Domestic Politics and American Foreign Policy: American & European political culture, an unsolvable misunderstanding?

Résumé du document

The end of the cold war with the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled the emergence of the United States as a hegemonic power. At this time Realist Theories in International Relations predicted that a counterbalancing coalition should soon be organized. The European Union appeared as the most probable counter power, with France as leader of this coalition. However, other theories of international politics (Constructivist ones) suggested that such a dramatic change in European-American relations was unlikely because of shared values and beliefs between the two continents. But September 11 2001 attacks produced the most significant change in the U.S foreign policy since a generation and soon major shifts would appear, the quarrel over whether or not to wage a war in Iraq being the last and most important crisis between the ‘old trans-Atlantic partners'. The provocative statement I have chosen to quote in the beginning of my paper has been made by Robert Kagan in his article "Power and Weakness", first appeared in the June/July 2002 issue of Policy Review. In 2003, the author has quickly expanded and released it in a book form under the title "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order." Robert Kagan's essay claims to offer an analysis of the current malaise between Europe and the United States. His reasoning is based on the idea that the US is the “Power” maintaining its predominant position through a Hobbesian use of force, while Europe is living in a Kantian world in which its “Weakness” appeared through its inability to cope with the anarchical menaces of the global world, and its reluctances to try to. For this reason, Kagan even went as far as to say, “It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world”.

Extraits

[...] After having briefly studied both European and American political culture, it is now time to come back to Kagan's quote, about the fact that is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world”[11]. To say a few words about the author, Robert Kagan is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He writes abundantly on American diplomatic history and the historical traditions that shape American foreign policy today. [...]

[...] These two wars have been among the ones which have contributed to a rethinking of national identity, in Europe as in the United States. Without any doubt, the Second World War have transformed the world not only in creating a new world order but also in putting into question the human government in regards with the atrocities committed during the war. After 1945, nationalism was so discredited that even the all-dominant U.S. recognized the need for a multi-lateral world. As for Europe, the Iron Curtain and the beginning of the Cold War gave her the desire to find a third way, which result was the signature in 1956 of the Treaty of Rome, marking the first steps toward common economic politics. [...]

[...] Wiarda in his book American Foreign Policy: Actors and processes, pp “early history and the religious basis of many U.S. institutions help explain America's long time concern with doing good in the world, the sense that America is a special nation blessed by God, with an obligation to bring the benefits of [their] civilization to less-favored lands.” The importance of moral construes the need to justify action accomplished for the ‘national interest', whatever it could be, with nobler purposes. When the government fails to find any moralistic pieties to his action, most of the time he loses the support of the population, as what happened during the Vietnam War in the 1960s or in Central America in the 1980s. [...]

[...] On the other hand, America as a whole continent with vast oceans as barriers and to the north a long and historically peaceful border with Canada, and to the South Mexico which was never a real threat to the United States. Being protected, the US has had the opportunity to chose isolation, decide when to use force. In the same time, the United States are a very richly endowed nation which historically did not have to depend on another country to assure its survival. [...]

[...] It would maybe be able to handle crises on the European continent, such as the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, and it would re- emerge as a global player. Kagan quotes Harvard University's Samuel P. Huntington, when this one predicted “that the coalescing of the European Union would be single most important move” in a worldwide reaction against American hegemony and would produce a “truly multipolar” twenty- first century.”[19] But for Kagan, the 1990s actually revealed the weakness of Europe, as the capacity of European powers, individually or collectively, to intervene in a decisive way into regions of conflict beyond the continent was insignificant. [...]