Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order - Hardcover

Kagan, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843541777 ISBN 13: 9781843541776

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2003

Synopsis

After years of mutual resentment and tension, there is a sudden recognition that the real interests of America and its allies are diverging sharply and that the transatlantic relationship itself has changed, possibly irreversibly. Europe sees the United States as high-handed, unilateralist, and recklessly belligerent; the United States sees Europe as spent, unserious and weak. The anger and mistrust on both sides are hardening into incomprehension.

In the influential journal Policy Review, the heavyweight commentator Robert Kagan analysed this impasse so incisively that each side was able to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Tracing the widely differing histories of America and Europe since the end of the Second World War, Kagan makes clear how Europe's need to escape a bloody past has led to a new set of beliefs about conflict, power and threat, while at the same time, the United States has evolved into the guarantor of the European order by dint of its might and global reach. This remarkable analysis is already being discussed by governments from Washington to Tokyo. It is essential reading.

About this title

Review

From the beginning of George W Bush's presidency there has been a profound unease in relations between Europe and the United States. Robert Kagan's Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New World Order offers a diagnosis and prognosis of the current malaise, which recent events such as Bush's "axis of evil" speech and UN divisions over Iraq have made even worse. Kagan argues that the 20th century has seen an inversion of history, whereby the once great, imperial, war-mongering powers of the 19th century (Britain, France and Germany) have become doves and multi-lateralists and the precocious and defenceless small power of the earlier era (America) has become a military and economic giant, hawkish and resolute in its defence of global security.

Europe (or more specifically France and Germany), Kagan argues, have learned that nation-states must live together or die, while America has come to rely on the blunt diplomacy of the pre-emptive strike. Europeans resent America for its bully-boy tactics; Americans get fed up with whining Europeans who would not enjoy their freedom to moan but for the post-1945 umbrella of NATO security. Kagan is wise and perceptive throughout his long essay and pleads reasonably that the US and the EU must develop a common policy that recognises their historical and strategic differences. He is a realist and there is little of the triumphalism to be found in similar recent works by American foreign policy experts such as Francis Fukuyama. Kagan is good on the military and diplomatic aspects of the question, but brushes over the resentments fuelled by America's MacDonaldisation of European culture. --Miles Taylor

Review

'Anyone looking for an intellectual primer to explain the geo-political forces at work in the Iraqi conflict should order a copy' -- Sunday Telegraph

'Brilliant.' -- Francis Fukuyama

'Come the hour, come the book... A penetrating effort to shed some light on the confusion in transatlantic affairs.' -- Raymond Seitz, The Times

'No piece in this realm has generated quite as much heat and interest since Samuel Huntingdon or Francis Fukuyama.' -- New York Times

'One of those seminal treatises without which any discussion of European-American relations would be incomplete.' -- Henry Kissinger

About this edition

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1843541777
• ISBN 13: 9781843541776
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112