Crises and Crisis Management in EU-US Relations: The 'Four Years' Crisis' 
(2000-2004) in Perspective


Michael Smith
Department of Politics, International Relations and European Studies
Loughborough University
Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK

M.H.Smith@lboro.ac.uk 


Paper Presented at the 9th Biennial International Conference of the European 
Union Studies Association, Austin, TX, April 2005




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Crises and Crisis Management in EU-US Relations: The 'Four Years' Crisis' 
(2000-2004) in Perspective

Michael Smith

Abstract

This paper explores the nature of crises and crisis management in relations between the European 
integration project and the United States, with special reference to the 'four years' crisis' from 2000-
2004. Although there has been a mass of literature dealing with this crisis, it has not been subjected to 
systematic analysis in the light of theories of crisis and its management. The paper reviews a number of 
key questions relating to crises and crisis management, outlines the historical record of crisis and crisis 
management in EC/EU-US relations, relates this to the record of crises during the George W Bush 
Administration, and draws conclusions about the role of crises and crisis management in EU-US 
relations.

The first part of the paper explores the nature of crises in international relations, drawing on a range of 
literatures. It identifies three key elements of crisis – context; causality; scope, intensity and contagion 
– and outlines their implications. The paper goes on to explore the implications for crisis management 
of these conceptions of crisis: who or what is crisis management for, what modes of crisis management 
can be identified, what are the potential outcomes and underlying logics of crisis management? On this 
basis the paper discusses the relevance of concepts of crisis and crisis management to EC/EU-US 
relations, before going on to explore the record of crises in EC/EU-US relations from the 1960s to the 
1990s. In the third section of the paper, the focus is on the period 2000-2004, or the 'four years'crisis', 
with the aim of providing four readings of its origins, its characteristics, the use or non-use of 
management devices and the longer-term implications of the crisis. The conclusions evaluate the uses 
and usefulness of crisis management analysis in EU-US relations, and some possible policy 
implications.

KEYWORDS: EUROPEAN UNION; UNITED STATES; CRISIS; CRISIS MANAGEMENT


Introduction: The 'Four Years' Crisis'

There is a strong tendency among those who have written on the course of EU-US 
relations between 2000 and 2004 to claim that they threatened more than ever before 
the foundations of the 'partnership' between the United States and an integrating 
Europe. A combination of US assertiveness and unilateralism, European inadequacies 
and turbulent global conditions can be seen to have provided a potent cocktail of 
conflicting interests, orientations and actions putting at risk the essence of the Euro-
American relationship. But there is also – and sometimes almost in the same breath – 
a tendency to argue that the underlying strength and sinews of the relationship are as 
strong as ever, if not stronger. A sampling of the vast recent literature on this question 
thus reveals a mild form of analytical schizophrenia, mirroring and often strongly 
linked to the uncertainties and contradictions visible within the policy community (see 
for example, in different ways Lindstrom 2003, Peterson and Pollack 2003, Jones 
2004, Peterson 2004a, Allin 2004, Gordon and Shapiro 2004, Pond 2004).  

How is it possible to reconcile these positions? Is it simply a fact of Euro-American 
life that crises will occur, recur and be seen each time as potentially terminal? Does 
this mean that if and when the terminal crisis were to appear, it would be part of the 
problem that it was not recognised and that no appropriate efforts were made to 
manage it? As John Peterson has pointed out (2004b), the argument that the wolf this 
time really was (or is?) at the door is perhaps a misleading one, since it begs questions 
about what is really changing in or around the EU-US relationship. It may be more 
important to focus on the fact that this crisis occurred during the post-Cold War 
period – a period in which by definition a number of the constraints and supports for 
'Atlantic partnership' that were prominent before 1990 no longer existed, or at least 
were far less prominent. Others have argued that the day-to day or month-to-month 
tensions over Iraq and a variety of other issues have masked a far more fundamental 
crisis of values and institutions within the transatlantic security community (Risse 
2004) – a crisis that has been cumulative over many years and which will continue 
despite the patching-up or line-drawing processes symbolised by recent transatlantic 
diplomacy. A third group might argue that the handling of crises over a variety of 
political, economic and security issues is an integral part of the transatlantic 
relationship and that both the crises and the management are part of an uneven but 
persistent situation of transatlantic integration (Smith 1999, 2005a forthcoming, 
2005b forthcoming).

It is clear from even such a brief summary that there is no orthodoxy as to the 
implications of the 'four years' crisis' that was focused if not precipitated by the first 
George W Bush Administration. At one level, the crisis seems to have been about the 
management of power within EU-US relations: both the management of relative 
power between the EU and the US, and the management of power within the EU and 
the US (Smith 2005b). At a second level, the crisis seems to have been one about the 
maintenance and development of institutions, both at the transatlantic level and at the 
level of Washington and Brussels, with the interplay of 'domestic' institutional 
developments making itself felt at the transatlantic level and linking in turn to broader 
global institutional contexts (Peterson and Pollack 2003, etc). At a third level, the 
crisis appears to have been one of values and ideas, with the political discourses on 
either side of the Atlantic diverging in ways that threaten underlying consensus on 
what is to be pursued or achieved in the political, economic and security spheres. 
Finally, the crisis appears to have been one of approaches to world order, 
encapsulating key differences between the modes of thought and action characterising 
the USA and the EU, and embodying the search for new ways of shaping the post-
Cold War order (Smith 2004).

These multiple dimensions of crisis enable us to analyse and evaluate many of the 
episodes around which EU-US relations have turned during the past four years. There 
is a kind of standard 'menu' for such issues, encompassing Iraq (and by extension the 
greater Middle East), the 'war on terror', the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto 
Protocol, and a range of human rights questions. It seems clear that these areas of 
tension or crisis have been managed with different levels of effectiveness or finality: 
most if not all of them remain on the agenda of EU-US relations as problems to be 
addressed during the next four years and beyond, and as challenges both for the EU 
and for Washington. It also seems clear that at the superficial level, the crises that 
have occurred have been concentrated in the political/security part of the spectrum 
rather than in the political/economic part: although there have been significant and 
continuing economic tensions between the EU and the US, centring on issues 
including WTO negotiations, bilateral commercial disputes, the management of 
currencies and other matters, there has not been visible a tendency to define these as 
fundamental or threatening to the very fabric of EU-US relations. One initial 
conclusion from this might be that in the more dynamic and uncertain conditions of 
political/security relationships after the Cold War, there is less prospect of effective 
and cumulative crisis management than in the no less dynamic but much more 
thoroughly institutionalised and 'integrated' world of political/economic relations. It 
might also be argued that the crisis of the early 2000s displays three distinct types of 
divergence as between the EU and the US: analytical divergence (how is crisis 
identified and described?), discursive divergence (how is crisis articulated?) and 
prescriptive or normative divergence (how or why is crisis to be managed?), and that 
these divergences have grown rather than shrunk as a result of the events of 2000-
2004.

But such a statements beg the question that is at the centre of this paper: in the context 
of EU-US relations, what do we mean by 'crisis' and by 'crisis management'? Whilst 
it is clear that such terms spring readily to the lips of policy-makers and 
commentators, it is less clear what they imply analytically and for the longer-term 
analysis of the EU-US relationship. The purpose of this paper is to raise (at least in an 
initial form) a range of questions about crisis and crisis management in EU-US 
relations, to relate them to the experience of EU-US relations in a historical sense, and 
to apply them in more detail to the experience of the last four years. The definition of 
'crisis' adopted in the paper is guided by those episodes in EU-US relations that have 
been defined by participants and commentators as crises, in the sense that they have 
challenged the continued existence or the operating principles of the 'Euro-American 
system'. The term 'crisis management' is taken in a broad sense to indicate the ways 
in which the parties either independently or acting together have attempted to cope 
with these crises. Although it is an intriguing avenue for investigation at another time, 
the argument here is not concerned with the convergence or divergence of EU and US 
approaches to the management of crises outside their mutual relations, except insofar 
as these are 'internalised' into the transatlantic sphere. In addition to putting forward a 
set of analytical approaches, the paper will develop three empirical propositions in 
relation to EU-US relations during the George W Bush presidency:

?	First, that the end of the Cold War has indeed created new types of crisis and 
generated new modes of crisis management for EU-US relations. This reflects 
not only broad processes of change within the 'Euro-American system', but 
also the extent to which these have become reflected in a policy-makers' 
understandings and responses to the evolution of EU-US relations in a 
turbulent world.
?	Second, that the above proposition holds most strongly in the area of 
political/security relations. In the area of political/economic relations, there is 
more continuity both of crises and of crisis management mechanisms, 
reflecting the accumulation of experience, understandings and institutional 
frameworks in EU-US relations.
?	Third, that as a result it is central to a systematic analysis of crises and crisis 
management in EU-US relations to acknowledge and chart the different 
trajectories and histories of these phenomena in on the one hand the 
political/economic arena and on the other, the political/security arena.

To return to terms used at the beginning of the paper, the question might be framed as 
follows: 'is the wolf at the door, or is it groundhog day?' The obvious argument is 
that as in other aspects of EU-US relations, it's a bit of both (see also Jones 2004, 
Peterson 2004a, 2004b). The extended history of EU-US crises since the 1960s 
supports in a very general way the argument that the 'four years' crisis' is simply a 
reprise of previous episodes, whilst a focus on the post-Cold War period 
understandably conveys the impression that things are rather different and rather 
novel. The aim here is to be more precise about what 'shadows of the past' and what 
'shadows of the future' are reflected in the events of the past four years. In this 
context, the problem of relating rhetoric and policy-maker discourse about 
'transatlantic crises' to the reality of turbulence, tensions and the messiness of 
practical management is a continuing theme but one that has new resonance in the 
new millennium. 


Towards a Framework for the Analysis of EU-US Crises

There is a long tradition and a vast literature surrounding the occurrence of 
transatlantic crises (see for example Smith 1984, Peterson 1996, Sloan 2002 and 
many, many others). Much of this literature is focused as much on the experience of 
NATO as it is on the ways in which crises have occurred between the US and an 
integrating Europe (and this is significant in the bigger picture of the evolution of 
EC/EU-US crises and their management, as will be seen later). All of it, however, can 
be interpreted as expressing the growth and development of a 'Euro-American 
system' in which the EC and later the EU have occupied an increasingly central place 
(Mcguire and Smith 2005 forthcoming, chapters 1-3). The notion of a system implies 
that between the US and an integrating Europe there has developed a set of 
institutions, understandings and practices with sufficient regularity and persistence to 
constitute a permanent structure of the broader world arena. It is possible to be more 
specific, and to identify four dimensions of the 'Euro-American system':

?	First, it can be conceived as a set of power relations, in which the key 
organising principle is the distribution and management of power between the 
participants. This is essentially a realist or neo-realist position, in which the 
predominant issue is the development and management of the 'balance of 
power', and in which as a result one of the key issues for EU-US relations is 
the management of US power. Analysis of the 'Euro-American system' in 
terms of alliance and burden-sharing is one feature of the literature dealing 
with this area.

?	Second, it can be seen as a set of market relations, in which the key organising 
features are patterns of production and exchange between the participants, and 
in which one of the central issues is the management of interdependence and 
integration among the economies of the North Atlantic area, increasingly 
encompassed by EU-US relations. This is broadly a liberal position; analysis 
of the 'Euro-American system' in terms of complex interdependence and as a 
space of uneven economic integration is one feature of the literature on this 
dimension.

?	Third, it can be conceived as a set of social relations, in which the key 
organising feature is the patterns of communication, ideas and understandings 
among policy communities in the North Atlantic area, and in which the sets of 
ideas surrounding EU-US relations have become increasingly central. 
Analysis of the 'Euro-American system' as a security community is one of the 
key features in the literature on this dimension.

?	Fourth, it can be conceived as a set of institutional relations, in which the key 
feature is the increasing institutional density of the North Atlantic area, and in 
which institutions have increasingly become organised around the EU-US 
core, at intergovernmental, transgovernmental and transnational levels. 
Analysis of the 'Euro-American system' as a form of multilevel governance 
system is prominent in exploration of this dimension.

None of these four conceptions of the 'Euro-American system' is necessarily 
predominant or exclusive: the nature of the system (and some would argue, the reason 
for its robustness and longevity) lies in the interaction and intersection of these four 
elements. But the interaction and the balance between the elements is subject to 
change, fluctuation and reinterpretation, in such a way that the 'Euro-American 
system' has been reinvented or re-written many times during its sixty-or-more year 
history. 

Three trends, though, are crucial to the argument here: first, increasingly, the 'Euro-
American system' has become co-extensive with EU-US relations. This argument will 
not be developed in detail here, but it needs to be stated with great clarity and it lies 
behind a good deal of the argument that follows. The 'Euro-American system' in 
terms of power, markets, ideas and institutions has over sixty years become largely 
though not completely the EU-US system. And this trend shows many signs of 
continuing and deepening. Second, throughout its existence, the system has been open 
to and sensitive to developments in the broader global arena. In the area of power, it 
has been subject to the broader array of power in the world arena; in the area of 
market, to the development of globalization; in the area of ideas, to the broader 
development of ideologies and values; and in the area of institutions, to the broader 
process of development in multilateral and regional arrangements. Third, the system 
is also open to (and in some ways embedded in) the domestic political, economic and 
institutional arrangements of the EC/EU and the US, and subject to the changing 
climate of political debate and contending ideas that characterises those two arenas.

Despite its robustness and longevity, this is a system apparently beset by persistent 
crises. That being so, it is important to understand what dimensions of crisis might 
help us to investigate and evaluate the phenomenon. At one level, the nature of crisis 
in the system can be read off the four central elements outlined above: power, 
markets, ideas and institutions. Thus:

?	Crisis in terms of power arises from the changing balance of power between 
the members of the 'Euro-American system' in the context of the broader 
global balance, and from the challenges this poses to the mechanisms of 
management.

?	Crisis in terms of markets arises from the intensification and unevenness of 
market relations between the members of the system, in the context of 
globalization, in which disruption and the uneasy balance of sensitivity and 
vulnerability are key issues.

?	Crisis in terms of ideas arises from shifts and rifts in the level of consensus 
among members of the system, and from the mismatch of ideological and 
value orientations among the members, linked to the broader development of 
ideology and values in the global arena.

?	Crisis in terms of institutions arises when existing institutions become 
saturated or overloaded, when there is a lack of investment in institution-
building or maintenance, when investment is directed into domestic or 
exclusive institutional arrangements or into global institutions at the expense 
of Euro-American arrangements.

So far so (apparently) obvious: the 'Euro-American system' is one of complexity, 
openness and change, in which there is an uneasy mix of features arising from power, 
markets, ideas and institutions, and in which there is the potential for periodic crises. 
The broad question of development and change in the system merits further detailed 
investigation, but the intention in this paper is to focus strongly on the issues arising 
from the different types of crisis outlined above: crises of power, markets, ideas and 
institutions. In order to do this, we need to retrieve some ideas from the literature of 
international crisis and crisis management.

Here, it is argued that three avenues of enquiry are important: first, arguments about 
the significance of context; second, arguments about causality; third, arguments about 
the scope, intensity and contagion of crises. The argument is presented here in general 
form, and later it will be related to the empirical record of EU-US crises. Three 
caveats (at least!) are in order. First, much of the literature dealing with crises and 
crisis management is a product of the Cold War, and specifically of the relations 
between the United States and the USSR, and it therefore needs to be treated with 
caution when applied to the context of post-Cold War EU-US relations. Second, much 
of the literature as a result is strongly focused on bilateral crises and crisis 
management, with a strongly rationalist tone, and it has to be 'stretched' in some 
respects to accommodate the kind of complex, multilevel relationships that are at the 
core of EC/EU-US relations. Third, studies of crisis have focused strongly on 
situations in which war or the use of force is a potential outcome, whereas in EU-US 
relations that is hardly a foreseeable contingency. Nonetheless, it is argued here that it 
asks questions that can be applied with due care and attention to the matters at hand. 

The key features will be reviewed before a general assessment is made of their utility 
for analysis of EC/EU-US crises and their management. The discussion draws upon a 
number of the standard treatments of international crisis and its management (Snyder 
and Diesing 1977, Lebow 1981, Craig and George 1995) as well as those specifically 
referred to below.


(i) Contextual Elements

In describing and analysing international crisis, it is important to keep in mind a 
number of contextual features. Among these are:

?	The overall climate of world politics, including the pervasiveness and rate of 
change, the level of uncertainty and the stability of key institutions.

?	The extent to which a given crisis is linked to broader forces of world politics, 
and the role of externalities or linkages between the crisis and the broader 
world arena.

?	The focus of the crisis: is it 'intramural' (within a defined set of relationships), 
'extramural' (challenging the set of relationships from outside) or 'intermural' 
(simultaneously possessing the internal and external dimensions)?

?	System structure: in multipolar systems, the implications of crisis are likely to 
be different in important respects from crises in bipolar systems.

?	The level of anticipation of a particular crisis by the participants: how much is 
a given crisis a surprise?

?	The extent to which the crisis is seen as threatening key values and stakes for 
the participants, or the dissolution of the system as a whole.

?	The extent to which the crisis engages the domestic political and economic 
systems of the participants.

An appreciation of these elements can at least in principle allow for some of the 
paradoxes that have been noted by observers: that of the 'stable crisis' or the 'routine 
crisis', for example, where the language of crisis is used to describe something that is 
well-anticipated and embedded within a stable if not rigid context. Without pre-
empting the later argument in this paper, it is clear even from this summary that 
EC/EU-US relations constitute a complex and multilevel context for the occurrence 
and the recognition of crises, with consequent implications for their management.


(ii) Causality

Studies of crisis identify a number of forces as being implicated in the occurrence of 
such events. Among these are:

?	Power structures and power shifts. This might also be described as the 
'tectonic' theory of crisis, in the sense that it focuses on the ways in which 
major changes in the distribution of power create disequilibrium and frictions, 
leading to crises between status quo and revisionist powers, or between rising 
and falling powers in the international hierarchy. Such changes can also 
include the creation of power vacuums where a major power disappears and 
where the successor powers compete for influence and position in the new 
context.

?	Integration and disintegration. Such forces imply that crises emerge from the 
tightening or loosening of connectedness between major participants and the 
challenges to perceived interests or to established structures that are thereby 
created. These forces can arise out of the desire to retain or assert autonomy 
within a situation of deepening integration, or the desire to ensure a favourable 
distribution of the benefits or costs arising from integration. Where 
disintegration takes place, the desire to ensure that the costs and benefits are 
favourably distributed and to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by 
the fluidity of the international situation is a potent source of crises.

?	Ideational convergence or divergence. Crisis among a group of actors can 
emerge from the assertion of divergent identities and the sharpening of 
differences between them. In this case, the ways in which political elites and 
leaderships define group identities, and the extent to which this entails the 
'othering' of those with whom they are closely involved, are key features of 
the generation of crisis. Such crises are not just in the mind, but they are 
focused and magnified by the extent to which previously shared experiences 
are challenged or differences magnified.

?	Institutional asymmetries. Crises can be shaped if not precipitated by the 
occurrence of institutional asymmetries among major actors, through which 
events are refracted and 'processed' in divergent ways. Where institutions are 
in flux and unstable, where their legitimacy is challenged and where they 
develop institutional pathologies, there is likely to be a tendency towards the 
exacerbation of differences among actors and towards the occurrence of more 
severe crises.

Taken together, these forces provide a means of profiling the factors and forces 
leading to crises, and to the magnification of apparently unimportant issues into 
crises. They also, of course, map onto the dimensions of the 'Euro-American system' 
outlined in the previous section, and the implications of this will be drawn out more 
fully below.


(iii) Scope, Intensity and Contagion

Whilst the forces outlined above can provide indications of when crises might occur, 
why they might occur and why they might be magnified, it is necessary to go further 
and to explore the ways in which crises are experienced and have effects, particularly 
on decision-making among the participants. A number of important distinctions can 
be made:

?	Between long term and short term crises. Clearly there is a major difference 
between a crisis that blows up and is then resolved or forgotten, and one that 
persists. Very often, short-term crises might occur as part of or alongside long-
term crises. The degree of compression or urgency associated with a crisis also 
has important implications for crisis decision-making on the part of political 
leaderships, as has been demonstrated in a number of classic studies.

?	Between chronic and acute crises. This distinction is allied to that between 
long-term and short-term crises. It relates also to the degree of awareness and 
anticipation existing among participants in relation to the crisis, and to the 
degree of tension generated by the crisis. The most famous classic treatment of 
this distinction, that of Charles Herrmann (1969), deploys three key criteria in 
distinguishing between types of crisis: degree of threat, level of urgency and 
level of surprise. Although chronic crises might thus be seen as less 
threatening and urgent, and more anticipated, this is not a simple distinction: 
as E.H. Carr argued in his classic Twenty Years' Crisis, the underlying chronic 
crisis of institutions, values and political will between World Wars I and II 
was obscured on many occasions by the onset of acute crises demanding 
immediate action.

?	Between crises of a system, crises in a system and crises for the participants. 
These are key distinctions, bearing directly as we shall see on the possibility 
and nature of crisis management. Crisis of a system implies that the 
foundations – institutional, ideational, material – of a system of relations are at 
stake, and that dissolution or radical change of the system is at least a 
possibility. Crisis in a system implies that the problems are confined to the 
participants and their mutual relations, and that (again by implication) the 
crisis can be contained within the system without threatening its existence. 
Crisis for the participants arises from the impact of events within or outside 
the system on individual members or groups of members; central to this aspect 
of crisis is that the impact of these factors can be and very often is 
asymmetrical, and that some members of the system will suffer more or gain 
more from a particular challenge than others. The tension between crisis for 
the whole and crisis for the parts of a system is clearly fundamental both to 
perceptions of crisis and to prescriptions for crisis management (see below).

?	Between the different potential resonances of crisis. The key question here is, 
how do the consequences of crisis feed into the development of a system of 
relations? At one level, this resolves itself into a discussion about whether 
crises are cyclical or structural, and whether they are recognised as such by the 
participants. At another, it is a question about whether crises are endogenous 
to the system – a part of its normal functioning – or whether they are 
exogenous, the manifestation of forces that challenge the system itself. To put 
it simply, crisis and its management (or mis-management) might be seen as  
contained, catalytic, cathartic or catastrophic. In the first case, crisis is seen as 
a contingent liability of the system, but not as a challenge to the fundamentals. 
In the second case, crisis crystallizes and underlines differences, and sharpens 
perceptions of the stakes for the participants. In the third case, crisis has a 
cleansing function: differences are put on the table, dealt with and the 
relationship is strengthened. In the fourth case, crisis leads to a genuine 
breakdown of relations and possibly to the dissolution of the system. In each 
of the cases, the resonance is not confined to those immediately involved, and 
can have effects on the functioning of the broader world arena; in the words of 
Stanley Hoffmann, 'crises are like rocks thrown into a pond: the stones 
disappear but the reverberations ruffle the waters all around' (1968: 62).


Collectively, these features give the basis for an appreciation of the scope and 
potential contagion of crisis affecting a system of relations. Importantly, they indicate 
that even relatively simple and clearcut challenges to a system of relations are likely 
to evoke differences among the participants in terms of their material interests, 
perceptions and narratives of crisis, and that by extension they are likely to give rise 
to different and potentially conflicting modes of crisis management. The lessons for 
EC/EU-US relations are at this level of generality only too obvious.

(iv) From Crisis to Crisis Management

Much of the literature of international crisis is closely linked to ideas about crisis 
management. Since the literature in many cases emerged from the Cold War period 
and was directed towards an understanding of crises actually or potentially occurring 
between two nuclear-armed Superpowers, the link is not difficult to understand. The 
doctrines of crisis management were first fostered explicitly in the Korean War and 
thereafter developed with increasing sophistication (Williams 197?, Snyder and 
Diesing 1977, Lebow 1981, Craig and George 1995). A number of key themes in the 
literature can be identified here (and of course they link with the interpretations of 
crisis outlined above):

?	Rationales for crisis management. The question 'why manage?' is implicit 
in much of the crisis management literature. An associated question relates 
to the interests served by management: is it part of a collective interest 
shared by participants in the system (or indeed by the world at large), or is 
it a reflection of partial or sectional interests? It can easily be seen that 
there are incentives (for example) for the powerful to manage crisis in their 
own interests, which may or may not coincide with the collective interests 
of those involved in the system. Equally, there are incentives for others at 
least potentially to abstain from management in the belief that an 
intensification of tensions and differences is in their interests. This sort of 
tension is inseparable from the idea of crisis management itself, whether it 
is conducted between states, within families or elsewhere.

?	Modes of crisis management. There is a wide range of possible approaches 
to crisis management, many of which raise important questions about the 
roles of power, institutions, rules and negotiation in world politics. Key 
approaches are those relying on the development of formal or informal 
rules, the use of negotiation and bargaining, and the deployment of 
material power. Some would argue that crisis by its very nature defies the 
creation of predictable and consistent rules, but others have pointed to the 
development of 'conventions of crisis' where relations among those 
involved are relatively stable, and to the emergence of crisis management 
technologies in order to provide reliable information and a basis for 
planning. There is clearly in this area an important distinction between 
bilateral generation of rules, conventions and technologies and the 
multilateral development of institutions. The distinction is underlined by 
the coexistence of what might be termed 'coercive' and 'persuasive' 
modes of crisis negotiation and bargaining, which clearly raise the issues 
attached to the uses of 'hard' and 'soft' power in crisis situations.

?	Outcomes of crisis management. Much of the crisis management literature 
identifies an enduring tension between crisis management as a search for 
relative gains and crisis management as the quest for absolute gains. The 
first of these, essentially realist in genesis, envisages crisis management as 
a win-lose process in which the deployment of power or the manipulation 
of institutions enables some participants to make relative gains. The 
second envisages crisis management as a process of communication, 
persuasion and mutual learning in which all parties can gain, and in which 
the collective interest of the participants lies in effective management. 
Empirically, all processes of crisis management are likely to embody 
elements of both these factors, with important implications for the 
handling of bargaining and negotiation and for the ways in which parties 
emerge from the management process.

?	Logics of crisis management. The features outlined above underline the 
ways in which crisis management can embody logics of 'consequences' 
and 'appropriateness'. On the one hand, the enterprise can be seen as one 
in which material outcomes expressed in terms of political and economic 
advantage are key; on the other, it can be viewed as a process in which 
there is a premium on social learning and social responsiveness and on the 
framing and re-framing of policy spaces through a process of 
communication – what Risse has termed the logic of arguing (Risse 0000). 
Especially in complex relationships, it is unlikely that either of these logics 
will exist in its pure form: the interesting questions about crisis 
management are precisely those that start from the coexistence and 
intersection of these logics.

What are the implications of these features for the study of EC/EU-US relations in 
general? It is clearly important to establish the relevance of the ideas discussed here to 
the specific case of the 'Euro-American system', which as already noted is 
characterised by diversity of participants, complexity of structure, multilevel 
processes and high levels of linkages and externalities.

The figure below attempts to summarise the ways in which concepts of crisis and 
crisis management might be applied to the EC/EU-US relationship. By its nature, it 
raises questions rather than providing answers, but it also serves as a foundation for 
more empirical exploration in the next two parts of the paper.

Figure 1: Crisis and Crisis Management in EC/EU-US Relations: Generating 
Questions


Context
Climate: the Cold War (variations in it) and after; differential rates 
of change, effects on legitimacy and stability of 
regimes/institutions?
Linkages: openness of transatlantic relationship: externalities for the 
world arena in politics, economics, security?.
Focus: affected by high level of openness/linkages and multilevel 
nature of relationship as it develops; potential for multiple crises in 
different sectors, 'intramural', 'extramural' and 'intermural'?.
Anticipation: affected by openness, linkages and multilevel nature; 
problems of balance and attention?
Values/Stakes: basic consensus but affected by changing climate; 
variation in participants, changes in perception of key values?

Causality
Power Structures and Power Shifts: initial US 
dominance/hegemony; crises of resistance and of power 
redistribution as EC/EU develop? Linkages with broader world 
balance and impact of change (e.g. unipolarity in post-Cold War 
period)?
Integration and Disintegration: major growth in connectedness and 
interdependence/interpenetration; crises of autonomy, 
institutionalisation (institutions as stakes), issues of costs and risks? 
Effects of broader turbulence and globalization?
Ideational Convergence/Divergence: EC/EU assertiveness 
combines with US perceptions of leadership and followership; 
crises of elite consensus involving 'othering' and sharpening of 
difference?
Institutional Asymmetries: impact of institutional change and 
challenge; crises through externalisation of 'domestic' institutional 
shifts in EC/EU and US? Crises reflecting adequacy of transatlantic 
institutional structure? How far projected into global/multilateral 
institutions?

Scope/Intensity/Contagion
Long/Short-term Crises: different rhythms of change in politics, 
economics, security: crises of adjustment occurring concurrently? 
Capacity of EC/EU and US to undertake effective crisis decision-
making in different domains?
Chronic/Acute Crises: challenges to capacity to discriminate and 
maintain strategic coherence; EC/EU-US crises as extreme test 
given wide range and incidence of disputes short of crisis, of crises 
short of breakdown?
Crises in/of/system, for Participants: problems of discrimination 
and attention given diversity and multilevel nature of system; strong 
likelihood of asymmetrical impact and stakes, uneven distribution of 
risks and potential costs, tension of whole and parts?
Resonance of Crisis: where crises are built into the system, how can 
participants evaluate whether they are contained, catalytic, cathartic 
or catastrophic? How can they tell what is at stake? How can they 
develop reliable narratives of causes and implications?

Management
Rationales: tensions between collective 'Euro-American' interest 
and manipulation for unilateral advantage (links to power shifts); 
problem of investment in management (heightening of 
contradictions); links to broader perceptions of interest and values.
Modes: deployment of material power in EU-US relations? 
Development of informal conventions, negotiation processes, crisis 
management technologies (e.g. 'early warning systems)? Shifting 
balance between coercion and persuasion, 'hard' and 'soft' power in 
EU-US relations?
Outcomes: Relative and absolute gains in EU-US crises? Processes 
of social learning and generation of absolute gains for participants?
Logics: role of 'logic of consequences' in EU-US crises? 'Logic of 
appropriateness', 'logic of arguing' and development of a shared 
discourse of crisis management?



Crises and Crisis Management in EU-US Relations to the 1990s

Having established at least the major components of a framework for the analysis of 
EU-US crises and their management, this part of the paper focuses on the ways in 
which this framework might be deployed to support an investigation of EU-US crises 
before the end of the Cold War. 'EU-US crises' here are defined as those episodes 
that have generated a major discourse of crisis and have been perceived as crises in 
policy communities on both sides of the relationship. The focus is thus not on specific 
individual tensions or disputes but on the periods of crisis that have been seen as 
characterising the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, and the US presidencies 
of Kennedy/Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton. As noted above and by others (for 
example Jones 2004, Peterson 2004a, Lundestad 1997) there is a huge literature on 
these episodes, but relatively little of it has attempted a systematic analysis of what 
made these episodes into crises, how they were articulated, how they were conducted 
or how they were managed (if they were managed). Here, they are presented in 
outline form, simply as a way of probing the relevance of the framework and then 
providing the base on which to move into an evaluation of the 'four years' crisis' in 
the early 2000s. The discussion draws upon a range of standard sources dealing with 
the broad development of EU-US relations and the 'Euro-American system' (Chace 
and Ravenal 1976, Freedman 1983, Smith 1984, Calleo 1987, Lundestad 1997, 
Peterson 1996, Featherstone and Ginsberg 1996, Smith and Woolcock 1993, Gompert 
and Larrabee 1996).

(i) The 1960s: Crisis in Community or Crisis under Hegemony?

In terms of the argument so far, the context for the occurrence of transatlantic crisis in 
the 1960s possessed a number of dominating features. The key elements were 
continuing US hegemony in both political/economic and political/security issues, a 
strongly growing but still relatively modest and asymmetrical integration of markets, 
a discourse and practice of security but also of economic interdependence dominated 
by the USA and the established institutions of NATO and the Bretton Woods system, 
and a fledgling European Community centred on a limited number of core states with 
internal problems about the intensification of market and political integration, 
enlargement and low levels of security integration. Not surprisingly, it might be 
concluded, the crisis that emerged within the 'Atlantic community' was centred on 
relations between the USA and particular European states, in which the EC was 
viewed more as a stake than as a participant. The predominant events around which 
the crisis surged, and through which it might be argued it was managed, were those of 
European security and (later) of US imperial engagement in Vietnam and elsewhere. 
But to argue thus is to neglect the tensions surrounding the management of the 
international political economy, in which it was noticeable for the first time that the 
EC gave the Member States a collective capacity to resist and defend themselves 
against US dominance. By the end of the 1960s, it was clear that the combination of 
security tensions with economic contradictions and divergence was at least beginning 
to put a new spin on the transatlantic relationship. The near-certainty of EC 
enlargement to encompass the UK meant that this was likely to become more rather 
than less challenging; although the crises of the 1960s might have been resolved 
within the presumption of US predominance, this was not guaranteed to persist.

(ii) The 1970s: America as an Ordinary Country, the EC as a Civilian Power?

It was in the 1970s that some decisive shifts in the context of EC/US crisis occurred. 
The development of US-Soviet dιtente opened up new challenges and opportunities 
for all engaged in the 'Euro-American system' and created new uncertainties about 
status and precedence. Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy not only recognised but also 
advocated a 'pentapolar world' in which (prematurely) the Europeans collectively 
were allocated a management responsibility. At the same time, however, the 
instabilities of the international financial system (themselves linked intimately to US 
foreign policy and the fate of intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East) 
created strains for the Bretton Woods institutions. The crisis of the 1970s was thus a 
more far-reaching and profound one than that of the 1960s, since it engaged the 
Europeans and the Americans across the spectrum of their mutual relations and 
domestic policies  and subjected them to far greater entanglement with the broader 
world arena. To put it simply, this was a multiple crisis in which the tectonic shifts of 
power were accompanied by the recognition of vulnerability, the clash of ideas about 
world order and the perceived inadequacies of existing institutions. Not surprisingly, 
the practices of crisis management in the Euro-American system were stretched to the 
limit, and became implicated with problems of domestic institutional development in 
the EC and the US. In the US, the post-Nixon uncertainties and institutional 
challenges were a severe constraint on the exercise of hegemonic management, whilst 
in the EC the impact of enlargement and of economic and institutional weaknesses led 
to a wide-ranging debate about the implications of this Atlantic crisis at the same time 
as it revealed in dim outline the potential of the EC in the exercise of 'civilian power'. 
It could be argued that this was a classic multiple crisis in which the chronic and the 
acute coexisted, in which hard lessons were learned about the limits of crisis 
management techniques and in which the beginnings of institutional efforts at crisis 
management might be discerned among the rubble. In particular, the 
institutionalisation of management devices in the political-economic part of the 
spectrum was a noticeable part of the limited progress that was made

(iii) The 1980s: Contending Narratives of the New Europe

It can be argued that it was in the 1980s that decisive changes took place in the Euro-
American relationship. At one level, it appeared that US predominance was 
reasserted, and that the Reaganite assertiveness and unilateralism of the early 1980s 
showed the persistence of hegemony as long as Washington was prepared to deploy 
its resources. The context of crisis was a marked increase in US-Soviet tensions that 
had originated in the mid-1970s, characterised by a strong rhetorical articulation of 
US leadership and demands for EC followership and by an escalation of threat centred 
on Soviet military and especially nuclear power. In this context, it made logical sense 
to play the EC-US crisis game on the terrain where the US was most dominant: the 
political-security domain where hard power was determinant. But the consequences 
were not entirely what might have been predicted: the EC was capable of redefining 
the game so that the terrain on which it was most advantageously positioned became 
more salient, through the Single Market Programme and accompanying institutional 
changes, which resonated with perceptions of economic and social inadequacy in the 
US. At the same time, the political/security terrain was shifting: the 
Washington/Moscow process was challenged in subtle and often intangible ways by 
the Helsinki process, in which the growth of European Political Cooperation could be 
embedded and different narratives of security articulated. There was, as in the 1970s, 
a multiple crisis of EC/US relations, but the outcomes were much more nuanced and 
complex, reflecting both the context and the methods by which the crisis was played 
out. It was also notable that the institutionalisation of EC/US crisis management 
through a variety of political/economic channels grew as a feature of the crisis 
management process (see for example Woolcock, Tsoukalis, etc). There was linkage 
between the political/security and political/economic, and it was not only the 
Americans who could handle the implications of politicisation at the transatlantic 
level (Allen and Smith 1989, etc). But when it came to the hard end of security and 
power, the Americans were still capable of dominating, dividing and ruling, at least in 
the short term.




(iv) Crises and Crisis Management in the 1990s

The decade of the 1990s stands out in part because there was no self-proclaimed 
'Atlantic crisis' involving the EU and the US. The context was of course distinctive: 
the disappearance of the Cold War overlay and of the Soviet Union created a 
fundamentally different power balance, while the intensification of globalisation and 
interdependence underlined the issue confronting both the EU and the US at the 
global level. Domestic preoccupations on both sides of the Atlantic, and the need to 
absorb and respond to change not only politically but also economically and 
institutionally, meant that transatlantic crises were muted; the convergence of ideas 
between the Clinton administrations and European leaderships can also be seen as a 
key restraining factor. This did not of course mean that the potential for crisis had 
disappeared: rather it meant that a fundamental if often tacit agreement on the need to 
cope with post-Cold War challenges in Europe, in transatlantic relations and at the 
global level could be reached and attained. Key to this was recognition by the US that 
the EU had attained a new status and legitimacy – even though that status and 
legitimacy were sorely tested and found wanting in the Balkans, the Middle East and 
elsewhere. One of the factors that played a key role in the management of potential 
flashpoints was the growing formalisation of 'coalitions of the willing' at the 
transatlantic level in the handling of European and global issues; this created the 
apparent paradox that whilst the CFSP and other developments were notionally 
strengthening the EU's collective action potential, there was an increasing range of 
more or less formal exceptions to this institutional framework. Both on the side of the 
EU and that of the US, there was a period of under-reaction rather than over-reaction, 
reflecting the predominance of domestic priorities and the need to absorb high levels 
of change at the international level. Economically, there was a noticeable 
development of EU-US mechanisms for crisis management, both at the bilateral level 
and in the multilateral context, which made it possible to deal with significant clashes 
of interest in commercial and broader economic policy, although the prospect of the 
Euro and a 'bipolar' international financial system contained the germ of future 
conflicts in the currency markets (Bergsten, Henning, etc). Ideas of multilateralism 
and of institutional fixes for political disputes went alongside this economic 
atmosphere of dispute management, which is of course not to say that there were no 
disputes and no potential flashpoints.

(v) Evaluation

What general strands can be extracted from the brief outlines of four decades 
presented above? It is possible to identify a number of important broad trends and 
tendencies, as part of the background to analysis of the 'four years' crisis' in the next 
section of the paper:

?	Context. There is evidence that the context for EC/EU-US crises has shifted in 
important ways. The power balance has changed, but not evenly; the 
fluctuation between tension and dιtente within the Cold War had significant 
effects on the possibilities for the definition of crisis and the mechanisms of 
management (see below); the linkages between the EC/EU-US relationship 
and the broader global arena have intensified; the focus of crisis has shifted 
and the potential for multiple crisis has been underlined. This means that by 
the end of the 1980s  there was a premium on the capacity to anticipate issues 
that could precipitate EC/US crises, but that only in certain areas had the 
institutional and other capacities to support this been developed.

?	Causality. There is strong support for the broad argument that EC/EU-US 
crises are multi-causal. There is a fluctuating mix of power factors, market 
factors, social/ideational factors and institutional factors (both international 
and domestic) in the precipitation and shaping of crisis, but there is also 
support for the argument that in any specific episode some of these will matter 
more than others. Importantly, when there is evidence of problems in all four 
of these areas, there will be a far greater likelihood not only of crisis, but also 
of lack of inclination or capacity to manage it. The mechanisms by which the 
four factors come together or diverge are unclear, but will bear further 
investigation.

?	Scope/Intensity/Contagion. The treatment of the situation up to the 1990s 
indicates that in general, the scope of EC/EU-US crises had broadened, and 
that the intensity with which crisis was experienced by political leaderships 
and broader groups on both sides had increased. As time has gone on, the 
tendency for transatlantic crises to be linked to both domestic and broader 
international turbulence has persisted, reflecting the openness of the Euro-
American system both to popular and to external forces. Policy elites have 
come under greater pressure to manage but at the same time greater pressure 
has been exerted on their capacities to manage crisis, and it has been 
increasingly difficult to contain crisis or to pay attention to the many 
dimensions of crisis (political/economic/security, linkages, different levels and 
implications). It is not clear whether any kind of 'menu' for crisis management 
has developed, or whether successive policy communities have had to re-learn 
the lessons or techniques. We need to question whether a dominant and shared 
narrative in terms of describing and evaluating EC/EU-US crises had emerged 
by the late 1990s, or whether there were competing and diverging discourses.

?	Management. This has already been touched on above, but it is important to 
note a number of key issues. It seems clear that there is a tension at all stages 
between the collective transatlantic interest and the particular interests of 
specific countries. This is especially true in the case of the US and of France 
(the latter especially but certainly not only in the 1960s), but can be discerned 
also in the cases of Britain and Germany, for example. Whilst there seems to 
have been significant and cumulative investment in crisis management 
capacities in the economic field, this has not been so obviously true in the 
political/security field (although the picture in complicated by the coexistence 
of the EC/EU and NATO, the latter the more obvious channel for management 
in the political/security field until the 1990s). There clearly has been a shifting 
balance between 'hard' and 'soft' power as the basis for management over an 
extended period, and along with this an enhancement of the role of the EC/EU 
in the management of transatlantic crisis – although the implications of the 
fact that the EU by the late 1990s had become the 'European' end of the 
relationship almost alone are yet to be realised. On the basis fo the brief 
examination here, it is not possible to reach and clear conclusions on the ways 
in which gains and losses are allocated in the relationship as a result of crisis 
management, but it seems logical to suggest that the increasingly bipolar 
nature of the relationship means that gains and losses will be defined more in 
zero-sum terms and in terms of relative gains/losses across a growing part of 
the policy spectrum. Again, though, this is clearer in the political/security area 
than in the political./economic area, where there is a different level of 
multilateral institutionalisation and of broader global issue-formation. This 
may mean that by the end of the 1990s, there was an established predisposition 
to the logic of appropriateness and arguing in transatlantic political/economic 
relations, supported by appropriate institutions and bargains, but no such 
secure basis in political/security relations, where there continued to be a focus 
on relative gains and divergent discourses of crisis management.

On the basis of these tentative and partial conclusions, the paper now goes on to 
explore the experience of the 'four years' crisis' between the EU and the US under the 
first George W Bush Administration. What kind of crisis has this been, how if at all 
has it been managed, and what might be the repercussions of the crisis for the future 
course of EU-US relations?


Reading the 'Four Years' Crisis'

As noted at the beginning of the paper, there is a vast range of analysis and of 
evaluation when it comes to the four years of EU-US tension experienced between 
2000 and 2004. In this section, the aim is to summarise some key aspects of the 
period, to identify the ways in which the crisis developed and to evaluate the ways in 
which it can be said to have been managed. In undertaking this analysis, the aim is to 
keep in mind the questions raised and provisional conclusions reached in the earlier 
parts of the paper.

It is important to note that at one level the 'four years' crisis' relied upon trends and 
tendencies established during the 1990s. Although the Clinton administrations had 
adopted a more multilateral and accommodating stance than the George W Bush 
administration on many issues, there had been evidence towards the end of the 1990s 
that the limits of accommodation were being reached – over the treatment of conflict, 
the negotiation of a range of global issues and the handling of some aspects of global 
governance. More specifically, it might be said that by the end of the 1990s, the 
development of global turbulence, coupled with the internal development of both the 
USA and the EU, had created the preconditions for an escalation of tensions. Global 
turbulence meant that there would likely be more areas in which the EU and the US 
would confront uncertainty and challenge; internal developments, including the rise of 
the neo-conservative right in the USA and the consolidation of European institutions 
in the foreign and security policy areas, meant that there was more likely to be a clash 
of values and policies across the Atlantic. The whole picture, of course, was thrown 
into sharp relief by the events of September 11th 2001, which posed huge challenges 
and created new opportunities and risks for both the EU and the US (Hill 2004, 
Peterson and Pollack 2003).

One way of describing the crisis that had emerged even before 9/11, and one that has 
had great prominence, is to say that it was essentially a crisis of unilateralism. 
Assertive US policies, fed by the effective unipolarity that had developed after the end 
of the Cold War, meant that in many ways crisis was created deliberately, as a kind of 
test the EU could not pass. Crisis, that is to say, was manipulated as a means of 
exercising power and underlining the predominance of the US in parts of the power 
spectrum that the EU simply could not collectively occupy. In part, this manipulation 
related to matters outside but closely linked to the EU-US relationship, especially the 
politics of the Middle East; in part, it was aimed at the broader system of multilateral 
institutions that gave the EU sustenance in important parts of its external policies; in 
part, it was aimed at the internal workings of the EU itself, continuing a policy of 
divide and rule that as we have seen was important to EC/US crises in the 1960s, 
1970s and 1980s. This is not, of course, to argue that the crises created and nurtured 
by the US administration were aimed primarily at the disruption of the EU's external 
status and pretensions, but they certainly had that effect, not least through the ways in 
which the US could penetrate and encouraged defection from the CFSP and ESDP. It 
is also possible to take a much more positive view of this aspect of the crisis: to argue, 
in effect, that the US stance was catalytic for the development of the ESDP and for 
the development of a far more consciously different EU security policy to which all 
Member States in effect were able to sign up (Menon 2004)

At another level, as indicated earlier, the crisis of 2000-2004 was less a crisis of 
unilateralism than a crisis about adjustment to the new balance in EU-US relations. In 
other words, the crisis emerged out of the continuing structural tensions set up by the 
end of the Cold War, and demanded of each of the parties a process of learning and 
institutional or policy adjustment to reflect the new realities. So the lack of major 
crises in the 1990s had in effect been a lull before the storm – a storm that might well 
have occurred both without 9/11 and without the Bush administration. With both, the 
crisis was more acute and more focused, and posed in the starkest possible terms the 
need to come to an eventual adjustment and accommodation. The crisis was thus, 
among other things, a return to 'normal politics' in the transatlantic relationship, or 
the establishment of a new normality taking account of the fact that the EU had 
developed institutionally to the point at which it could conduct almost a full-spectrum 
relationship with the USA. The 'almost' is important, of course, because whether or 
not the crisis was one of adjustment to a new reality, it did demonstrate the continuing 
lack of EU credibility and capability in the hard security area. This had been 
demonstrated throughout the 1990s as well, but the lesson of the 1990s was also that 
(haltingly) the EU had produced solutions to the crisis of credibility and legitimacy it 
had undergone.

A third way of describing the 'four years' crisis' is as one of mutual vulnerability. It 
has often been remarked that alongside the US' assertion of unprecedented power and 
primacy has gone a perception of unprecedented vulnerability. On this reading, the 
Bush administration's response to 9/11 in the form of the 'war on terror' and the war 
in Iraq is at least partly beside the point, since the point is one about the ways in 
which US society can be attacked in new and unorthodox ways. The exercise of 
massive military force is thus not an answer to the question posed, but it is a way of 
attempting to incorporate the crisis into a language in which the US is proficient. For 
the Europeans the crisis has been one, as noted above, in which they have been 
attacked at their weakest collective point by their most significant other, and have not 
unnaturally attempted collectively to move back onto ground where they have a 
comparative advantage. For both, therefore, the management of the crisis between 
them can be seen as a matter of self-preservation, but in attempting to shift the crisis 
back onto the ground where they are strongest each of them has succeeded in 
exacerbating the suspicions and fears of the other. It is not as simple as that, of course: 
the fact that this crisis spanned several policy domains, underlining the linkages 
between them and leading to forms of political hostage-taking in each of them, meant 
that the incentives to return to a shared narrative of events and their implications were 
not always apparent. 

Finally, it is possible to read the 'four years' crisis' as one of ideas and values, in 
which the Europeans and the Americans alike (but in very different directions) felt the 
need not only to safeguard core values for the sake of the values themselves but also 
to promote difference as a means of self-identification. Such analysis is often 
undertaken in the case of the Europeans, where the end of the Cold War and the 
shifting foundations of the EU has made the notion of a European identity and the 
promotion of 'European' values almost two sides of the same coin, but it must also be 
recognised that it has value in the US case. The generation of new images of 
Americanness, begun under Ronald Reagan and moderated both by George H W 
Bush and Bill Clinton, resumed with a vengeance under George W Bush and fed with 
great force into the already turbulent EU-US relationship. Atlantic crises throughout 
the last 50 years have been at one level crises of self-realisation and self-definition, 
and it is thus to be expected that they will contain significant processes of 'othering' 
on the part of all concerned. In the absence of an agreed 'other' external to the 
relationship, and in the presence of important incentives to capitalise on material or 
institutional assets in the context of the relationship, there is every reason to 
anticipatea kind of transatlantic 'crisis slide' exacerbated by competing images and 
readings of the global situation.

What do these partial but often complementary readings of the 'four years' crisis' 
allow us to conclude about its relationship to the broader evolution of EU-US 
relations since the 1960s? In particular, how do they help us to address the 'what's 
new or different?' question and to address the apparent paradox of fundamental 
challenge but essential convergence posed at the beginning of the paper? The 
following conclusions are couched in the terms used earlier for analysis of crisis in 
general and for evaluation of the pre-2000 evolution of EU-US relations.

?	First, context. The period 2000-2004 sees the coming together of a number of 
forces that arguably formed a critical mass of contextual influences and 
permitted an acute but also lasting crisis for EU-US relations. Among these 
influences are: the coming to fruition of a number of post-Cold War conflict 
lines, especially the foregrounding of asymmetric warfare and terrorism; the 
continuing openness, sensitivity and vulnerability of EU-US relations to global 
turbulence, in the political, economic and security domains; the linking of 
crises and conflicts in a number of issue-areas seen as central by either the EU, 
or the US, or both; challenges to the basic consensus among policy elites on 
the two sides of the Atlantic relating to core values and images of transatlantic 
relations; lack of anticipation and thus of contingency planning for the types of 
crisis that emerged. But as before it must be emphasised that the unevenness 
of the impact and perception of these forces is a key feature and one that is 
essential to an understanding of the crisis.

?	Second, causality. Central to the causes of the 'four years' crisis' was the 
shifting balance of power between the EU and the US. As we have seen, this 
was apparent during the 1990s, but it was also accompanied by a strong 
perception of the 'capabilities-expectations gap' which moderated its impact 
on policy actions on both sides of the Atlantic. The continued erosion of 
NATO – especially significant in the wake of 9/11 – meant that the focus of 
transatlantic tensions about the balance of power, and consequent issues of 
leadership and followership, was increasingly on EU-US relations and (formo 
a Bush administration perspective) on the inadequacies of the EU. This is turn 
led to the privileging of certain bilateral relationships such as the US-UK 
relationship, and thus to a crisis within the EU itself as escalation towards the 
war in Iraq took place. Outside this central, security-related crisis, there was a 
focus on issues that reflected the value divergence between Europeans and 
Americans about the uses of multilateralism (Kyoto, the ICC) and the need for 
international institution-building. There was remarkably little feed through 
from the central security crisis to the political/economic sphere, and disputes 
that arose in this context were (however sharply expressed) dealt with via the 
existing institutional arrangements, supported not only by governmental action 
but also in many cases by strong private pressures for agreement. As noted 
above, there was significant evidence of divergent ideas and values, and of the 
ways in which these fed into 'othering' and the emphasising of difference. It 
could be argued that this was the period in which for many Europeans the US 
ceased to be both 'self' and 'other' and became more unambiguously 'other', 
with consequent implications for EU self-definition. Finally, it is clear that 
although there were significant transatlantic institutional ties in security 
matters as well as economic matters before 2000, the events of the period 
2000-2004 stretched these security ties to the limit and beyond. Of the 
multiple causal factors operating in the crisis, some would argue that the 
structural power factor was and is the most fundamental. If that is a necessary 
condition, though, it is not sufficient to explain the specific focus and 
evolution of the crisis itself.

?	Third, scope/intensity/contagion. It is evident that the events of 2000-2004 
engaged participants and structures of the EU-US relationship and thus of the 
'Euro-American system' on a very wide front and over a range of linked issue 
areas. There was evidence of tensions if not outright challenges to the basis of 
the system in a number of these areas, most obviously hard security. It has to 
be said, as others have emphasised, that there was also a good deal of 
collaborative work and effective cooperation in areas where the EU had 
established credentials and credibility. This was a multiple but uneven crisis 
for EU-US relations, which made itself felt with widely varying degrees of 
urgency and intensity, and which thus challenged the capacity of both the EU 
and the US to maintain consistent and coherent decision-making procedures. 
One of the problems both for participants and for analysts has been how to 
decide whether this was/is a chronic structural crisis requiring basic re-
thinking and threatening breakdown, or a series of acute crises that could be 
managed back into their appropriate place within the Euro-American system. 
President Bush's visit to Brussels in February 2005 seemed essentially to be 
based on the latter assumption, but it is by no means clear given the scope and 
intensity of the challenges experienced over the past four years that this is the 
case. On thing that is clear is that the crisis was felt and impacted upon 
participants unevenly, and that there were several different narratives of the 
crisis, with attendant prescriptions for its resolution, being peddled at any one 
time. This is not unprecedented in EC/EU-US crises as we have seen, but it 
was at an unprecedented level and intensity in this case. The asymmetry of 
perceptions, of stakes and of prescriptions arises from the very wide scope of 
the crisis and from the challenge it posed to institutions that were themselves 
in a state of flux, especially on the European side; but it also reflects the 
tectonics of the underlying power structure and especially the incursion of the 
EU into new areas in which its credibility and coherence was bound to be at 
issue.

?	Finally, management. Inseparable from the 'four years' crisis' is the tension 
already noted between the collective interests of the 'Euro-American system' 
and the sectional or partial interests of the participants therein. In particular, of 
course, the clash between unilateralism and multilateralism in US policies has 
attracted a great deal of attention. We noted above that one powerful reading 
of the crisis is that it was managed and manipulated in the interests of the 
USA, and especially in the cause of 'disaggregating' the EU. It has been 
pseruasively argued elsewhere (Peterson, Jones etc) that such a policy was 
neither feasible or likely to be helpful for the USA, but this of course does not 
mean that it was not tried. Alongside this practice of unilateral management, 
there was the undoubted occurrence of multilateral management within the EU 
with the aim of producing at least a minimum of group solidarity in the face of 
the American challenge. But this was subject to defections and abstentions, as 
well as to the wider problems created by domestic political pressures and 
forces. This was clearly a crisis for many of the participants in different ways; 
but it was also a crisis within the 'Euro-American system' in which some 
rather traditional mechanisms were brought into play, through national or 
wider channels. At the same time, it was a crisis of the system itself, in which 
the established mechanisms and languages of crisis management did not 
necessarily work, and in which there was a danger of dissolution through 
inattention as well as through the clash of priorities and policy prescriptions. 
Yet the same message is important here as elsewhere: this was an uneven 
crisis and one of its most taxing features for the participants was the uneven 
demands it placed on their capacity or will to manage. When it comes to the 
outcomes, it is of course far to early to say. It is already apparent, however, 
that there are competing narratives not just of the course of the crisis but also 
of its result. The US' return to at least the language of multilateralism and 
cooperation can be seen by some as a victory, but equally it is clear that the 
rhetoric of unilateralism and liberation is still present. Given the continuing 
state of flux in the EU's foreign policy capacities (a flux that is likely to 
persist for the next decade at least), it is very unlikely that a clear line will be 
drawn under this episode in the foreseeable future. Finally, it is important to 
be aware of the ways in which this episode raises questions about the logics of 
crisis management. The discourses generated on the two sides of the Atlantic 
(with the British caught uneasily in between) were notably at odds, with the 
'logic of consequences' being deployed unrelentingly by the Americans (if 
you're not with us you're against us, and beyond) whilst the Europeans on the 
whole shaped their arguments around a logic of appropriateness and a 
discourse of multilateralism. In these conditions, it is not clear that any shared 
narratives of the crisis itself, or any shared discourse of crisis management, 
have emerged from the experience of the last four years. But the EU and the 
US are still talking, and the apparent new climate of the past three months on 
both sides gives some ground for hope that lessons can be learned.


Conclusions

When a paper is this long, it is wise not to have a long conclusion! Briefly, the paper 
has tried to do the following:

?	Clarify the puzzle surrounding the occurrence and management of crisis 
within the 'Euro-American system'.

?	Propose a series of questions that can be used to form a framework for the 
analysis of crises and crisis management within the 'Euro-American system'.

?	Review some outline evidence from the evolution of the system in general and 
from the past four years in particular, with the aim of seeing what it adds to 
our understanding of crises and crisis management within the system.

?	Suggest ways in which the 'four years' crisis' is both similar to and different 
from the previous crisis periods in EU-US relations, and to identify the 
implications for analysis of the 'Euro-American system'.

As hinted earlier in the paper, three key conclusions can be identified on this basis:

?	First, the 'four years' crisis' is distinctive among crises within the 'Euro-
American system. It took place within a context that varied in vital respects 
from those of previous crisis periods; it displayed a potent mix of causal 
factors, many of which fed with unprecedented intensity into the course of the 
crisis and gave it a distinctive scope and intensity; and it demonstrated that the 
effective management of such crisis periods depends upon the generation or 
recovery of shared narratives and discourses as much as upon the repair of 
institutions and relationships. In particular, it reflected the fact that the 'Euro-
American system' is now almost consubstantial with the 'EU-US system' and 
that this has changed the stakes and the possible shifting alignments within the 
system as a whole – a condition that will continue to have important effects.

?	Second, the crisis was essentially uneven in origins, process and impact. In 
particular, it was uneven as regards its prime focus on hard security, which 
was not paralleled or replicated in areas of softer security, of 
political/economic relations and of non-governmental networks. An 
explanation for this unevenness can be sought in the social and institutional 
characteristics of these issue areas, and in particular in the fact that there is at 
least forty years of social and institutional development behind the 
management of crisis in those areas, compared with the still primitive forms of 
joint or multilateral management characterising EU-US security relationships. 
This suggests that the development of a more active process of joint 
management for EU-US security relations is desirable, but it also suggests that 
it will be very difficult.
?	Third, whilst the 'four years' crisis' is distinctive, it is not detached from 
history. The previous experience of crises and their management in the 'Euro-
American system' provides both a standard for comparison and a measure of 
how far things have changed in the post-Cold War era. It also provides 
important questions about the credentials of institutional bargains, and about 
the importance of memory and learning, that are critical to the understanding 
of what goes on between the EU and the US in the broader sense.

At a broader level, the analysis attempted here tells us something about the 
development and nature of the 'Euro-American system'. It was noted earlier that this 
system can be conceptualised as having four key characteristics: it can be seen as a set 
of power relations, a set of market relations, a set of social relations and a set of 
institutional relations. Each of these interlocking characteristics generates a set of 
indicators as to what constitutes a crisis and what constitutes crisis management 
within the 'Euro-American system'. The argument here indicates that the 'four years' 
crisis'was experienced in different ways and managed in different ways within each 
of these sets of relations, and that this reinforced the essential unevenness of its 
impact. In some areas, the crisis was contained; in some it was catalytic, framing a 
new and sharper appreciation of the issues at stake; in some it was cathartic, cleansing 
the system; in others, it threatened to be catastrophic. In the longer term, there is no 
doubt that the reverberations of this episode will as Stanley Hoffmann said 'ruffle the 
waters all around'.

. 








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