Francis Fukuyama presented a speech that has been widely linked in the blogosphere. It was a balanced an interesting piece, but several parts stood out:
Robert Kagan, in a brilliant recent article in Policy Review, (3) put the current difference between the United States and Europe as follows. The Europeans are the ones who actually believe they are living at the end of history, that is, in a largely peaceful world that to an increasing degree can be governed by law, norms, and international agreements. In this world, power politics and classical realpolitik have become obsolete. Americans, by contrast, think they are still living in history, and need to use traditional power-political means to deal with threats from Iraq, al-Qaeda, and other malign forces. According to Kagan, the Europeans are half right: they have indeed created an end-of-history world for themselves within the European Union, where sovereignty has given way to supranational organisation. What they don