Cambrido^e
Review of International Affairs, mm
Carfax Publishing
O J JJ '
^Illm
Taylors.Francis Group
Volume 17, Number
3,
October 2004
The United States and the European Powers
Introduction
International relations as practice and scholarship is heavily vested in therelations of the great and super powers. Interestingly, the list of significantpowers has changed little in the course of the 20th century—except for thecollapse of Austria-Hungary and the rise of China—and seems unlikely to do soas we enter the 21st. Two world wars and the Cold War were largely fought byand between the present G8.The US, Britain, France and Germany, the world's central democratic powers(along with Japan), are all Western, the US the global superpower, the otherthree great powers. They have been at the heart of the bitterest conflicts, themost developed institutions of cooperation and recently the Iraq question. Thestrategic outlook for the 21st century will be greatly influenced by their relation-ships.These relations are accordingly the subject of strong interests and opinionsamong lay and learned, but are often seen in isolation and explained by singlefactors. Anglo-American special or Franco-American strained relations aretoo often seen as the product of national character, with insufficient analysisof conscious strategic choices or interdependence. The relationship betweenthe US and a reunited Germany coming out of the shadow of the Cold Warinto the fog of new post-Soviet strategic alignments is a great unknown.This section reflects the centrality of these relationships for internationalrelations. To contribute to understanding, we find it necessary to addressthese relations comparatively as well as from different national, method-ological and theoretical perspectives. This is done with an article from eachcorner of this strategic square with the intent to illuminate different aspects fromdiverse angles. The four articles written by scholars of the four countries reflectvarying academic styles and traditions, and act as four voices speaking to eachother.David M. Andrews presents the US view of these relationships from thewell-established American structural-realist perspective. This theoretical ap-proach explains not only the great underlying forces that have brought an endto bipolarity and led to US pre-eminence, but how this is perceived by USdecision makers. John Dumbrell, analysing the British position in the strategicsquare, follows the Anglo-American special relationship through the two inter-national transformations of the end of the Cold War and after 9/11. Nationalculture and interests, as well as the personality of Tony Blair, are discussed fortheir explicative value. Addressing the interplay of relationships from the Frenchperspective, Thierry de Montbrial reminds us of the long history of the Ameri-can and French revolutionary republics, both filled with universal, republican
ISSN 0955-7571 print/ISSN 1474-449X online/04/030419-02 © 2004 Centre of International StudiesDOI: 10.1080/0955757042000296928
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