cooperation and conflict in transatlantic relations after the cold war

In the 1990s there was a widespread view that there was a deep, organic transatlantic unity. This view was one-sided, too focused on economic flows and common ideological themes. And it encouraged a misleading perspective on the Bush administration’s strategy as being the product of a narrow political coalition on the American right. It is necessary to note how the collapse of the Soviet bloc created a structural crisis of the Atlantic political system and how this crisis was exacerbated by the regionalist political project through which West European states launched and deepened their programme for the social restructuring of West European capitalism. Both these developments, along with the need for a concerted West European policy towards East Central Europe, encouraged powerful groups in Western Europe to seek to renegotiate the transatlantic alliance and the nature of US leadership. Since the start of the 1990s, successive US administrations have pursued a counter-strategy to reimpose its cold war hegemonic leadership over Western Europe. The resulting conflicts, largely pursued at elite state levels in a closed way during the 1990s, have become more open and confrontational under Bush. The structural sources of this conflict make it difficult to overcome in the short term. And it may be a positive development from a global point of view.