robert kagan

Is the United States an empire of war or an empire of love? In the early days of the Iraq war, journalists and scholars wrote of our empire of war, comparing the United States to grand historical realms of the past supposedly built on the battlefield. As our occupation of Iraq began, Robert Kagan mocked European pacifists as being from loving Venus, while manly Americans were from warlike Mars. But in Greek myth bellicose Mars played the fool, while beautiful Venus got her way.

War breaks rather than makes empires. The 1914 invasion of Serbia doomed the Habsburgs and began the First World War; the 1941 war against the Soviet Union brought down Nazi Germany; the 1979 occupation of Afghanistan fatally wounded the Soviet Union, and now the war in Iraq bleeds the United States dry. Although Europe has its share of problems, it is Venus rather than Mars that carries the laurels of victory. The European Union has expanded twice since the United States invaded Iraq, adding 12 countries to the ranks of its members. It is now more populous than the United States, and has a much larger economy.