The US post‐imperial presidency and transatlantic relations

The EU’s response to the Arab Spring is seen as one of its biggest missed opportunities. It has been unable to bring together its different tools of foreign, development and security policy into a strategic joined-up approach. The interconnectedness of the socio-economic and political demands of the popular uprisings across the north of Africa represented a unique opportunity to implement such a joined-up approach. The EU’s ambitious rhetoric and pledges to promote ‘deep democracy’ have not been matched at policy level in the fields of money, market or mobility. Whilst certain member states have sought to overcome the different operating logics of the development, diplomatic and security communities in their regional Arab Partnership programmes, a number of structural and circumstantial factors limit the effectiveness of these attempts, at both the EU and member state level.     

The Atlantic Alliance in a Global System

The war in Iraq led to a confrontation between emerging American and European models for global governance. In imagining the future, each has tended to project its own positive experience in the Cold War years. Europeans imagine a multilateral concert, with confederal institutions encouraging mutual appeasement. Americans imagine a benevolent unipolar hegemony. Experience in the 1990s reinforced America's unipolar perspectives. Trends in the new century make Europe's model seem better adapted to an increasingly plural world system. The conclusion speculates on the European model's relevance to Asia. Much will depend on whether China and Japan can replicate the Franco-German reconciliation. China may have more success “containing” the US within a larger Eurasian or even UN context, including, in some fashion, Europe and the US. Conceivably the Western powers may more easily balance their own relations in a Eurasian rather than transatlantic geopolitical framework.     

American Views of Europe

America’s diplomacy towards Europe has passed through two broad historic phases. A first, isolationist phase, determined in part by America’s need to maintain its domestic multinational consensus, was replaced, after World War II and under the Soviet threat, by a policy of hegemonic engagement. The Soviet collapse opened a new era forcing a reinterpretation of America’s role in Europe and the world. Four different narratives have emerged: triumphalist, declinist, chaotic or pluralist. If a unipolar American role seems unlikely to persist, American decline is all too possible. A new hegemonic replacement seems unlikely, which makes the pluralist narrative plausible and desirable. This multipolar world will require an adaptation of the Western alliance and a new way of thinking about interstate relations. Confederal Europe, for its experience in bargaining and conciliation, might have much to offer to the new plural world order.