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		Robert Kagan on the Trans-Atlantic Relationship June 30 2003 Robert Kagan went to Carnegie Endowment to direct the U.S. Leadership project in September, 1997. Mr. Kagan is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. Previously, he worked in the Department of State from 1985-1988, as a Deputy for Policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs and as principal speechwriter to the Secretary of State. He was also the foreign policy advisor to Congressman Jack Kemp in 1983 and Special Assistant to the Deputy Director of the U.S. Information Agency. It is time, he says, to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. Robert Kagan asserted that the fundamental issue in repairing EU and USA relations is understanding the different positions America and Europe come from. The United States remains in a world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. The geopolitical earthquake of the 11th of September has had the effect of a tectonic shift on the agenda of President Bush. America the invincible has lost its sense of invulnerability. Yet the ensuing focus of an understandably traumatized America on "war against terrorism" is still not fully understood in Europe. That is why on major strategic and international questions of today, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus". The United States resorts to force more quickly and, compared with Europe, is less patient with diplomacy. Americans generally see the world divided between good and evil, between friends and enemies, while Europeans see a more complex picture. When confronting real or potential adversaries, Americans generally favour policies of coercion rather than persuasion, emphasizing punitive sanctions over inducements to better behaviour, the stick over the carrot. Americans tend to seek finality in international affairs: They want problems solved, threats eliminated. And, of course, Americans increasingly tend toward unilateralism in international affairs. They are less inclined to act through international institutions such as the United Nations, less inclined to work co-operatively with other nations to pursue common goals, more sceptical about international law, and more willing to operate outside its structures when they deem it necessary. The EU claims to be based on peace. It was started with the aim of putting to an end to the wars by focusing on and creating common aims. The EU has been successful in its initial aim; since the creation of the EU there have been no wars within EU (although many people would credit NATO, not the EU, with keeping the peace). So Europeans believe themselves not to have the responsibility to build up its military power for an interventionist approach. The USA, however, has thought itself the saviour of other countries as it intervenes to put an end to wars and tyranny. Europe, because of its unique historical experience of the past half-century - culminating in the past decade with the creation of the European Union - has developed a set of ideals and principles regarding the utility and morality of power different from the ideals and principles of Americans, who have not shared that experience. If the strategic chasm between the United States and Europe appears greater than ever today, and grows still wider at a worrying pace, it is because these material and ideological differences reinforce one another. The divisive trend they together produce may be impossible to reverse. "Europe whole and free" working together as a counterpart, not as a counterweight, as a "partnership in leadership" not as a follower, of the United States, was President Bush Snr's way of describing our ambitious common agenda. Robert Kagan believes that the way forward is for a more powerful Europe, not a less powerful America in order to narrow the capabilities of mutual respect, shared objectives and complementary of means.