A Transcendence of Exhaustion? :: Free Essays Online

A Transcendence of Exhaustion?In his article situation and Weakness, Robert Kagan offers an insightful explanation of recent trends in transatlantic relations. He puts forth a very elegantly systemic explanation for this unraveling, or at least schism, of the West that seems to be taking place at a lower place our very noses. And yet for all its apparent clarity, Kagans underlying argument is a myopic one, a model in need of a tonic lens in order to gain any significant predictive role. Luckily, current regularts offer an indispensable laboratory for testing some aspects of Kagans ideas, bit even our class very circumscribed readings in the field equip us to spot major shortcomings of the argument. Kagan posits that a Kantian perpetual stop has emerged in Europe in the decade after the Cold Wars demise. (211) the States, in numerous ways a Western European nation but in many ways not, has found itself straddling a sort of a confines between ideologies. (239) On the one hand , it espo roles the same liberal values held by the Europeans, of forming economic and diplomatic ties, the establishment of the liberal separate peace, so to speak. However, even as it speaks these noble words, it finds itself stomping on Panama and Chile, reaching out to bang at Iraq. It is not free from the need to act in the Hobbesian orb of anarchy and strife. (211) This fundamental disagreement drives much of the tension over orthogonal affairs that has arisen between Washington and the European governments in the recent past. (Ibid) It is in offering a historical explanation for this state of affairs that Kagan excels. He dismisses outright the possibility that some abstruse national character force be to blame, pointing out that in many respects Europe and America have recently switched places, and behaviors accordingly, on the world stage. (214) Europe from the time of the Westphalian peace until the World Wars was the bloody realm of machtpolitik, the constant power pl ays at hearthstone and abroad that characterize especially the colonial period. As the locus of power in the Hobbesian sense, the Europeans historically believed in it and wielded it without hesitation. The timid young America, subject to the persecution of contradictory European empires for much of its early life, learned accordingly to make use of the weapons of the weak political and economic diplomacy. (215) However, Europe laid waste to itself in the two World Wars that can rightly be called the climax of machtpolitik, eliminating the cover basis it once held for world domination.