The answer lies somewhere in the realm of ideology, in European attitudes not just toward defense spending but toward power itself. Important as the power gap has been in shaping the respective strategic cultures of the United States and Europe, if the disparity of military capabilities were the only problem, the solution would be fairly straightforward. With a highly educated and productive population of almost 400 million people and a $9 trillion economy, Europe today has the wealth and technological capability to make itself more of a world power in military terms if Europeans wanted to become that kind of world power. They could easily spend twice as much as they are currently spending on defense if they believed it necessary to do so. And closing the power gap between the United States and Europe would probably go some way toward closing the gap in strategic perceptions.
There is a cynical view current in American strategic circles that the Europeans simply enjoy the “free ride” they have gotten under the American security umbrella over the past six decades. Given America's willingness to spend so much money protecting them, Europeans would rather spend their own money on social welfare programs, long vacations, and shorter workweeks. But there is more to the transatlantic gulf than a gap in military capabilities, and while Europe may be enjoying a free ride in terms of global security, there is more to Europe's unwillingness to build up its military power than comfort with the present American guarantee. After all, the United States in the 19th century was the beneficiary of the British navy's dominance of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. But that did not stop the United States from engaging in its own peacetime naval buildup in the 1880s and 1890s, a buildup that equipped it to launch and win the Spanish-American war, acquire the Philippines, and become a world power. Late-nineteenth-century Americans did not take comfort from their security; they were ambitious for more power.
Europeans today are not ambitious for power, and certainly not for military power. Europeans over the past half century have developed a genuinely different perspective on the role of power in international relations, a perspective that springs directly from their unique historical experience since the end of World War II. They have rejected the power politics that brought them such misery over the past century and more. This is a perspective on power that Americans do not and cannot share, in as much as the formative historical experiences on their side of the Atlantic have not been the same. Consider again the qualities that make up the European strategic culture: the emphasis on negotiation, diplomacy, and commercial ties, on international law over the use of force, on seduction over coercion, on multilateralism over unilateralism. It is true that these are not traditionally European approaches to international relations when viewed from a long historical perspective. But they are a product of more recent European history. The modern European strategic culture represents a conscious rejection of the European past, a rejection of the evils of European Mahtlpolilik.
1.What might be the question raised prior to the first paragraph of the passage?
2.What have made it difficult to redress the military imbalances between the United States and Europe?
3.What does the phrase “free ride” imply here?
4.What does the phrase “the transatlantic gulf” refer to?
5.Why do Americans and Europeans think about power so differently?
