Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan - Essay Example They self-identify as tough. 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 or deal with an intractable ethnic conflict. 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 and conflicts. This theory has inspired me to potentially work as a diplomat in the future. I started out thinking about conflict in an idealistic way, but now am much more realistic about these sorts of things. It’s important to ask the question when thinking about conflict and politics, 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.