This review of Robert Kagan’s book on the different American and European approaches to world order first appeared in Liberal Democrat News on 20 June 2003.

This short book is a fascinating read for anyone interested in understanding the fundamental differences in approaches towards international relations between America and Europe so starkly exposed over the past few months.

Kagan’s view is that 21st century America, with its total military and political dominance of international relations, quite naturally regards traditional raw power politics as a legitimate and indeed necessary way of achieving the aims she desires. Conversely, as a club of weaker ex-Great Powers, Europe equally naturally seeks to constrain the most powerful nation in a system of binding international laws and treaties. Their eagerness for such an approach is strengthened by their extraordinary success in replacing raw conflict with a system based on law and treaty within the European Union itself – an achievement for which Kagan has the utmost admiration.

In his view, the different approaches are naturally dictated by the disparity in power: as he points out, when the USA was formed in the eighteenth century, and the world was dominated by European Great Powers, it was Americans who argued for a law-based international system to constrain the powerful, and Europeans who were quite happy with relying on their inherent power to achieve outcomes which were in their own national interest.

Although American himself (and a former State Department official), Kagan successfully manages to sound almost obsessively even-handed about the relative merits of these different approaches. But his is, finally, an analysis which accepts the value of real domination of the international system by the USA. Through the Cold War years, he argues, the imperative need to stand united against a common enemy ensured a common approach from America and Europe, giving both partners a perception of Europeans as more important than their actual military weakness deserved. Released from such a need in 1989, Europe had an opportunity to build itself as a partner and near-equivalent to the USA through the 1990s. But despite progress towards European unity in almost all other areas (Kagan has an interesting view that the 1990s saw, quite simply, the establishment of a politically united Europe), Europe failed this test, unable even to deal with a small war on its very doorstep without calling in, almost literally, the US Cavalry.

Europe has comprehensively failed to live up to its potential as a military power: at the start of the 21st century, EU countries with a combined population of significantly more than the USA, together spend less than half what the US does on defence. And while the USA plans to expand still further military expenditure, Europe insists on crippling its military effectiveness still further by dividing up what it does spend between 15 national forces duplicating each other. The result is American capacity and technology of which Europeans can only dimly dream.

Crucially, he says, the EU can get away with this degree of military weakness because during the Cold War years it has got used to benefitting from, as the USA has got used to providing, “free” security to the rest of the world.

The upshot of all this is a Europe which has achieved the remarkable feat of abolishing war within its own borders, and now has no interest in participating in ensuring international military security – a “postmodern paradise”. But the security of this is only made possible by an America still living in the real world of real threats to international security, an armed guard at the door of a secure paradise which itself it is unable to enter. For while Europeans may pretend that there are no longer any global threats to their own security, Americans know from direct experience of attacks for which they are inevitably more in the firing line than others, a harsher reality.

There is much to disagree with in this book – are we really condemned forever to a dog-eat-dog series of international conflicts, untouched by effective international law, when each within our own countries, the rule of law works so effectively? – but Kagan offers a plausible and readable insight into the psychology behind very different American and European conceptions of international order.

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Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, Robert Kagan, Atlantic Books,London £10.