The Iraq War in 2003 led to a deep crisis in American–European relations. France and Germany, not Russia and China, emerged as the major critics of the US intervention. Some spoke about the death of NATO, to be replaced by “coalitions of the willing”; more temperate voices referred to transatlantic drift. Deep structural forces were allegedly at work: the end of the cold war, a turn to the right in the United States, the emergence of a more independent Europe. Yet, there had always been crises in NATO. They had come and gone ever since the organization was founded in 1949. In George W. Bush's ... More

The Iraq War in 2003 led to a deep crisis in American–European relations. France and Germany, not Russia and China, emerged as the major critics of the US intervention. Some spoke about the death of NATO, to be replaced by “coalitions of the willing”; more temperate voices referred to transatlantic drift. Deep structural forces were allegedly at work: the end of the cold war, a turn to the right in the United States, the emergence of a more independent Europe. Yet, there had always been crises in NATO. They had come and gone ever since the organization was founded in 1949. In George W. Bush's second term relations between the United States and Europe improved considerably. The United States discovered that it needed allies; the Democrats took control of Congress. Under Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy Germany and France again moved closer to the USA; the defeat of the constitutional treaty slowed the independence of the EU. So, did the initial Bush years represent just another crisis in Atlantic relations, already come and gone like the many crises of the past, or did they represent deep, structural forces at work? In this book leading historians and political scientists on both sides of the Atlantic give different, but always stimulating answers to this question.