Power And Weakness By Robert Kagan. The psychology of power and weakness. Robert kagan power and weakness pdf. Joseph Nye coined the term soft power, meaning the ability to get what. 19 Robert Kagan 2002: Power and Weakness. Power and Weakness by. Power and Weakness by Robert Kagan. Only available on StudyMode. Study of the essay 'Power and Weakness' by Robert Kagan Robert Kagan. Power and weakness Robert Kagan Policy Review; Jun/Jul 2002; 113; Research Library pg. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Kagan’s Power and Weakness. Power and Weakness, Robert Kagan’s essay. Kagan then goes on to conclude.
Kagan’s Power and Weakness . My friend. Matthew Rose tells me that it’s already proving rather influential inwhat he calls . If you simply don’thave the time, however, then in a nutshell Kagan’s argument is this: that Europeans, with little might to their name, like internationalnorms because they’ve built some kind of Kantian utopia, where suchthings trump military might. Americans, on the other hand, with nearlyas much military might as the rest of the world combined, are much moreinclined to a Hobbesian/Machiavellian view of the world, and, moreover,have provided the security shield which has allowed Europe to developpeacefully over the past 5. The essay is excellent, and there is a temptation to admire this piece’sintelligence and insights to the point at which one overlooks its elisionsand oversights.
Its broad thesis, I think, is largely correct: Europeis living in a postmodern Kantian paradise whose security is only assuredby brute Hobbesian US strength. At least, I think that was unarguableup until the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union constituteda threat to Western European regional security which nobody denied. Now, however, for all that Europe is a “military pygmy”compared to the US, it still has more than enough firepower to deterany state you might care to mention from a direct assault upon it. Kaganis convinced that the only reason that Europe is secure is that anypotential aggressors know that they’d have the US to answer towere they to act. But that’s not the case: while the US is overwhelminglymore powerful than Europe, France and Britain both have militaries (notto mention nuclear weapons) big enough to deter any tinpot dictatorlike Slobodan Milosevic or even Saddam Hussein from launching a directattack on the EU. Which leaves Russia — a country which certainly has enough inthe way of nationalistic rumblings to worry the Kantians of the EU.
But even in the case of Russia, a direct assault on the European Unionis unthinkable: the worst that could happen would be some kind of attemptto expand to the borders of the former Soviet Union. And Germany’sattempts to reach out economically to Russia and start to integrateit into the European economy have to be a more constructive way of bringing. Russia to Kantian paradise than would be building more tanks. Quoth Kagan: Most Europeans do not see the great paradox: that their passageinto post- history has depended on the United States not making the samepassage. Because Europe has neither the will nor the ability to guardits own paradise and keep it from being overrun, spiritually as wellas physically, by a world that has yet to accept the rule of . I think that Europeans do see the great paradox,but with the emphasis very much on the “deter” rather thanthe “defeat” of the final clause. As Kagan himself notes,“Europeans generally believe, whether or not they admit it to themselves,that were Iraq ever to emerge as a real and present danger, as opposedto merely a potential danger, then the United States would do somethingabout it – as it did in 1.
So there’s no need to go inand topple Baghdad now. What’s more, Saddam Hussein, a man who has showna unusual degree of ability on the self- preservation front, is unlikelyto suicidally attack Europe, America or anybody else anytime soon. It’s quite a simple argument: either Saddam’s going to startattacking other countries, or he isn’t. If he isn’t, thenwe can let him be, following the principle of the 1.
Treaty of Westphalia,which established the principle of nonintervention in the domestic affairsof other states. If, on the other hand, Saddam is going to attack, thenwe can wait until he does so and then destroy him with the full supportof the world community. Meanwhile, any invasion now would mean thatit was the US which was making an unprovoked attack on another sovereignstate, violating every principle of international peace. Kagan’sjustification of such an action as, basically, “well, that’sthe way a Hobbesian world works” isn’t good enough.
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When hasa “pre- emptive” attack by one country on another ever beenconsidered moral or justifiable? The United States, of course, in its role as global policeman, hascertainly attacked regimes which haven’t marched across internationalborders: Kosovo being a prime example. But what’s being mooted in Iraqgoes beyond .
I have met one person, a former UN official, who approvesof invading Iraq on humanitarian grounds. But there’s only one nationwhose long- term security is uppermost in the thoughts of the Bush administrationhawks, and it’s not Kurdistan. I would also like to take the opportunity to poke a couple of holesin what Rose calls Kagan’s . A man armedonly with a knife may decide that a bear prowling the forest is atolerable danger, inasmuch as the alternative – hunting the bear armedonly with a knife – is actually riskier than lying low and hopingthe bear never attacks. The same man armed with a rifle, however,will likely make a different calculation of what constitutes a tolerablerisk. Why should he risk being mauled to death if he doesn’t needto?
Kagan then goes on to conclude, at the end of the following paragraph,that Europeans like to say that Americans are obsessed with fixingproblems, but it is generally true that those with a greater capacityto fix problems are more likely to try to fix them than those who haveno such capability. Americans can imagine successfully invading Iraqand toppling Saddam, and therefore more than 7. Americansapparently favor such action. Europeans, not surprisingly, find theprospect both unimaginable and frightening.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? But actually, it doesn’t stand upto scrutiny. Pretty obviously, bear=Saddam, knifeman=Europe, shooter=USA. But the problem is that the situation never arises where the man armedonly with a knife needs to decide whether or not to hunt the bear: healways knows that there’s another man with a rifle who will shootthe bear before it mauls anybody. So he doesn’t need to make anycost- benefit calculations about hunting the bear versus not huntingthe bear. He knows he’s not going to be mauled, because the chapwith the rifle is right behind him. So there’s no point in goingbear- hunting: the minute the bear becomes a real and present danger,it gets shot.
Now consider the situation from the bear’s point of view. So longas there’s a man with a rifle in the forest, he knows better thanto go after either man.
So what’s the shooter afraid of? Rememberthat the knifeman, although he doesn’t like the bear, certainlydoesn’t want the man with the rifle to shoot it, because that wouldviolate the Rules of the Forest (aka the Treaty of Westphalia). So fromthe shooter’s point of view, the bear might be a potential danger,but there’s no point in pissing off the knifeman by going afterit: if and when the bear actually attacks, it can be shot then justas easily. Stop and think: why would an American invasion of Iraq be “notsurprisingly” unimaginable and/or frightening to Europeans? Itwould only be so if (a) Europe could conceivably lose a war with Iraq; and (b) Europe would not have the backing of the US in such a war. Neithercondition obtains in the real world.
Kagan misses his own point, whichis that America has taken on the role of Europe’s guardian. Kagan doesn’t take sides on the should- we- or- shouldn’t- we- invade- Iraqdebate. But it’s actually easy to frame it in terms of his forest scenario. The only reason to tear up Westphalia and shoot the bear anyway is becausethe bear might lend its claws to suicidal rabbits, who can creep upon the man with the rifle when he’s not looking and cause seriousdamage with them.
They certainly die in the process, which is why thebear itself never does such a thing, but they’re suicidal rabbits,remember, so they’re not so fussed about that. The shooter, worriedabout rabbits bearing bear- claws, then decides that the only way toavoid that threat is to kill the bear and declaw it. And this is where we get to the Mars/Venus distinction between Europeand the US.
Both of them are well aware that shooting bears becauseof a threat from rabbits violates centuries of international protocol. And because Europeans care about international protocol and Americansdon’t, Europeans are opposed to bear- shooting while Americans thinkit’s actually rather a good idea. There’s one more hole in Kagan’s argument I’d like to pointout, and that’s where he says that “although the United Stateshas played the critical role in bringing Europe into this Kantian paradise,and still plays a key role in making that paradise possible, it cannotenter this paradise itself. It mans the walls but cannot walk throughthe gate.” Someone should remind Kagan that the US is itself afederation, and has been living in its own Kantian paradise for muchlonger than the Europeans have — in fact, since the end of the. Civil War. America’s states have gone so far as to leave theirdefenses completely open, relying only on the Second Amendment to provideindividual citizens with small arms. One Republican pundit told me oncethat her answer to “who’s in charge here?” would notbe the mayor of New York nor the president of the United States, butrather the governor of New York State. States’ rights are a cornerstoneof Republican ideology, and many of the most hawkish members of thepresent Administration would consider the USA a hegemonic power, tobe sure, but one constituted of 5.
Kagan claims that “Americans apparently feel no resentment atnot being able to enter a . Only twice in its history has America been attacked by foreignagents: Pearl Harbor and September 1. Both attacks profoundly changedthe American national psyche, but neither of them compare to the kindof invasions that most of the rest of the world’s countries havesuffered again and again.
Both attacks started — and stopped —right on the very edge of US national territory. Never has the Americanheartland had to worry that a foreign power would take over the USA.