Article: Europeans: From Venus?

Thoughts from Robert Kagan, the new trendy guy among the international security 
types.  Some highlights:

* As Europe settles into strategic irrelevance, 
Americans need pay it less and less attention.

* Contrarily, because 
Washington so predominates, it should make gestures to win European goodwill.

* NATO is little more than a shell.

* Americans should look increasingly to 
countries outside Europe - Turkey, Israel and India come first to mind - for 
meaningful military alliances
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Europeans: From Venus?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
July 16, 2002
http://www.daniepipes.org/article/432/


Whatever the current burning issue is - trade with Iran, war with Iraq, support 
for Israel, building a missile defense system, accepting the International 
Criminal Court - Americans and West Europeans often find themselves on opposite 
sides of the argument.

Americans tend to dismiss the Europeans as soft-minded 
appeasers lacking moral fiber or strategic vision. In turn, Europeans depict 
Americans as cowboys under the sway of a "culture of death."

These current 
attitudes tend to be seen as immutable facts of life, arising out of the 
respective national characters. But these differences are hardly permanent. Two 
centuries ago, when Americans acted cautiously around the tough-guy Europeans, 
the roles were roughly reversed.

Today's attitudes, Robert Kagan writes in a 
brilliant analysis in the Hoover Institution's "Policy Review," follow 
logically from deeper realities. In particular, they result from two post-1945 
developments so momentous they tend to go unnoted:

* Europe is weak: For 500 
years before 1945, Europe dominated the world. Tiny Portugal and Holland took 
turns ruling the seas. Mid-sized Britain and France built empires that spanned 
the globe. But that was then.

Today, the European Union spends far more on 
social problems than on arms. Despite a population and an economy roughly 
similar to America's, it is a "military pygmy" that lacks the ability to 
project force or even handle a minor problem in its own neighborhood (as the 
Balkan fiascos revealed).

In contrast, Americans have continued massively 
investing in defense, creating a true superpower no other state can challenge. 
"In military terms there is only one player on the field that counts," observes 
Yale historian Paul Kennedy. Looking at the contrast between the United States 
and the rest of the world, Kennedy finds that "Nothing has ever existed like 
this disparity of power; nothing."

This huge gap in capabilities causes 
Europeans and Americans to approach problems very differently. In their 
strength, Americans predictably see it as normal and legitimate to use force 
against enemy states such as Iraq. In their weakness, Europeans no less 
predictably find this approach worrisome and even immoral.

* Europe is 
post-modern: For the 80 years before 1945, the demon of German aggression 
haunted Europe, causing two world wars. Then, through a lengthy process of 
negotiation, multilateralism, building commercial ties and applying 
international law, the Europeans engineered what Kagan calls "perhaps the 
greatest feat of international politics ever achieved" by integrating Germany 
into a totally peaceable Western European state system.

As the German lion lay 
down with the French lamb, Europeans widely congratulated themselves on a 
world-historical breakthrough and concluded that their future global mission is 
to develop a "postmodern system" that resolves problems without even the hint 
of force. (Along the way, they conveniently forgot that this transformation was 
only made possible because U.S. forces defeated Germany.) They aspire, Kagan 
argues, to replicate their success on a global scale, by taming a North Korea 
or an Iraq as they did Germany.

From this vantage point, American use of force 
challenges the universal validity of Europe's soft approach. Worse: if the 
European methods of cajoling and paying off adversaries do not always work - as 
they clearly do not - this suggests that Europe's own hope for perpetual peace 
among states may be illusory. The European Union's highly emotional reaction to 
American use of force derives in large part, then, from its horror at facing 
war again in Europe.

The differences, in brief, are stark: Americans are from 
Mars; Europeans, from Venus. Europeans spend their money on social services, 
Americans continue to devote large sums to the military. Europeans draw lessons 
from their successful pacifying of post-1945 Germany; Americans draw lessons 
from their defeat of Nazi Germany and of the Soviet bloc. Kagan's insights have 
important implications:

* U.S.-European differences are not transitory, but 
long-term.

* They are likely to grow with time.

* Europe is highly unlikely 
to develop a military power to rival America's.

* As Europe settles into 
strategic irrelevance, Americans need pay it less and less attention.

* 
Contrarily, because Washington so predominates, it should make gestures to win 
European goodwill.

* NATO is little more than a shell.

* Americans should 
look increasingly to countries outside Europe - Turkey, Israel and India come 
first to mind - for meaningful military alliances.