investment order. But such an order
requires rules and procedures for peaceful dispute
resolution not so different from those on which Europeans
have set out to build their Union.
Furthermore, while this is certainly not a universally
accepted view, many Europeans firmly believe that it was
U.S. economic self-interest as much as anything else that
prompted the United States to take its principled stand
in the post-War period on the ending of the European
colonial empires. They would of course have ended anyway,
for the reason Kagan offers that European societies
lacked the strength to maintain them. But the way in
which they ended was considerably influenced by a U.S.
policy that at the least had a considerable element of
economic interest.
Another omission in Kagan's historical canvas relates
to the policy of détente in the Cold War. Kagan
generally treats this as if it were a creature of
power-deficient Europeans imposed on a reluctant,
power-playing United States. In reality, of course, the
policy of détente arose from a combination of the
activism of U.S. scientists and intellectuals, who
believed it to be a necessity and persuaded even the
skeptical Republican administration of Richard Nixon to
adopt it, and the advocacy of European social democrats
who believed that there was merit in seeking to blunt the
edge of East-West hostility. The Harmel report in NATO in
1967 and subsequent allied policy innovations led to
results that, by the testimony of many Eastern and
Central Europeans, played a significant beneficial role
in the evolution of their countries. In short, there may
be times when a judicious combination of the power-based
and the norm-oriented approaches offers the most
promising policy. Fast forward to today, when we find
Europeans substantially converging on precisely such an
approach in their attitudes towards Iraq and also
Iran.
Thirdly, there is a pragmatic question about Kagan's
presentation of U.S. attitudes. While the United States,
with its superior military power, may have been able and
willing to embark on a number of policies alone, it has
normally come to see the importance of the involvement of
its allies along the way. This has been true consistently
in the Gulf since 1990 and rapidly emerged as significant
in Afghanistan in the Fall of 2001, a fact that the
'unilateralists' in the Bush administration have often
somewhat disingenuously downplayed. It will be even more
true as we move into the inevitable 'nation-building'
phase of current policy towards Iraq and Palestine, just
as it applies to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
George W. Bush came to power on a promise not to do
nation-building and the U.S. body politic may well lack
the stomach for the kind of prolonged commitment to a
presence in Iraq after a military operation to depose
Saddam Hussein (9) that could ensure that the country
does not relapse into the military authoritarianism that
has been its characteristic form of government for so
long. How helpful it would be if there were a stronger
standing international capability for this purpose,
something that fits well with the 'European' philosophy
sketched, and on the whole deprecated, by Kagan.
This applies both in strategic and financial terms.
Kagan is dismissive of the financial burden that greater
application of military power would impose on the U.S.
economy and sees no threat that the Paul Kennedy thesis
of imperial overstretch could realistically affect the
United States. Yet even the Gulf War was considered by
the U.S. body politic a greater expense than the United
States could conveniently shoulder alone, with the result
that it was largely financed by the Gulf states and U.S.
allies in Europe and Asia (to the tune of at least $50
billion in direct payments to the United States, not to
mention the other costs that they bore on their own
budgets). And in the West Bank and Gaza both the United
States and Israel appealed to the EU to pay the costs of
developing the institutions that, to the chagrin of the
Europeans, have recently been destroyed by Israeli
attacks.
We have not yet started to measure the real costs of
the long term projects of nation-building in the Middle
East implied by current and likely U.S. and Western
policies. No doubt Iraqi oil revenues will be expected to
bear much of the cost there, but elsewhere that solution
will not be available. Not to mention the greater sums
that many believe will be needed to address the problem
of poverty and economic deprivation that threaten to
undercut the benefits of what, for want of a better word,
is called 'globalization' (10). At a time when the U.S.
federal budget seems headed towards a prolonged period of
substantial deficits, those costs may loom larger and
more forbidding that Kagan allows.
The Way Ahead
The transatlantic imbalance of force and policy that
Kagan describes will exist for many years to come, even
if, as is likely, NATO adopts new policies that lead to
more capable European power projection forces and the EU
acquires something resembling a true rapid reaction force
capability with significantly enhanced components capable
of, and intended for, power projection beyond Europe. The
United States will remain in the vanguard of policy
formulation in relation to crises outside Europe and the
Europeans will probably remain reluctant partners in the
application of military force to resolve some of these
situations (11). No doubt the charges of U.S.
unilateralism and European weakness will be heard again
across the ocean.
In the long term, of course, the best possible outcome
would be a situation in which both Europeans and
Americans had at their disposal the full range of
military and other instruments for addressing
international crises and a political consensus on their
use in judicious combinations. In such a situation the
existence of similar, but not identical, interests across
the Atlantic could be managed with fewer crises of
identity and psychology than have marked the relationship
in recent decades.
But even in the absence of such a happy development,
it should be possible to achieve a great deal of common
action in dealing with crises in the Middle East and
elsewhere. Attitudes are changing on both sides in line
with the familiar pattern of challenge and response that
has recurred throughout the period of the modern
transatlantic relationship. Europeans may well come to
see a greater role for the use of military force in
several of the circumstances we will confront. And the
United States may come to see greater value in a more
strenuous policy of diplomatic engagement and
multilateral action in the attempt to forestall the need
for such military engagement and enhance the probability
of its success when it becomes unavoidable (12). Kagan
reluctantly admits late in his article that Americans as
well as Europeans may have an interest in, as he puts it
when criticizing the European view, 'devaluing and
eventually eradicating the brutal laws of an anarchic,
Hobbesian world where power is the ultimate determinant
of national security and success.' That interest may be
weaker for the 'only surviving superpower,' but it is
assuredly not non-existent. And it is not simply, as he
goes on to assert, that 'For Americans, who stand to lose
at least some freedom of action, support for universal
rules of behavior really is a matter of idealism.' It is
also, as has been argued earlier, a matter of
self-interest.
But even this relatively benign outcome of the dilemma
posed by Kagan will only come about if the process of
challenge and response which has driven attitudes and
actions on both sides of the Atlantic for many years
continues to operate effectively. This means, in
particular, that:
- Europeans will need to match their changing
rhetoric about military capabilities with action. This
does not mean only increased expenditures (although
some of that would be welcome and is already
happening, albeit on a very modest scale compared with
the recent increases in the U.S. defense budget). It
also means smarter defense programs aimed at the
restructuring of their forces to meet the new needs
that both NATO and the EU have outlined.
- Both sides must be willing to engage the debate in
a more systematic and intensive manner across the
Atlantic. There are reasons why both are reluctant to
do this (13). Internal divisions and disagreements on
both sides make it hard to engage in substantive and
definitive consultations and planning. European
concerns about the state of the transatlantic
relationship itself incline European leaders to pull
their punches in exchanges with U.S. leaders, while
those in the U.S. administration who believe that
European governments will not willingly endorse robust
policies see little to be gained by consulting them
before U.S. policy is set. There are those on both
sides who fear that consultations could draw them into
approaches that they would wish to avoid. At the same
time, Europeans have few new policy ideas, and
certainly few on which they can agree, to deal with
what both they and the U.S. administration accept as
the real problems of the Middle East. Yet both are
aware that in the last analysis, if only in the
interests of protecting their relationship, Europeans
are likely to go along more or less reluctantly with
U.S. initiatives, including the use of military force.
These are not, however, compelling reasons for the
lack of more serious consultations, especially when
set against the potential value of more cooperative
policies. To achieve this would require some new
practices on the part of the bureaucracies on both
sides. But that should not be impossible to bring
about.
Above all, there is a need to tone down the rhetoric
of a public debate in which, in recent months, Europeans
have accused Americans of being simplistic unilateralists
and Americans have accused Europeans of being, at best,
irrelevant wimps. This is never an easy project when
issues are controversial not only between the United
States and European countries, but also among Americans
and Europeans alike. Achieving it will require changes of
both attitude and practice.
As to attitude, Europeans will need to strengthen and
reconfirm their political will to accept strategic
responsibility alongside the United States for the
pressing challenges of our time. On its side, the United
States will need to accept that it is no more able or
willing now than in the past to undertake alone the task
of addressing these issues in all their manifold
dimensions, including the non-military ones.
As to practice, there is a need for a renewed effort
at quiet and serious engagement among those outside
governments, like Kagan himself, who have devoted so much
effort to understanding European and U.S. attitudes. That
knowledge can be invaluable for the practical task of
bridging transatlantic gaps of assessment and policy.
Such gaps will always exist. To some extent they reflect
differences of interest that need to be accurately
measured and discussed. But almost more importantly, they
derive from the fact that political cycles and pressures
on the two sides of the Atlantic will only rarely be
synchronized. The best interests of both sides lie in
ensuring that those gaps of policy, and the underlying
differences of interest and assessment, are not allowed
to mask the greater similarities of interest. For the
differences are not as large or as structural or as
enduring as Kagan's provocative article would have one
believe.
Endnotes
1. Christopher J. Makins is President of the
Atlantic Council of the United States.
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2. Policy Review No. 113, June/July 2002.
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3. Perhaps the most egregious example is this
remark: '
appeasement is never a dirty word
to those whose genuine weakness offers few
appealing alternatives. For them it is a policy
of sophistication.' This historically debatable
observation hardly shows great sensitivity to
European history!
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4. While the opposition of Kant to Hobbes may
be the canonical one, a comparison with Locke
would perhaps have been even more vivid than
that with Kant, especially in the context of
relations with the United States, which owed so
much to Locke in its founding.
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5. For a strong statement of the importance
of soft power, see Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of
American Power, Oxford University Press, March
2002.
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6. The survey of opinion in the United States
and six European countries published in
September by the German Marshall Fund of the
United States and the Chicago Council on Foreign
Relations sheds interesting light on the
similarities in the distribution of public
opinion on these and other issues relating to
the Kagan thesis. While the results are by no
means conclusive, the least one can say is that
they are by no means altogether supportive of
Kagan's conclusions. The results can be found at
www.worldviews.org.
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7. He does at one point admit the possibility
of an upside, but rapidly dismisses it with the
blanket observation (another snapshot crying out
to be incorporated into a movie) that the
mission of the European Union is to 'oppose
power'!
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8. One such omission is Vietnam, a word that
does not appear in his article. I will not
discuss this issue in detail in this article
because it is of only limited significance for
understanding current European thinking with
which I am principally concerned here. It does,
however, have a good deal to do with the
evolution of the thinking of an important
segment of the U.S. elite with which Kagan is
concerned. Some of the discussion about an
invasion of Iraq has brought this sensitive
matter closer to the surface. One side of this
debate was graphically portrayed by Maureen Dowd
in the New York Times on 22 September when she
wrote: "The Bush hawks don't simply want to go
back in a time machine and make Desert Storm end
with a turkey shoot. They want to travel back
even farther to the Vietnam War and write a more
muscular coda to that as well. Extirpating
Saddam is about proving how tough we are in a
world that thinks we got soft when that last
helicopter left the roof of the American embassy
in Saigon in 1975." The continuing argument
about the so-called 'Powell doctrine' for the
use of U.S. military force is another
manifestation of the persistent influence of the
Vietnam experience on the U.S. debate about the
issues that lie at the heart of the Kagan
thesis.
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9. For what it is worth, European experts
estimate that this phase could last upwards of
ten years in Iraq. And they currently show
little enthusiasm for picking up the pieces left
by a U.S. invasion undertaken without clear
international authority and what they apprehend
may be a subsequent premature withdrawal.
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10. For a compelling statement on this
subject, and its connection to the problem of
international terrorism, see the remarks of
Robert Rubin at the Atlantic Council's annual
awards dinner on May 14, 2002, available at
www.acus.org/publications/speeches.
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11. Although there may be others, for example
in Africa, in which the United States would be
the reluctant partner.
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12. U.S. policy towards Iraq has, albeit much
later than would have been desirable, taken this
course since the President's speech of 12
September at the U.N. General Assembly.
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13. These points are more fully developed
with respect to the Middle East, which is where
most of the problems that are implicitly at
issue for those who think like Kagan, in Elusive
Partnership: U.S. and European Policies in the
Near East and the Gulf, by Rita Hauser et. al.,
The Atlantic Council of the United States,
September 2002.
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©
TFF and the
author
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