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To: Lane3 who wrote (17346)	7/12/2002 5:55:40 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

From today's Post for anyone interested in the Europe/US bifurcation. EUROPE: THE WORLD'S SALOONKEEPER? "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," begins Robert Kagan's essay "Power and Weakness" in the June/July issue of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review. Apparently, Kagan's take on this dysfunctional transatlantic relationship is causing quite the stir among the smart set in Europe. "I was certainly trying to step beyond the name-calling. Mostly, it has been 'You, Europeans, stink,' and 'You, Americans, are monsters.' I'm trying to give it a structural and actual ideological answer," said Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a monthly contributor to The Washington Post's editorial page. "If anything struck home, it was my argument that we actually have two different ideologies about power that are a product of our recent historical experiences," he said. Kagan argues that Europe's preference for diplomatic over military solutions and for multilateralism over unilateralism is not an intrinsic part of the European character, but instead stems from two things: Europe's current military weakness and the continent's success in using diplomatic and commercial means to rein in its national rivalries and form a peaceful European Union. Kagan also says that, ironically, Europe can afford to hold this particular view of the world only because the United States is policing the globe's trouble spots for it. The piece has been a big hit on Carnegie's Web site, and Germany's weekly Die Zeit newspaper is running a condensed version later this week. The essay is also being reprinted in French, Italian and Russian publications. Policy Review editor Tod Lindberg, who calls Kagan's article "debate changing," is going to edit a Hoover Press volume including the piece and some "heavy-hitter responses." Several conferences are being organized for the fall. Of course, not everyone likes Kagan's take on the world game board, in which he writes that if the United States is the world's sheriff, then Europe is the world's saloonkeeper, worried about both the outlaws and the lawman. "Of the people who've read it, among the Europeans, it's probably two to one, or three to one not that happy," said Kagan from his home in Brussels. "The French seem to be the most exercised."