Kagan's Of Paradise And Power

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Recommended: Consequences of WWII

Robert Kagan’s observant eye brings to the forefront an issue that is often disregarded in terms of contemporary importance. Throughout modern history, the United States and Europe have differentiated in both tact and standpoint, yet this critical fact has almost become the backdrop to the changing pace of today’s events. The histories of both continents are quite varied, yet are also intertwined—such is the reason why their viewpoints are so disparate. In Of Paradise and Power, Mr. Kagan shines light specifically on these reasons, yet unfortunately at the same time offers only weak resolutions. Nonetheless, his book discusses a topic that for a long time has been swept under the carpet, and does it with great detail.

Mr. Kagan begins by directly addressing the issue: the United States and Europe clearly do not see eye to eye on how to handle current affairs. The United States is currently the top superpower, whose slightest whim can start a chain of events that span the globe. This is because the U.S. is a military power that prefers to shoot before talking (or in some cases, talk with a pistol in hand). The political leaders of the country believes it to be ideologically supreme, and therefore must use its force to spread these good ideas to places in the world where they believe are missing.

Europe, on the other hand, is relatively weak compared to the bulkiness of America’s muscles. The continent has been battered by the last two World Wars and has thus developed a set of ideals that do not revolve around power and military defense. Europe over the centuries was the original superpower, conquering foreign lands as well as each other using brute, destructive force. Now that they have learnt from the terrors caused by supreme militarization, as well as radical ideology, the Europeans have become more state-oriented, and have therefore “fallen behind” the United States.

The biggest blow came to Europe during World War II, which essentially ended its militaristic and colonial ideals. The collective term for all the troubles that began then is the “German problem,” where fanatical dogma was taken to its extreme. Europe, a wounded superpower from the First World War, never fully regained the status it had retained beforehand. The people saw that building up armies would no longer be beneficial to the future of the continent. Now the nations’ leaders handle situations more diplomatically, although sometimes passively if the possibility of war looms.

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