Someone to Run With is a love story told as an adventure story. At the centre of a diverse cast of unlikely – but not unbelievable – characters, are the teenagers Assaf and Tamar, separately overcoming difficulties in their own life by creating challenges on an altogether different scale. The scene is present-day Jerusalem, but nothing like the Holy City or centre of The Conflict. David takes us into the underbelly of Israeli life, through back alleys, cafes, dodgy hostels and druggies’ haunts.

The underbelly is exposed as being full of both beauty and ugliness. It is also found in surprising places – a best friend turns out to be an enemy, an ugly ex-heroin addict proves to have a heart of gold. All moral tales worthy for children to read, yes, but told in such a captivating way that the story never reads morally. In fact, I’m not convinced David is out to impart a moral tale along Victorian lines, just that he has a powerful view of what is and is not important in the world. Meanwhile, Assaf and Tamar move ever closer to discovering each other and love for the first time. If this sounds soppy, just remember the druggies’ haunts.

The writing itself is a joy to read. The translation is good, though sadly cannot reflect the full breadth of David’s mastery of Hebrew. His imagination constantly surprises. An awkward word in conversation is described as ‘fluttering like a living creature, a chick that had fallen from Rhino’s [a friend of Assaf] bosom, and someone had to pick it up.’

That David can convey a 16-year old’s imagination through the prism of a mature writer’s language is no mean feat. It is the mark of a great writer to maintain a childlike joy in the world and in his art, while honing his craft to a peak. In the simple story of Someone to Run With, David Grossman does precisely that.

In other words, Robert Kagan sees America playing Mars to Europe’s Venus. While NATO, or ‘The West’, has all but dissolved as a formal alliance, both sides now play different but complementary roles in the world. Just as Europeans should be grateful to see America take on the responsibility of world policeman after WWII; Americans should respect Europeans’ sensible insistence on multilateralism and its fears of the Hobbesian world.

There is no small amount of implicit condescension here, which will not warm European hearts. Robert offers no criticisms of the effects American imperialism has had; he thus ignores many of the complaints of critics of America. In his conclusion, most of his didacticism is directed at Europeans: they should be more appreciative of the good work that America does. How can they, if no acknowledgement is made of the bad?

This is all the more surprising considering the author, a former official in the State Department, lives in Brussels. He was there during the ‘axis of evil’ speech, and in a recent interview showed sympathy for locals’ horror. His compassion is evident throughout Paradise and Power, but the nuances are missing. Robert points out those modern strategists are informed more by Munich and appeasement than Vietnam, but so too is his own discussion of the inevitability of American militarism. He recognises Kim Jong Il of North Korea as a threat to be met with force. But is he a threat in the 19th century sense, and is military deterrence the only way to negotiate with him?

Worst of all, Europeans are made to seem like innocent children playing merrily in the mud of domestic problems without wondering whether there are nasty strangers about. Europeans’ – and Americans’ – criticism of American foreign policy implicitly appears naive and misguided. It often is, but we could equally apply such adjectives to Vietnam.

If he is to be taken at his own word, Robert Kagan is one of only a few to have attempted to explain and analyse the Atlantic divide. He has done so expertly, but by failing to look more closely at the threat an American juggernaut with memory difficulties presents to the world’s health, he has created a flawed work.