Earlier this year, Robert Kagan, an American historian, suddenly became a celebrity in Brussels, after he wrote an article for Policy Review, an American journal, arguing that Europeans and Americans have fundamentally different attitudes to the world. Americans, he declared, were "Hobbesians", at ease with the use of force; Europeans were "Kantians", yearning for a world of perpetual peace in which all difficulties are settled by multilateral discussion. The article hit a nerve. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, suggested that all his staff should read it. Chris Patten, his counterpart at the European Commission, wrote articles challenging the "Kagan thesis". Mr Kagan himself was invited to innumerable seminars.
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