Forgive me if this article has already been posted on this thread. This is an essay submitted by Asmus and Pollack in response to Kagan's original piece, “Power and Weakness,” Policy Review 113 (June-July 2002). As I recall, Kagan's view caused quite a transatlantic stir when it was first published this summer. I would be interested in what the thread thinks of Asmus and Pollack's response, and perhaps, if our resident foreign policy wonk (hi tekboy) could give us their first impressions. For convenience, a link to both essays has been provided.
The New Transatlantic Project
By Ronald D. Asmus and Kenneth M. Pollack
policyreview.org
For 50 years and more, the United States and our European allies cooperated in a grand strategic venture to create a democratic, peaceful, prosperous continent free of threats from within and without. At the dawn of a new century, that task is approaching completion. This autumn both nato and the eu are likely to launch so-called “Big Bang” rounds of enlargement, encompassing up to seven and 10 countries, respectively. If successful, these moves will help lock in democracy and security from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Relations between Russia and the West are also back on track. Russian President Vladimir Putin has opted to protect Moscow’s interests by cooperating with the U.S. and Europe rather than by trying to play a spoiler role. The certitude of that decision and, above all, the depth of Moscow’s commitment to democracy at home remain open questions. But Putin’s turn to the West has further reduced the risk that Russia might again become a strategic adversary and has instead opened a window to put the West’s relations with Russia on a more stable and cooperative footing.
There is still work to be done. Not all of the European democracies are fully functional and not all of the European economies are prosperous. Completing Central and Eastern Europe’s integration will take time even after they join nato and the eu. Balkan instability has been stemmed but the underlying tensions are not yet resolved. Ukraine’s westward integration and that of Russia will remain works in progress for years to come. And the West is only waking up to the challenge of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
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Power and Weakness
By Robert Kagan
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.
policyreview.org |
