Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus

Robert Kagan, an American historian, is influencing policy on both sides of the Atlantic with this controversial and iconoclastic analysis of what has gone wrong between Europe and the US

Just over 350 years ago the political theorist Thomas Hobbes was so appalled by the chaos in England during the civil war that he wrote a book, Leviathan, denouncing mankind’s anarchic and murderous instincts. He famously warned his countrymen that unless they obeyed one powerful central authority, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

A century and a half later, as the aftermath of the French revolution shook Europe, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote an equally famous pamphlet called Towards a Perpetual Peace. He suggested that a stable universal order could gradually be achieved through a league of enlightened republics that banded together as modern history worked itself out.

Between these two visions of how to stop mankind tearing itself apart — power and enlightenment — America and Europe are divided today as they argue over the fate of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

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 co-operation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realisation of Kant’s “perpetual peace”.

Americans do not believe we are as close to the realisation of the Kantian dream as do Europeans. One of the things that most clearly divides them is where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the laws of the jungle and the laws of reason.

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 defence and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.

To put it another way, on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand one another less and less.

When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defence policies, America and Europe have parted ways. 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.

It is easier to see the contrast as an American living in Europe, as I have been. At their most extreme, Europeans depict an America dominated by a “culture of death”, its warlike temperament the natural product of a violent society where every man has a gun and the death penalty reigns.

Even those who do not make this crude link argue that America resorts to force more quickly and, compared with Europe, is less patient with diplomacy. Americans generally see the world divided between good and evil, between friends and enemies, while Europeans see a more complex picture. When confronting real or potential adversaries, Americans generally favour policies of coercion rather than persuasion.

Americans want problems solved, threats eliminated. And, of course, Americans increasingly tend towards unilateralism. They are less inclined to act through international institutions such as the United Nations, less inclined to work co-operatively with other nations to pursue common goals, more sceptical about international law, and more willing to operate outside its strictures.

Europeans insist they approach problems with greater nuance and sophistication. They try to influence others subtly and indirectly. They are more patient when solutions don’t come quickly. They generally favour peaceful responses to problems. They are quicker to appeal to international law, international conventions and international opinion to adjudicate disputes. They try to use commercial and economic ties to bind nations together. They often emphasise process over result, believing that ultimately process can become substance.

Of course, one cannot generalise. The British may have a more “American” view of power than many Europeans on the Continent. Nor can one simply lump French and Germans together: the first proud and independent but also surprisingly insecure, the second mingling self-confidence with self-doubt since the end of the second world war.

There are also differing perspectives on the other side of the Atlantic. American Democrats often seem more “European” than Republicans; secretary of state Colin Powell may appear more “European” than secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld. Nevertheless, the caricatures do capture an essential truth: the United States and Europe are fundamentally different today. Powell and Rumsfeld have more in common than do Powell and the foreign ministers of France, Germany, or even Britain.

Despite what many Europeans and some Americans believe, these differences in strategic culture do not spring naturally from their national characters.

The young United States claimed to abjure power and assailed as atavistic the power politics of the 18th and 19th-century European empires. Two centuries later, Americans and Europeans have traded places — and perspectives. But even the power gap offers only part of the explanation for the broad gulf between America and Europe. There is also a broad ideological gap.

Europe, because of its unique historical experience of the past century culminating in the creation of the European Union, has developed a set of ideals and principles regarding the utility and morality of power different from those of Americans.

The first world war devastated Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia and destroyed the will and spirit of Britain and France, at least until the British rallied against Hitler. The second world war then all but destroyed European nations as global powers. They were now dependent on America, for their own security and for global security.

America’s cold war strategy was built around the transatlantic alliance. Naturally, this elevated the importance of European opinion on global matters, giving both Europeans and Americans a perhaps exaggerated estimation of European power.

After the cold war there was the early promise of the “new” Europe. By bonding together into a single political and economic unit — the historic accomplishment of Maastricht in 1992 — many hoped to recapture Europe’s old greatness but in a new political form. Instead, many Europeans took the end of the cold war as a holiday from strategy. The 1990s witnessed not the rise of a European superpower but the further decline of Europe into relative military weakness compared with America.

The sizeable American military arsenal, once barely sufficient to balance Soviet power, was now deployed in a world without a single formidable adversary. Thanks to the new technologies, America was also freer to use force in more limited ways through air and missile strikes, which it did with increasing frequency.

One British critic of America’s propensity to military action recalls the old saw: “When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.” This is true. But nations without great military power face the opposite danger: when you don’t have a hammer, you don’t want anything to look like a nail.

One of the biggest transatlantic disagreements has been over which “new” threats to world order merit the most attention. American administrations have placed the greatest emphasis on so-called “rogue states” such as Iraq and what Bush a year ago called the axis of evil. Most Europeans have taken a calmer view of these regimes. As a French official once told me: “The problem is failed states, not rogue states.”

One explanation of Europe’s greater tolerance for threats today is its relative weakness. A man armed only with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is a tolerable danger, because hunting it with a knife is riskier than lying low and hoping it never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however, will likely make a different calculation.

This perfectly normal human psychology has driven a wedge between America and Europe. Americans could imagine successfully invading Iraq and toppling Saddam, and therefore by the end of 2002 more than 70% of them favoured doing so. Europeans found the prospect both unimaginable and frightening.

It is not just that Europeans and Americans have not shared the same view of what to do about a specific problem such as Iraq. They do not share the same broad view of how the world should be governed, about the role of international institutions and international law, about the proper balance between the use of force and the use of diplomacy in international affairs.

Because they are relatively weak, Europeans have a deep interest in devaluing and eventually eradicating the brutal laws of an anarchic, Hobbesian world where power is the ultimate determinant of national security and success.

The present transatlantic tensions did not begin with the inauguration of George W Bush. Today many Europeans view the Clinton years as a time of transatlantic harmony, but it was during those years that Europeans first began complaining about American power and arrogance in the post-cold-war world.

Europeans were appalled when administration officials in 1997 began suggesting that the economic sanctions placed on Iraq after the Gulf war could not be lifted while Saddam remained in power. They believed, in classically European fashion, that Iraq should be offered incentives for better behaviour, not threatened, in classically American fashion, with more economic or military coercion.

When the Clinton administration tried to increase the pressure on Baghdad to co-operate with United Nations arms inspectors at the end of 1997, France joined Russia and China in blocking the American proposals in the UN security council. When the Clinton administration finally turned to the use of military force and bombed Iraq in 1999, it did so without security council authorisation and with only Britain by its side.

In its waning months, the Clinton administration continued to believe that “Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, remains dangerous, unreconstructed, defiant and isolated”. It would “never be able to be rehabilitated or reintegrated into the community of nations” with Saddam in power.

This was not the view of France or most of the rest of Europe. The rehabilitation and reintegration of Saddam’s Iraq were precisely what they sought.

The European emphasis on negotiation, diplomacy and commercial ties, on international law over the use of force, on seduction over coercion, on multilateralism over unilateralism represents a conscious rejection of the evils of European power politics.

The German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, has described “the core of the concept of Europe” as “a rejection of the European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual states”.

Of course, it was the “hegemonic ambitions” of one nation in particular, Germany, that European integration was meant to contain. And the taming and integration of Germany is the great accomplishment of Europe — viewed historically, perhaps the greatest feat of international politics ever achieved.

Some Europeans recall the central role America played in solving the “German problem”. Fewer like to recall that the military destruction of Nazi Germany was the prerequisite for the European peace that followed. Instead, most Europeans like to believe that it was the transformation of the European mind and spirit that made possible the “new order”. The Europeans, who invented power politics, turned themselves into born-again idealists by an act of will.

Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat and EU official, has argued that Europe today lives in a “postmodern system” that rests on “the rejection of force” and “a moral consciousness” in international affairs.

American realists might scoff at this idealism. But why shouldn’t Europeans be idealistic about international affairs, at least as they are conducted in Europe’s “postmodern system”? Within the confines of Europe, the age-old laws of international relations have been repealed. Europeans have stepped out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of perpetual peace. The German lion has lain down with the French lamb. The conflict that ravaged Europe since the violent birth of Germany in the 19th century has been put to rest.

The means by which this miracle has been achieved have understandably acquired something of a sacred mystique for Europeans. Diplomacy, negotiations, patience, the forging of economic ties, political engagement, the use of inducements rather than sanctions, compromise rather than confrontation, the taking of small steps and tempering ambitions for success — these were the tools of Franco-German rapprochement and hence the tools that made European integration possible.

The end of the cold war allowed Europe’s new order, and its new idealism, to blossom fully into a grand plan for world order. Freed from the requirements of any military deterrence, internal or external, Europeans became still more confident that their way of settling international problems now had universal application.

Many Europeans, including many in positions of power, routinely apply Europe’s experience to the rest of the world, sometimes with the evangelical zeal of converts.

The general European critique of the American approach to “rogue” regimes is based on this special insight. Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya — these states may be dangerous and unpleasant, and even, if simplistic Americans insist, evil. But Germany was “evil” once, too. Might not an “indirect approach” work again, as it did in Europe? Might it not be possible once more to move from confrontation to rapprochement, beginning with co-operation in the economic sphere and then moving on to peaceful integration? Could not the formula that worked in Europe work again with Iran? Might it have even worked with Iraq? A great many Europeans have insisted that it might, and at less cost and risk than war.

The transmission of the European miracle to the rest of the world has become Europe’s new civilising mission. Just as Americans have always believed they had discovered the secret of human happiness and wished to export it to the rest of the world, so the Europeans have a new mission born of their own discovery of perpetual peace.

America’s power and its willingness to exercise it — unilaterally if necessary — constitute a threat to Europe’s new sense of mission. Perhaps it is the greatest threat.

American policymakers have found it hard to believe, but leading officials and politicians in Europe really have worried more about how America might handle or mishandle the problem of Iraq — by undertaking unilateral and extralegal military action — than they have ever worried about Iraq itself and Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. American action, even if successful, would be an assault on Europe’s new ideals, a denial of their universal validity.

As Americans have for two centuries, Europeans speak with great confidence of the superiority of their global understanding, the wisdom they have to offer other nations about conflict resolution, and their way of addressing international problems. But there is a hint of insecurity in the European claim to “success”, an evident need to have their success affirmed and their views accepted by other nations, particularly by America.

To deny the validity of the new European idealism is to raise profound doubts about the viability of the European project. If international problems cannot, in fact, be settled the European way, wouldn’t that suggest that Europe itself might eventually fall short of a solution, with all the horrors this implies? This situation abounds in ironies. Europe’s rejection of power politics and its devaluing of military force as a tool of international relations have depended on the presence of American military forces on European soil. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important.

And now, in the final irony, the fact that American military power has solved the European problem, especially the “German problem”, allows Europeans today, and Germans in particular, to believe that American military power, and the “strategic culture” that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous.

Most Europeans do not see or do not wish to see the great paradox: that their passage into “post-history” has depended on America not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun by a world that has yet to accept the rule of “moral consciousness”, it has become dependent on America’s willingness to use its own military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.

Some Europeans do understand the conundrum. Britons, not surprisingly, understand it best. Cooper writes that if the postmodern world does not protect itself it can be destroyed. But how does Europe protect itself without discarding the ideals and principles that undergird its pacific system? “The challenge to the postmodern world,” Cooper argues, “is to get used to the idea of double standards.” Among themselves, Europeans may “operate on the basis of laws and open co-operative security”. But when dealing with the world outside Europe, “we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era — force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary”.

This is Cooper’s principle for safeguarding society: “Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.”

Cooper has served as a close adviser to Tony Blair, and it is clear that Blair, perhaps a good deal more than his Labour party followers, has endorsed the idea of an international double standard for power. He has tried to lead Britain into the rule-based world of the European Union. But as his solidarity with Bush on the question of Iraq has shown, he has also tried — largely unsuccessfully — to lead Europe back out into a world where military power remains a key feature of international relations.

America is already operating according to Cooper’s double standards, trying to abide by, defend and further the laws of advanced civilised society while simultaneously employing military force against those who refuse to abide by those rules.

American leaders believe that global security and a liberal order — as well as Europe’s “postmodern” paradise — cannot long survive unless America uses its power in the dangerous world that still flourishes outside Europe.

What this means is that although America has played the critical role in bringing Europe into its paradise, and still plays a key role in making that paradise possible, it cannot enter this paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk through the gate. The United States, with all its vast power, remains stuck in history, left to deal with the Saddams and the Kim Jong-ils, leaving most of the benefits to others.

To those of us who came of age in the cold war, the strategic decoupling of Europe and America seems frightening. If Americans were to decide that Europe was no more than an irritating irrelevancy, would American society gradually become unmoored from what we now call the West? It is not a risk to be taken lightly, on either side of the Atlantic.

So what is to be done? The obvious answer is that Europe should build up its military capabilities, even if only marginally. There is not much ground for hope that this will happen. But who knows? Maybe concern about America’s overweening power really will create some energy in Europe.

It would be better still if Europeans could move beyond fear and anger at the rogue colossus and remember, again, the vital necessity of having a strong, even predominant America — for the world and especially for Europe. It would seem to be an acceptable price to pay for paradise.

Extracted from Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan to be published by Grove Atlantic on March 6.

Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served in the US State Department from 1984 to 1998. His original essay on Paradise and Power appeared in the journal Policy Review last year

And the taming and integration of Germany is the great accomplishment of Europe — viewed historically, perhaps the greatest feat of international politics ever achieved.

The "taming and integration" of Germany is exclusively the accomplishment of the U.S. and Britain, not continental Europe.

The "taming and integration" of Germany is exclusively the accomplishment of the U.S. and Britain, not continental Europe.

Also the nation being chopped in two for 40 odd years had something to do with it too, I think.

Regards, Ivan

Man, is this guy's head up his ass or what? The "indirect approach" did not work in Europe, as the author claims. We directly destroyed the Thrid Reich, then directly occupied "the Fatherland" for the next half century, and directly protected their impotent asses from the Soviet threat for that same period of time. The guy is as delusional as they come.

This situation abounds in ironies. Europe’s rejection of power politics and its devaluing of military force as a tool of international relations have depended on the presence of American military forces on European soil. American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important.
And now, in the final irony, the fact that American military power has solved the European problem, especially the “German problem”, allows Europeans today, and Germans in particular, to believe that American military power, and the “strategic culture” that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous.
Most Europeans do not see or do not wish to see the great paradox: that their passage into “post-history” has depended on America not making the same passage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guard its own paradise and keep it from being overrun by a world that has yet to accept the rule of “moral consciousness”, it has become dependent on America’s willingness to use its own military might to deter or defeat those around the world who still believe in power politics.

I spoke too soon in that last post of mine. The author does indeed seem to get it.

There is a basic difference between our traditional concept of power and the European's. America was formed on the notion of a "bottom-up" delegation of authority. Power eminates from the citizen and is doled out in pieces to the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. Some is retained and never doled out.

Europeans, as exemplified by traditional French democracy, delegated all their power to government to make decisions for the common good. Individuals retain very little power. Power eminates downward and the individual is a subject of it.

In the two, sovereignty resides in very different places. The Europeans are historically used to the concept of one national sovereign competant to make international agreements with the authority to implement same. International law moves into and through these systems with comparative ease.

In America, the Executive negotiates the treaty, but the Federal and State legislatures must implement them. This causes a bunch of problems - particularly as affects internal affairs. The power eminates upward, but the International model expects it to flow downward.

The U.N. is replete with International policy and "programmes." Agreements like the Biodiversity Treaty hit a roadblock in our federal system. Treaties also hit roadblocks in similar system like Australia. The International Community is not patient with our incapacity to dictate internal law.
We should be impatient with their insistance that we scuttle our sovereignty so our system integrates with theirs.

We are indeed from Mars and they are from Venus. Perhaps, for this reason, we are more acclimated to operating in two worlds.

Moral superiority is worthless in the service of national interest.

What on earth is that supposed to mean? Do you subscribe to the Clintonista logic that we can only use force when we have no national interest at stake? You sound like it.

On the contrary, acting in our national interest is exactly when our moral superiority is most demonstrated. How many countries would have rebuilt their enemies after a life and death struggle intiatited by those same nations, as we did after WWII? They surely wouldn't have. For them to adopt a smug condescending tone of moral superiority towards us is chutzpah on a grand scale.

Meanwhile these moral giants can't wait to get back to business as usual with Saddam, even as he butchers his own people. But I expect no less from the continent whose cheif contributions to humanity in the last century have been Communism, Fascism, Nazism, WWI, WWII and the Cold War.

Copyright gives the owner EXCLUSIVE right to copy

Nope. (read up on fair use). Additionally, all written work has a PRESUMED copyright, whether or not you put in the little symbol.

For a guideline as to what constitutes "fair use", see here. And, oh yeah, this DOES qualify (just ask JimRob about the WashPost lawsuit if you dare).

This is an interesting philosophical debate, but the "Europeans" happen to be wrong. Evil men understand nothing but brute force. And that is the beginning, the middle and the end of the discussion.

I would add that open warfare has this ability to bring truth to the table and frank exchanges. The Euro's shyness to thugs is sinister.

The real core of the problem, ... is that the Europeans have come not to believe in the existence of evil. It's too unsophisticated for them, to religious, too Judeo/Christian.

You, along with MadIvan, have identified the fundamental difference between Europe and the U.S.

The Europeans believe that everything can be finessed, nuanced, compromised. They have lost the vision for truth; why, I do not know, except that the decreasing role of the religious faith which is one of the essential legs of Western Civilization, ergo Judeo/Christianity, is notable in comparison to this country.

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