Transatlantic Relations: the Long Holiday from History is Over. CEPOB #6.19, September 2019

Conley, Heather A. (2019) Transatlantic Relations: the Long Holiday from History is Over. CEPOB #6.19, September 2019. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

Following seven decades of global engagement, the US is returning to its natural state of retrenchment, but encumbered by an expansive global military footprint and alliance structure. The US must decide whether to maintain these outward facing structures, allow them to go fallow, or re-treat from them entirely. The United States and the European Union seek the benefits of a benevolent and stable global order which was underwritten in large part by the US, but neither of them wishes to shoulder to-day’s increasingly high costs of maintaining that order and enforcing its many rules. The EU is increasingly caught in the middle of great power competition between the US, China, and Russia, and its post-modern structures seem inadequate to the task. The EU must make choices about whether it will continue to work with the US or seek greater accommodation with outside powers. There will be strong impulses for the EU and the US to go their separate transatlantic ways as great power competition and its regional manifestations become more dynamic and old multi-lateral structures and institutions seem unable to respond. However, in an era of such power com-petition, the US and the EU need one another to mutually succeed.

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