I've seen many references to Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power in the Blogosphere and mass media literature in the past few weeks  (notably, Parapundit's extremely comprehensive indexing of book reviews & reaction to the book from pundits abroad)

Kagan's book is based on a very influential & widely received article he wrote for CEIP expanded into an eminently readable 100 page pocket hardcover.    His thesis is that the root of US/European differences stem from who's currently holding the instruments of power.   The lack of European power in the traditional military sense yields a hostility towards the exercise of military power and an outsized belief in the language of treaties, negotiations, and diplomats to achieve international ends.

Guns, Germs, and Steel sometimes too simplistically prescribes all social differences to fauna, flora, and geography in lieu of the development of the philosophies of liberalism, property rights, etc.    Similarly, I fault Kagan somewhat in his prescription that all differences stem from the Power divide in lieu of underlying philosophical deltas (VDH explores a few of these in response to Kagan here).  This is probably due to the short length of the book and it's origins from a single essay (it's so short, it lacks chapters).   

Kupchan, by contrast, provides a more comprehensive discussion but I nevertheless tend to agree with Kagan's thesis more.

For example, the EU has a far greater belief in the role of groups rather than direct representation of the individual.   Consequently, EU foreign policy world focuses on the clear establishment of "rules of the game" amongst groups as a substantive end.   By contrast, within the US, the rules of the game as they apply to the individual are more prominent.   We do not hold group / national boundaries as sacrosanct particularly if they stand in the way of securing liberal democratic ideals for the individual. 

Kagan could argue that these notions are closely meshed with notions of sovereignty and thus appropriate use of force but they should be, IMHO, properly called out.

Nevertheless, Kagan's observations are enlightening and his arguments certainly encompass most of the dominant faultlines in the relationship.  Kagan doesn't mince words and comes out of the gates swinging.   He starts with [p 4]:

It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world.   On the all-important question of power -- the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power -- American and European persectives are diverging.  

Kagan argues that there is a certain cyclicality of the politics of power and notes that it was the Americans who adhered to & advocated international treatises during the 1800s / early 1900s when it was comparative a maritime weakling.  The aftermath of world wars, collapse of European empires, and the emergence of the cold war, resulted in a role reversal with ascendent US power.   However, there was an interesting type of influence nevertheless available to Europe [p 19]:

Although dwarfed by the two superpowers on its flanks, a weakened Europe nevertheless served as the central strategic theater of the worldwide struggle between communism and democratic capitalism, and this, along with lingering habits of world leadership, allowed Europeans to retain international influence and international respect beyond what their sheer military capabilities might have afforded

Consequently, there was a form of disappointment in Europe as their center stage role in the Cold War was swept aside with the fall of the Soviet Union.   Central to this was the utility of Force to solve problems of international significance [p 27]:

One British critic of America's proensity to military action recalls the old saw "When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails."   This is true.  But nations without great military face the opposite danger:  When you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail

The current brouhaha over Iraq simply casts a spotlight on the underlying views held by both parties [p 31]:

...the vast majority of Europeans always believed that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was more tolerable than the risk of removing him.  But Americans, being strong, developed a lower threshold of tolerance for Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, especially after September 11

A key corollary in Kagan's thesis is that these issues are not only pre 9/11, but also pre-Bush and, in some cases, pre-fall-of-the-Iron-Curtan.   For example, several core argument threads attributed Bush were alive, well, and had their genesis during the Clinton presidency -- hyperpuissance, Kosovo, Baghdad, Kyoto, ICC exceptions, even the beginnings of the unraveling of ABM (Andrew Sullivan discusses some of this here).

Kagan's description of Euro/American rifts during Kosovo was particularly interesting.   He argues (mostly using words from General Wesley Clark's Waging Modern War) that the Europeans sought a gradual, metered escalation of conflict with Milosevic to provide him with as many opportunities as possible to capitulate.   In contrast the US and it's undoubtedly post-Vietnam inspired military doctrine sought a much more decisive application of power in fewer steps to achieve the desired outcome.

During the cold war, these rifts were assuaged by the greater desire to present a unified "Western" front versus the Soviet block.    For all the differences that may have become visible between Washington and Paris, they paled in comparison to differences with the Kremlin and that kept folks singing the same song.

The Hobbes vs. Kant analogy is perhaps the most cited portrait of the 2 views on governance.   Kagan comes close to saying that the *real* root differences are actually philosophical rather than just oriented around Power [p57]:

...Europeans have stepped out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of perpetual peace...In fact, the United states solved the Kantian paradox for the Europeans.   Kant had argued that the only solution to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the creation fo a world government.

... By providing security from outside, the United States rendered it unnecessary for Europe's supranational government to provide it.   Europeans did not need power to achieve peace, and they do not need power to preserve it [due to unseen US power operating outside of Europe].

Kagan is leaving room here to argue reverse causality.   It isn't exclusively the lack of Power that spawned a philosophy.   We could argue that the adoption of a philosophy that equates virtue with weakness has necessarily resulted in a lack of power.   Because we're dealing philosophy, the implications are profound and the passion is fiery [p 62]:

After all, to deny the validity of the new European idealism is to raise profound doubts about the viability of the European project

[p 74] ..."The challenge to the postmodern world," Cooper argues, "is to get used to the idea of double standards."   Among themseles, Europeans may "operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security."  But when dealing with the world outside Europe, "We need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era -- force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary."

[p 91]...One of the things that most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a philosophical, even metaphsyical disagreement over where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the alws of the jungle and the laws of reason.   Americans do not believe we are as close to the realization of the Kantian dream as do Europeans.

Kagan's final prognosis for Europe [p 100]:

The day could come, if it has not already, when Americans might no more heed the pronouncements of the EU than they do the pronouncements of ASEAN or the Andean Pact.

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