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This essay introduces a special journal issue discussing a 2002 article, "Power and Weakness" by Robert Kagan, which assessed the structural underpinnings of foreign relations between the United States and Europe. Kagan's observations formed a double argument: First, that the relative power of the United States and the relative weakness of Europe frame the way Americans and Europeans approach international politics; and second, that ideas about the efficacy of power also shape the extent to which one pursues and uses it. In this essay, Kagan offers a historical context for the original essay. Adapted from the source document.

Der Beitrag erörtert die internationale politische Situation nach Beendigung des Kalten Krieges 1989 mit dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion. In diesem Zusammenhang gilt das Hauptaugenmerk Russland und China, deren politische Entwicklung beschrieben wird und die als autokratische Systeme dargestellt werden. Ferner werden die Vor- und Nachteile der amerikanischen Hegemonie für die Weltordnung, insbesondere die Auswirkungen auf die Verbreitung der freiheitlichen Demokratie betrachtet. Anders als erwartet brachte nach Ansicht des Autors das Ende des Kalten Krieges nicht das gelobte demokratische Zeitalter. Autokratische Regime wie Russland, China oder der Iran gewannen zusehends an Macht. Der Westen muss sich entscheiden: Will er die Welt nach seinen Vorstellungen formen oder sich in einer Weltordnung einrichten, die andere gestaltet haben? (ICG2)

AbstractIntensified global economic competition, economic liberalization, and the rise of EU governance have led some observers to argue that there has been a trend toward the "Americanization" of the European "way of law." This article addresses that contention, focusing on legal change in European member states. It first describes ways in which the American legal tradition has differed most sharply from the national legal systems of Western Europe (including Great Britain) and the political and economic factors that account for this "American legal distinctiveness." Similar political and economic factors currently are at work in Europe, the article acknowledges, creating incentives for legal convergence. But it also argues that European legal culture and the political organization of European national states generate path‐dependent forces that impede European movement toward American ways of law, and it discusses six important differences between European and American law that remain entrenched and are unlikely to disappear.