Quotes from book
Of Paradise and Power

Name: Of Paradise and Power
Author: Robert Kagan

Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order is an essay by Robert Kagan which attempts to explicate the differing approaches that the United States and the nations of Europe take towards the conduct of foreign policy. Kagan argues that the two have different philosophical outlooks on the use of power, which are the natural consequence of the United States' possession of power and the Europeans' lack of it.

“And now, in the final irony, the fact that the US military power has solved the European problem, especially the "German problem", allows Europeans today, and Germans in particular, to believe that American military power, and the "strategic culture" that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 73

“The vast majority of Europeans always believed that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was more tolerable than the risk of removing him. But Americans, being stronger, developed a lower threshold of tolerance for Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 31

“When you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Alternate version: If you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.
Of Paradise and Power, p. 26
According to Kagan, this is a variation of the proverb "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails." (p. 25 of the same book)

“The United States was losing interest in preserving European security, but at the same time it was hostile to European aspirations to take on the task themselves. Europeans complained about American perfidy, and Americans complained about European weakness and ingratitude.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 43

“When President Dwight Eisenhower undermined and humiliated Britain and France at Suez in 1956, it was only the most blatant of many American efforts to cut Europe down to size and reduce its already weakening global influence.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 72

“Americans officials have found it hard to believe, but leading officials and politicians in Europe really have worried more about how the United States might handle or mishandle the problem on Iraq — by undertaking unilateral and extralegal military action — than they have ever worried about Iraq itself and Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.”

Robert Kagan book Of Paradise and Power

Of Paradise and Power, p. 61