Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate Robert Kagan Foreign Policy Analyst Says Rift Between America, Europe Is Widening by John Shaw When Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote an essay several years ago about the troubled relationship between the United States and Europe, he expected it would be read by a small group of foreign policy analysts and then be forgotten. He did not foresee that it would be carefully deconstructed by foreign policy and security analysts on both sides of the Atlantic and e-mailed across Europe. Nor did he expect that his essay about the widening rift between the United States and Europe would be endlessly debated by American and European diplomats and circulated among the foreign ministers of the European Union and senior officials at NATO. "It was something of a fluke. The article created a much bigger sensation in Europe at first than in the United States," Kagan said in an interview at his office at the Carnegie Endowment. "But in the I nternet age, an article that bounces around electronically can have a big impact. It became a hot topic among European strategic and security intellectuals. There was a big buzz about it in Europe and the buzz bounced back into the U.S." Kaganís article was first published in the summer of 2002 as a 25-page essay titled "Power and Weakness" in Policy Review, a journal published by the Hoover Institution. He later expanded his arguments into a book that was published last year, "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order." An expanded paperback version of the book was released in 2004. Kaganís central argument, outlined in sweeping and confident prose, is that the United States and Europe have become "structurally different" since the end of the Cold War and are growing further apart. He believes that when it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways. Kagan said he is still not certain why his views have captured so much attention. "I think many believed this was the articulated view of what is driving the Bush administration. Also, I held a mirror up to Europe and Europeans were upset by, and fascinated by, the picture that was presented to them," he said. Some analysts have compared Kaganís article to other seminal foreign policy essays, such as George Kennanís "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Francis Fukuyamaís "The End of History and the Last Man" and Samuel Huntingtonís "The Clash of Civilizations." Engaging, energetic and expansive, Kagan is often described as one of the United Statesís most perceptive foreign policy analysts and a leading neoconservative thinker. He grew up in Ithaca, New York, and New Haven, Conn. His father, Donald Kagan, is a prominent historian. Robert Kagan received a bachelorís degree in history from Yale University and a masterís degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. While at the Kennedy School, Kagan had a summer internship at the State Department where he worked in the Middle East section during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He later held full-time jobs at the State Department, serving as a member of the policy planning staff, the principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George Shultz and the deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. Kagan said his government experience gave him an important perspective from which to study foreign policy. "I had a chance to see the haphazardness of normal American foreign policy making. I saw the great difficulty of making foreign policy when the whole world is the U.S.ís responsibility and you have a wonderfully restive public to deal with," he said. Although he has long been interested in American foreign policy, Kagan said he does not have a specific expertise in U.S.-European relations. "It had not been a major focus of my work. If I had sought to make a splash, I would have done it in a different way." Kagan said the main themes in "Of Paradise and Power" came to him during the three years he lived in Brussels with his wife and two children. "I had been brought to Europe by my wife," he said, noting that she was then the deputy chief of the U.S. mission to NATO. She is now a senior foreign policy aide to Vice President Richard Cheney. Kagan attended foreign policy conferences across Europe and said he was struck by the starkly different world views held by Americans and Europeans, which were apparent mostly during private conversations in the corridors and at informal meetings. "When you are in the ëtrans-Atlantic dialogueí attending ëtrans-Atlantic conferences,í everyone seems to tailor their message. Maybe they are just being polite. But when the Americans leave the room, you get a sense of what Europeans are really thinking," Kagan said. The foreign policy expert disagrees with the view that the U.S.-European relationship is fundamentally healthy but is just going through a difficult period. "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," he wrote. "On all the important questions of poweróthe efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of poweróAmerican and European perspectives are diverging." Europe, Kagan argues, is turning away from power, or put differently, is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering, he said, a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperityóthe realization of Immanuel Kantís "perpetual peace." Meanwhile, the United States, Kagan declares, remains mired in a brutal Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where security and the defense of liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. "That is why 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. And this state of affairs is not transitory," he wrote. Kagan said the source of these different strategic perspectives can be partly explained by the power gap between the United States and Europe. When America was weak, he said, it practiced the strategies of indirection, the strategies of weakness, but now that America is powerful, it behaves as powerful nations do. And when the great powers of Europe were militarily strong, they believed in strength and martial glory. Now they see the world through the eyes of weaker powers and support the authority of international law and institutions. Kagan acknowledged that most Europeans he has spoken to are not persuaded by his argument. "Iíd say about 70 percent of the people in Europe who I know read my article disagreed with it very strongly for one reason or another," he said. "But I must have been invited to 200 conferences because, I guess, they wanted to have the conversation. I kept thinking to myself: If Iím so wrong why do they want to talk to me? Whatís the point?" Kagan outlined three basic responses from critics to his core argument. Some believe that he overstates the differences between the United States and Europe; some agree that there are pronounced differences and argue the United Statesís heavy reliance on military power is misguided and destabilizes the international system; and others contend that the differences are not between Europe and the United States, but between Europe and the foreign policy of George W. Bush. On this last point, Kagan argues that analysts seem to have forgotten recent history. "The problem between the United States and Europe precedes the Bush administration. American and European divisions were apparent even during the Clinton and Bush I administrations. Letís not forget there were differences over Iraq, missile defense and the International Criminal Court even during the Clinton years," he said. The fierce dispute between the United States and Europe over the International Criminal Court illustrates these clashing world views. "The ICC is much more a battle of principles and symbols. It is emblematic of a battle of world views," he said. "The ICC has become the quintessential symbol of European aspirations to a world in which all nations are equal under the law." Kaganís thesis has been challenged on both sides of the Atlantic, including by some respected American analysts. In a gently worded but hard-hitting review of Kaganís book, David Calleo, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Universityís School of Advanced International Studies, praised Kagan for his clear and forceful arguments but nevertheless said he is wrong. "In a debate that has grown dangerously rancorous, [Kaganís] tone is amiable and fair minded. The book is well worth reading, not least for insight into what the intelligent and civilized American neoconservative thinks about the world," Calleo wrote. However, he also argues that Kagan overstates American power, understates European vitality, and misunderstands how the world of the 21st century will be shaped. But Kagan is not persuaded by his critics and said he believes there is a growing consensus that supports his fundamental view of the trans-Atlantic relationship. "Europe and the U.S. donít disagree about economics fundamentally. We donít disagree on political philosophy fundamentally. But we do disagree about military power fundamentally," he said. "Europeans made a bet after the Cold War that this was the era of globalization and all the big strategic issues were old news. They believed that the future would be about economic power, cultural power and soft power. I think they have been proven wrong." Kagan added that Europeís economic accomplishments are impressive, but that it has failed to develop a strong security policy. "On the global stage Europe has very little influence. Europe doesnít have an independent capacity to carry out a policy. It is true that on economic matters, Europe is strong. If we have a trade war, they are as strong as we are," he said. "But you have to live in Europe to see the self-doubt when it comes to geopolitics. If you talk to any serious leader in Europe, they will say Europe is not ready, that it needs 10 to 20 years to be a serious actor on the international stage. Itís wrong to say that if Europe has an $8 trillion economy and the U.S. has an $8 trillion economy, they are equal powers. Europe does have moral power and an automatic legitimacy because it is a collective," he added. Working from his office at the Carnegie Endowment, Kagan directs Carnegieís U.S. Leadership Project. He writes a monthly column for the Washington Post and is a contributing editor at both the Weekly Standard and New Republic. In addition to "Of Paradise and Power," Kagan has written "A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990." He also edited a book with William Kristol, "Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy." Kagan is now working on a sweeping two-volume history of American foreign policy from the 17th century to the end of the 20th century. One of his chief goals is to explore what he calls the United Statesís "elaborate structure of myths" about the nationís self-image and its perceived relationship with the world. He said a careful review of the historical record calls into question the countryís cherished assumptions about its reluctance to exercise power or its preference to lead by quiet example. "Our favorite myth is we are just sitting here minding our own business, hoping no one bothers us. But the truth is there has been one American intervention after another throughout our history. Weíre willing and ready to use military force frequently. Iraq is only the most recent example." John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.