Review - Book Report/Review Example

Download file to see previous pages... The author is troubled by fact, mostly because it means that America has to fight alone to preserve stability and peace around the world. In the end, Kagan claims America is much more technologically advanced and that it can attack safely other countries because it has the means to do so with technological warfare. However, as has been seen over the last few years in Iraq, American military power can get very tied up and may not always be very effective; it can sometimes limited in its ability to reshape a society or political system. That said, I really do believe that Kagan’s argument more or less makes sense and that the Europeans need to take a more proactive, robust role in the world today in order to help solve all the problems.
It’s important to ask the question, What is power? Kagan suggests it is purely military force. The US is the lone power in the world with the ability to conduct expeditionary warfare on multiple fronts across the globe whenever it wants to. As was demonstrated in the Balkans in the 1990s, Europeans aren’t able to project a credible military force even within Europe. Therefore the Europeans resort to the only thing they have for managing international conflicts, international institutions such as the UN. The success of European integration and solving the "German problem" has a lot of Europeans, Kagan says, to believe that they live in a Kantian paradise where international institutions can banish war forever. Americans have a different historical reality, and think of the world as a Hobbesian jungle where hard power rules. All of this I agree with. However, I do have a few hesitations when it comes to this erudite and enlightening book.
Yes, Europeans don’t have a right to tell us that the use of military force in some situations is morally wrong and no you can’t do that, because they really do depend on us, but they are also somewhat correct in being apprehensive about our decisions because they ...Download file to see next pagesRead More