This book is the most recent publication of the American journalist and writer Robert Kagan, responsible in 2003 of the popular statement that "Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus".
The author articulates the following bottom-line ideas: the new era of global convergence and victory of the liberal order that seemed to be reached at the end of Cold War was a fake illusion, "History" is back and the struggle for the nations influence is again the most relevant actor of the international arena, and the western democracies should be united in order to shape this new situation, before giving the autocracies the chance to do it on themselves.
In the first part, Kagan defines the return to the "nationalism of great power" as the key factor of the international relations, and makes an analysis of the evolution of the foreign policy of the regional powers, including the only superpower, the USA. The second block is devoted to the study of the current relations among these powers, pointing out the challenges to the "new world order" that was supposed to be triumphant during the nineties.
There is a clear evidence of the evolution of Robert Kagan's ideas from the publication in 2003, "Power and Weakness." He doesn't consider that Americans and Europeans belong to different planets, affirming that their differences are minimum and must be disregarded in order to reach the common goal and to face the challenges posed by the resurgent autocracies and the radical Islamism.
Therefore, we can see that the American unilateralist euphoria of 2003 is gone, and that, without giving up the ideal of spreading the liberal order and the democratic values all over the world, the specialists in political science like Kagan now recognize the need of a multilateral action, coordinated at least with all the democracies, mainly the EU. The lessons learned from the post-war in Iraq, together with the already mentioned growing defiance of the autocratic regimes and the persistent challenge of radical Islamism, represent the keys of that evolution.
A polemic question is the definition of a geopolitics faulting line between democracies and autocracies: first, because it magnifies the differences and explicitly identifies some nations as the "enemy" side, making more difficult the feasible evolution of the authoritarian regimes; second, for leaving the Russian Federation that emerged after the presidency of Vladimir Putinon the other side of the border, assigning it the same degree of autocracy as for the Chinese communist regime.
So, Kagan doesn't pay attention to the strategic relevance of Europe and their good relations with Russia (not only due to energy security considerations), but related to the second struggle identified, the one against the radical Islamism. He doesn't hesitate to place some very autocratic regimes in the western group, for instance Saudí Arabia, considering the benefits that its collaboration can represent. He supports carefully regulating the pressure over these regimes in order to make them evolve into having more liberal positions.
Fransicso J. Ruiz works for Spanish Center for National Defense Studies. Currently he is working on a PhD thesis on US, EU and Russia security and defence policies.
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October 3, 2008
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Europe, after the second world war - it started the two world wars, not the US - was wobbly and could only stand with US help. The colonial experience that many use to abuse the US and determine their slogans bearing the "anti-US imperialism" dead-horse epithets, is not an american reality. The American reality (again the debate can be started about and over what it really means to say so) has been of fighting colonialism itself. Within and amongst the colonial powers, the British are the only ones to have handed over most areas peacefully. The French have been notorious over a rather obsessive pathology in dealing with the issues of independence of its colonies. An interesting hypothetical work exists by an Indian author wondering what would have it meant for India to have been a French or rather a German colony. Most Indians who have read that book would be grateful for having the British as their colonial masters.
The Soviet area of infleunce, again, could rebuild themselves so, again only with Soviet assistance. This is not to negate the accomplishments of 'Europe' - should one attempt and determine what it really means! One has found a certain paper submitted at the Strasbourg Symposium, during the early days of the euphoria over the European Union, by an European that talks of the "Voice vs The Exit people". One does not know if that also refers to the colonial period of the difference that marked the British from the 'european' colonial powers over either the devolution of power or granting independence to their formr colonies. It is a question that might as well be asked here before such Mars & Venus characterizations are made, even though Dr. John Gray is just slightly away from the mark - just a wee bit, as mentioned earlier.
Or may it be that going by Dr. John Gray's thesis (and one can very well imagine what are those factors that may have led to certain observable behaviour patterns giving rise to such an observation - with the caveat about the problems of particlar methodologies already hinted at here), the Venus like behaviour of Europe arises (to external appearances) because of the same reasons? Of course Americans then wear the pants and they wear rather good pants in the trans-atlantic home and sound like Mars!
No - there are differences and valid differences between any people, after one has determined what it menas to be those people. Quintessentially - Americans are the do-gooders. Europeans? One would like to pass a statement maybe after a couple of centuries of them begining to wear the pants, without stealing the pants of the Americans, as one puts it. Dr. John Gray would not be an American now? Would he?