Glad you enjoyed the review John. I couldn't agree more. Kagan wrote an outstanding piece. It hardly seems worth my time reading the book after reading the review carefully. :)
I was so impressed I decided to click around the web and see if he had written any other insightful pieces related to foreign affairs. Found this interesting article describing the reason America and Europe differ so much on the use of military force.
Power and Weakness
By Robert Kagan
policyreview.org
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. On the all-important question of power — the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power — American and European perspectives are diverging. 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 cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a 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 — the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. 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. much more including in the link above.
In regard to partisan writing, you might find this website useful. It ranks the pundit writers daily and scores them based on their partisan comments.
lyinginponds.com
Looks like Paul Krugman from the NYT is leading the pack. |
