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

This book essentially has three hypotheses: firstly, that with the end of the Cold War, America no longer has to compromise with the Europeans, as there is no enemy against which a united "West" has to present a united front. Secondly, that the EU has developed an obsession with controlling the US by trying to force it to work through the UN where the EU at least in theory has some power. Finally, that Americans believe that war is acceptable to enforce liberal values, whilst the EU is very averse to warfare.

The author is not afraid to attack what he sees as European naivety and ingratitude. For example, he asks why the EU is so upset about there only being one superpower, when that superpower is America, and not a potentially much worse country. He also seems puzzled by Europe's refusal to spend more on their military, claiming that 60 years of peace in Europe have led Europeans to dangerously underestimate the potential threats from zones outside Europe. He also argues that Europeans want to have their cake and eat it: protected from attack by the USA, whilst at the same time criticising the methods of that protection.

He also argues that European governments do not have the reverence for the UN they often claim. For example, the author argues that the Europeans had no problem fighting in Kosovo without a UN resolution to do so when it suited their national interests. Conversely, the Americans often have more reverence for the UN than the Europeans, often trying to work through it. Therefore, some stereotypical views of the US and EU relationship with the UN are challenged in a thought provoking manner.

The book does have its weaknesses. Firstly, it is very brief, and one feels that the author could have said a lot more. Also, there are no index or reference pages, meaning finding a point of interest to refer back to can be rather time consuming.

All in all, the book is an excellent read for those interested in the relationship between the US and the EU. Pro-Americans will especially enjoy this book, as the author implies heavily that the American way of doing things is more realistic, albeit he never explicitly says so. His closing passage is particularly damning and thought provoking.

States when they are weak seek create international bodies to bind in the powerful, States that are strong try and break out of such bodies to give them freedom of movement to best defend their national interest on a global scale. Voila, that's it.
Europe (France/UK) during the 19th Century behaved as the global policemen, and what was good for Europe was good for the world - if you disagree we sent in the gunships and infantry and bludged you into agreement. The US on the other hand was busy trying to set up international bodies to control and channel Europe's iron fist imperialism.
Now that the US has gained world dominance, economically and militarily it is behaving in exactly the sameway as Europe did and it is Europe running to the inmternational bodies, first pioneered by the US, screaming "unfair unfair".
Europe is now spending its cash on social programmes, the US on bullets- both have things to learn from the other so we should stop fighting and work together on the next crisis, because we have more in common with each other than those johnny foreigners who don't believe in democracy.
That's one neo-con perspective. Now don't you feel better?

Luckily this book got an afterword in 2004. The initial text is definitely obsolete. But even so three years have passed and the book is quite largely obsolete. First and foremost today the main objection at the decision of the Bush administration to go at war in Iraq is that all evidence, intelligence and testimonies brought to our attention at the time has been revealed as nothing but lies. And maybe even worse than that. The recently revealed top secret classified papers from the French Ministry of Defense have revealed that terrorist attacks were planned with highjacked commercial planes at least nine months before 9/11. Did the Minister of Defense at the time, a socialist, not communicate this intelligence to the newly elected President Bush? Or did the newly elected President Bush neglect this intelligence. A second investigation is necessary. What did the two administrations, French and US, do at the time? And don't forget this field of expertise (military and foreign policies) is the privileged area of presidential governance in France. So Chirac had some kind of say in the decision to communicate or not this intelligence to the US. But that does not change the fact that all arguments used by Colin Powell or President Bush in 2002-2003 were a pack of lies. But even so, and trust cannot be built on lies, the other essential objection of Europeans and many other nations, including China and Russia, was that this war would open up a box of surprises, each one of them worse than all the others. Today in 2007 we are forced say that all these fears have come true. I will overlook the torturing of prisoners in El Ghraib or Guantanamo. I will overlook the nullification of habeas corpus for the prisoners in Guantanamo. I will only look at two elements that cannot be solved in any way by any number of GIs, no matter how many. Iraq is on the verge of a possible explosion that will send waves and tremors a lot farther than the Middle East. Who can imagine what would happen if a reunified Kurdistan was becoming a reality? Who can imagine what would happen if a reunified Shiite nation were to be recomposed, essentially what's more a reunified Shiite nation that would not be Arabic in spite of its being Moslem? What remains on the table is that Iraq has become ungovernable with three million refugees all around the world, and essentially in Syria and Jordania, with at least 600,000 civilian victims so far and the number grows everyday by the hundreds and not by the units. That's why we, the Europeans and many others, said the war was an absurdity. No WMDs but results that are deadly. Iran is running on an everyday more radical road. Hizbollah has taken over Moslem Lebanon. Hamas has been elected in Palestine, and there is no end to that long line of consequences. President Bush has opened up a Pandora's box that threatens to be a well timed but unpredictable bomb. When will it explode? We don't know. Will Israel's nuclear weapons be enough to stop it? We don't know. What will the Russia or Chinese reaction be? We don't know. That's why this book has to be read and meditated upon. It is the revelation of the most extreme impossibility for some American intellectuals to listen to the world and understand history is changing. So far class struggle and war were the engines of history. Today economic welfare and development are becoming this engine because everyone wants electricity, cars, fridges and washing machines. Henry Ford's answer when he was asked why his T Model was black is typical of the extreme dictatorship the mass economy of the mass consumer's society we are living in or aspiring to be living in imposes onto us, and without any kind of a war possible out of it: "I have no objection to any other color, provided it is black." Humanity started its long road towards freedom and democracy and welfare as soon as the homo sapiens, Cromagnon in Europe, decided to develop the division of labor imposed by the premature state of its little babies into an economic division of labor that created then the market economy, since some had goods or services others did not have and they had to start pooling together and exchanging things. The future of the world is democratic because the mass market of our mass consumer's society requires peace and freedom, peace and democracy, peace and personal individual responsibility and creativity. President Bush maybe wants to go faster than the hands of the Big Ben of history. Impossible. One has to desire something to accept to have it, better even to earn it, win it or deserve it. A gift is a gift but if it a basic vital thing it becomes an alienation or a humiliation. The Americans did not understand that, even in Europe. I remember a colleague professor of mine in Davis, CA, presenting the land around the campus as the richest land in the world. Vanity fair, nothing else. In de Gaulle's time hotel managers in Paris explained American tourists that they did not have the biggest king size beds in the world, nor the most spacious bath cum toilet restrooms, but they did have the biggest fleas and all French people were proud of their fleas. Robert Kagan is behind his time, just like President Bush. And I did have a petition signed after 9/11 to express my and many other people's grief and solidarity with the victims and I did have a petition widely signed in my city at the time against the war in Iraq after Babylon had been attacked. So please don't argue the point and the trauma of 9/11 that some of my students read 9-1-1.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Despite of irony, exaggerations, oversimplifications and not least errors this book is very recommendable.

Let me just mention a few of the negative sides:

Irony: To live in post-modernity is to live in utopia. Kagan teases the Europeans because the real world is of course the Hobbesian reality in which the Americans live.

Exaggerations: The power gap did not increase after the end of the cold war. Take a look at any NATO statistic both in real money and in percentages and you will find that there clearly is a power gap but it did not grow during the last ten years.

Oversimplifications: There is a clear tendency throughout the book to treat America and Europe as persons.

Errors: The Germans simply uses more money on military than Luxembourg both in real numbers and compared to number of inhabitants and GNP.

The book is clearly not flawless but there is a clear point in saying that the reason why France and Germany are so well behaved to day is simply because to do not have the powers not to be. What Kagan calls the psychologies of power and weakness explains why the Europeans don't try to compete with the USA on military power but on moral.

Though, what really makes this book worthwhile reading is that it makes you think and it has coursed a lot of discussion which is interesting to follow.

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"?