The Cube (Chapter Three)

I don't disagree that Europe is secularized.

The third chapter of Weigel's book is a summary of Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. To summarize his summary, "on major strategic and and International questions today, Americans are from MArs and Europeans are from Venus". Kagan p. 3. WE have different understandings of how the world works, of the "nature" and "utility" of power and this is before we get to diffrences on the Middle East. Due to its expereince of devistation from war, prominent Europeans are of the mind conviction that "secuirity threats can and should be met, in the main not by traditional applications of military 'hard power' but by the further refinement of international legal and political instruments of conflict resolution...the rule of law had replaced the crude interplay of power...power politics have lost thEIr influence." But Europe think this way only becasue the U.S. keeps the world safe.


COMMENTS:

1) The Middle East Again? Three references to Iraq in five pages. Mighty fishy.
2) That we want peace in the Middle East is questionable [see previous discussion]
3) I wonder if he counts among these "prominent Europeans" men such as Karol Wojtyła and Joseph Ratzinger who, last time I checked, are closely identified with the "culture that built the cathedral." What about Thomas More?
4) If this is the European undersatnding of power, what is America's? Peace through hegemony?
5) Is he implying we have traded the rule of law for the crude interplay of power? I'm not arguing with him--inside the U.S. or in the rest of the world--I'm just asking.
6) Does he forget we won the cold war through not going to war?
7) I see no indication that GW disagrees.