Über-Neocon Robert Kagan: America May Be a Sucker, But at Least It's Not a Wimp!

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 8:51 AM on April 3, 2009.

You've got to feel a bit sorry for the Kagans, the first family of neoconservatism (for those that don't follow these critters, Robert, Fred, Donald and Kimberly are all zealous advocates of American perma-war). Their era is done; the "New American Century" lies in the dustbin of history and they have to work so much harder these days to hold on to their many columns throughout the conservative media.

But Robert, whose book Of Paradise and Power was supposedly a great influence on George W.'s worldview, is chugging right along, this time playing every feverish right-wingers' favorite game, 'How Many Clichés About Those Spineless European Surrender Monkeys Can I Pack Into a Single Washington Post Column?'

Let's catch up with his musings about Obama supposedly making the "conservative" Europeans uneasy:

[What the] Europeans yearn for in their self-contained world is stability and predictability, a little peace and quiet ... They don't want more excitement... [They share] a mortal fear of the turmoil that can be caused by unconstrained ambitions, both national and individual. The German people, for whom and by whom the European Union was consecrated, want to be constrained. The E.U.'s economic strictures, which now act as a barrier to Keynesian deficit spending, were put there by the Germans, for whom memories of inflation, not depression, are the great nightmare. The Germans and French prefer welfare payments to government stimulus spending, for they are part of the passive system of social safety nets on which their citizens have grown so comfortably dependent.

They do have deficit spending rules, but "welfare payments" -- things like food stamps and unemployment benefits -- are, of course, the "government stimulus spending" that brings the greatest bang for the buck. Or, as the New York Times put Kagan's argument:

The Europeans say they have no need for further stimulus right now because their social safety nets, derided in good times by free market disciples as sclerotic impediments to growth, are automatically providing the spending programs that the United States Congress has to legislate.

Europe’s extensive job protections and unemployment benefits are “bad in the upswing, because firms don’t dare to hire people, because then they are glued to them,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich. “In the downswing, it’s good if the people are glued to the companies. They keep their jobs. They keep their income. They keep consuming.”

But never mind those pesky details. Back to Kagan:

The creative destruction of the business-oriented political economies of the Anglo-Americans is too violent and unstable, too brutal and unpredictable. Better to regulate more tightly the international capitalists who can cause havoc through their inventiveness. Better to be less rich than less secure.

Ah yes, let's take a moment to praise those gritty international capitalists -- at least those that adhere to the Anglo-American model -- and their "inventiveness." Look at the big, beautiful crisis they've invented for the global economy!

This is a tired old talking point. America's vaunted "jobs machine" has fallen behind the European economies. The U.S. is 10th in average income; ahead of us are three of those timid countries with 'better regulated' economies. None of the three is Britain. According to the corporate-sponsored Heritage Foundation's "Economic Freedom Index" -- the closest I could come to quantifying a country's tolerance for "creative destruction" -- the U.S. ranks 6th in economic freedom; among ten "freest", only 2 aren't highly-regulated social democracies. But, again ... facts.

In foreign affairs, there have been brief moments of European global ambition. In the late 1990s, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac joined hands to promote a more muscular and capable European military. They were troubled and embarrassed by the vast military superiority, and accompanying arrogance, of the Americans during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts and were determined to make Europe an independent global player.

[...]

But Europe has largely recoiled from those fleeting ambitions. The E.U. army remains as distant a prospect as it was a decade ago. The eastward enlargement of 2004 produced indigestion and is regretted by many Western Europeans. Fear of Russia limits talk of admitting Ukraine, much less Georgia. Fear of Islamicization has killed any hope of admitting Turkey. The only question about enlargement today is whether it is dead or, as the optimists hope, merely in a 30-year coma.

It is into this Europe that President Obama has flown, with what Europeans regard as some radical and frightening plans for the economy; with a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that is far more aggressive, militaristic and success-oriented than they would prefer; with ideas about Iran that are welcome (the promise to talk) but also unnerving (the threat to impose more sanctions). As one savvy French journalist told me, "We have all been surprised. He is so . . . American!"

Americans are creators of turmoil. Europeans see them the way the ancient Greeks saw the Athenians, as "incapable of either living a quiet life themselves or of allowing anyone else to do so." As the scholar Stephen Sestanovich pointed out in a brilliant essay on "American Maximalism," Democratic and Republican administrations alike over the past half-century have favored "large, even risky" transformative strategies, whether confronting the Soviet Union, unifying Germany, fighting in the Balkans or solving global economic crises, and have abjured the safer, incremental approaches that Europeans always prefer. Yet Europe has often been dragged out of its comfort zone by this born gambler of a superpower.

Let's tally the clichés: Europeans are passive, vaguely feminine, and happy to allow those strapping Americans -- whom they disdain as overbearing and obnoxious -- protect them (with our, yeah, but also our "large, even risky transformative strategies"). Why? Because they lack the backbone to bankrupt themselves on military spending and instead foolishly spend their cute little Euros on health care, education and their silly little social safety-nets. 

Bien. If you've consumed some conservative media, you've heard this song many times before. The thing that I find so interesting about it is this: to the degree it has merit (and it really doesn't have much), it makes us the Biggest Suckers in the World. We have a poverty rate unheard of in Europe, we get the least value for our health care dollars among wealthy states and we rank 15th in the Human Development Index (a  broad measure of social well-being). And they end up as free-riders on the back of our massive "defense" budget. They have more equal, healthier (and taller) societies, and they get security for next to nothing, all thanks to Pax Americana, the neocons'' lifeblood. Sweet deal.

Just imagine that you lived in a gated community, and your neighbors down the lane --let's call them the Kagans -- spent all their hard-earned cash on guns and ammo and a few security guards to keep them and you safe from intruders. But you didn't have to chip in a dime, which allowed you to spend your dough on good, wholesome food for the family, nice clothes for the kiddies, decent health insurance and maybe a trip to Disneyworld (all of which the Kagans missed out on because they've got a lot of, you know, debt problems and the like).

I imagine that if the Kagans were walking down the lane and told you how much smarter their approach to household budgeting was, and why you should strive to be a bit more like them, you'd just think to yourself, 'keep talking, suckers!'

Back to Kagan:

Europeans love Obama, but European leaders have been fretting ever since his election. George W. Bush did the Europeans a huge favor by giving them the best excuse for inaction in transatlantic history. Now comes Obama, so much more compelling and yet, still, American.

I love this spin, because of course when he talks about Bush being an "excuse for inaction," he really means they "refused to follow me and my neocon buddies' advice and leap into a disastrous and immoral war in Iraq." Again, who's the sucker?

One wonders whether Obama officials quite see the enduring gap between Europe and the United States, or whether they have convinced themselves that the gap was merely a creation of Bush and will now vanish. This was the view put forth by a senior administration official in Brussels recently. But Europeans, and presumably seasoned veterans such as Richard Holbrooke, know better. The question will be whether the Obama administration, like some previous American administrations, can get Europe to do what Americans believe needs doing.

God, I hope not. Not Americans like this guy.

Or perhaps, in the interest of comity, it will tacitly accept that most Europeans don't want to send more troops to Afghanistan, spend more on defense or on economic stimuli, impose tougher economic sanctions on Iran, or stand firm against any of Russia's many demands. Instead of challenging them to do more, the administration may politely move on without them: the soft unilateralism of low expectations.

Or we could start ignoring the most hawkish among us, play better with the other children and stop being such suckers.

Tagged as: obama, europe, kagans

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.