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Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 132906
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.6
ISBN: 1843541785
Dewey Decimal Number: 327
EAN: 9781843541783
ASIN: 1843541785
Publication Date: March 11, 2004
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Amazon.co.uk Review
From the beginning of George W Bush's presidency there has been a profound unease in relations between Europe and the United States. Robert Kagan's Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New World Order offers a diagnosis and prognosis of the current malaise, which recent events such as Bush's "axis of evil" speech and UN divisions over Iraq have made even worse. Kagan argues that the 20th century has seen an inversion of history, whereby the once great, imperial, war-mongering powers of the 19th century (Britain, France and Germany) have become doves and multi-lateralists and the precocious and defenceless small power of the earlier era (America) has become a military and economic giant, hawkish and resolute in its defence of global security. Europe (or more specifically France and Germany), Kagan argues, have learned that nation-states must live together or die, while America has come to rely on the blunt diplomacy of the pre-emptive strike. Europeans resent America for its bully-boy tactics; Americans get fed up with whining Europeans who would not enjoy their freedom to moan but for the post-1945 umbrella of NATO security. Kagan is wise and perceptive throughout his long essay and pleads reasonably that the US and the EU must develop a common policy that recognises their historical and strategic differences. He is a realist and there is little of the triumphalism to be found in similar recent works by American foreign policy experts such as Francis Fukuyama. Kagan is good on the military and diplomatic aspects of the question, but brushes over the resentments fuelled by America's MacDonaldisation of European culture. --Miles Taylor
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 The point may not be the one the author wants to make December 15, 2003
I. P. Gearing (Bristol UK)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book is well worth reading. It sets out two of the approaches to International Relations in a clear and concise manner, and for that it deserves plaudit as not all the writing on these subjects is even remotely approachable by the general reader. It is well written. It favours the "Realist" belief that the only way to bring order to the anarchy of the international society is for the hegemon to behave as police/enforcer of international co-operation through the application of its power in the logic of its own self interest. What it doesn't really do is address the $5 trillion debt-consequence of current US foreign and economic policy, nor the impact of a rationalist approach in ameliorating such consequences as have to be borne by everyone else. Essentially it proposes that someone's gotta do it and the least of all evils is the good ol Liberal US of A. Well if you live in it, rather than in the shadow of it, I suspect that that the view makes different sense. That does not make it good or bad, but it ignores the fact that, maybe, the rationalist approach of Europe is actually looking beyond the present (fuelled by hindsight) to the passing of the current hegemon, which its own history suggests gets increasingly violent (Monet and Schuman during the birth of the EU looked to a future where another Franco-German war was a material impossiblility - it makes the most sense given the shared brutalities). Cliche it may be but "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword", but in every age the cost of that to humaity gets heavier and heavier.
A brilliant analysis of diverging trans-atlantic politics March 18, 2003
Tom (London)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Written by an American who lives in Europe, this book provides an astonishly clear and balanced analysis of the different ways Europeans and Americans think about the world today, and it places these diverging views within a political context that has been building for 100 years (i.e. not just since George W Bush was elected and the attacks took place on 11 Sept 1999). It's a must read for anyone trying to make sense of the seismic shifts in world power politics brought to a head by the crisis over Iraq. It's also attractively concise - you can read it in a single evening!
A must-read, whether or not you agree... September 2, 2003
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
A highly compelling work, which outlines the neo-conservative viewpoint in a far clearer manner than the governments who themselves expound it.
A very important, thought-provoking essay July 26, 2004
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Robert Kagan is known as a neo-conservative (whatever real meaning that phrase actually has) but it is wrong to call this book a polemic. Let me say first that I am in favour of the war to remove Saddam Hssein from power in Iraq and support George W. Bush. So too is the author. However, I fail to see how anyone who actually reads the book could call it unbalanced. Kagan is an American who has lived in Europe; he displays a strong knowledge of history and illuminates and analyses the problematic transatlantic relationship. He dissects some of the arguments against the war in Iraq and when the use of force is or can be legitimate. He looks at terms like "unilateralism","illegality" (in international law), "consenus" etc. and teases out their true meanings in the context of the transatlantic alliance and European and American attitudes and beliefs. For example he makes an interesting comparison between America now and Europe in the 19th century and vice versa; he points out how Europe's different worldview - which comes from its rejection of "power politics" after the Second World War and its consequent development into integrated peace - is in large measure a result of American policy. He contrasts European attitudes to international law in the cases of Kosovo(1999) and Iraq(2003). However he is also critical of the Bush adminstration's maladroit diplomacy. The book is balanced, clear-thinking and rigorous in style; its substance is based on historical analysis and extrapolation. Kagan's conclusions are thought-provoking and extremely important. I believe it will become a seminal text on international affairs in the 21st century. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in history and the future of international affairs.
Balanced essay January 8, 2005
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Kagan lucidly explains the current transatlantic divide with ever-increasing detail. He logically seeks the root of the current problem in world affairs and justifies American action. With a brief reference to Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" he ends with the real point of the book, that of whether the ideology of Europe, unwillingly mutated and fostered by the United States, has changed significantly and/or irreversibly enough to turn the two into separate civilizations. Does "the West" remain?, is the first point he begins to close with, but for those seeking to criticize the unilateral action of the United States the stance taken by Kagan is that the ideology of those belonging to the current Western hegemony need not be applied to those outside of it when protection is needed. A practicable view when so few states in current global affairs are obeying the naive attempt to bind the whole world in one ideology-the United Nations.Throughout the book Kagan contines to refer to the same events in Euro-American history to back up his theory, as he moves continually forward. Stylistically, the main feat of the book is to move fluidly from one point to the next in a logical fashion that does not get bogged down with too many examples. His points are terse, relevant and clear. It is too difficult to say whether this book is a polemic or not, but when Kagan ends on the surprisingly gentle note of "a little common understanding could still go a long way" it becomes clear that the real question asked is "is "the West" still bound by the same ideology?" All the book might seem to say no, but the last paragraph or so seems to say yes. This considered does religion bind, and will it continue to do so?, "the West", and if it does, will this be a serious enough difference in ideology from nation-state to nation-state in the future to induce the "Clash of Civilizations"?
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