One of the recent topics in my "American Foreign Policy in a Post-9/11 World" class was how the US relationship with Europe has changed. The main essay we read for this was Power and Weakness by Robert Kagan. Essentially, the essay argued that the US is strong military and destined to provide a "Kantian paradise" for the world. Europe, military weak and without the real desire to become otherwise, is left to reap the benefits of this paradise. At the same time, the Europeans have come to mistrust the same power that has brought them here:

American power made it possible for Europeans to believe that power was no longer important. And now, in the final irony, the fact that United States military power has solved the European problem, especially the “German problem,” allows Europeans today to believe that American military power, and the “strategic culture” that has created and sustained it, are outmoded and dangerous.

The essay is a very interesting read, and provides a lucid explanation for how we arrived at the current situation. But in the end it seems to assume that the world is relatively static. There are some Europeans trying to make Europe a stronger military power to balance out the US; perhaps eventually they will convince enough people to do so. We have to write a single paper for this class, and I chose to write mine on what I thought was a somewhat orthogonal topic. In my paper, I argue that a European superpower would actually be beneficial to the United States without going into detail on whether a European superpower would actually develop. (I finished a draft yesterday; I'll post it on my website when its in the final form.) But then one of the most frustrating things happened. After having this great idea and thinking so highly of myself for being able to think this through, it turns out just about everyone else is doing (or has done) the same thing. In Salon today, "Welcome to the new cold war" by Andrew O'Hehir, explores this very topic. More than that, the article is actually in part a book review of two entire books on the topic, Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream and T. R. Reid's The United States of Europe. This goes back to something I used to think about a lot--is there anything I can think of that someone else hasn't already thought of? More importantly, do I have the skills to do something that someone else couldn't do better? I'm thinking about these questions now in terms of public policy, foreign affairs and the like. Perhaps, though, I just need to temper my expectations. I'm near the end of a 20-hour course. Should I really be expected to be as well-informed and as eloquent as people who think about topics like this for a living? The answer to the first question is likely to always be "no"--only true geniuses could honestly answer "yes" to that. But the answer to the second question is almost definitely "yes." I need to take the time to become better informed, to practice exercising my mind and wrapping them around these topics and, perhaps, to specialize on something (though this last one is up for debate and, of course, more thought).