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4 - Transatlantic relations in the shadow of the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

George Lawson
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Chris Armbruster
Affiliation:
Research Network 1989
Michael Cox
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Summary

Introduction

The relationship between the United States and Europe constitutes one of the most intimate in modern history. Indeed, if the United States, in Irving Howe's view (1979: 243) began life as a European project propelled forward by European settlers, European technology, European markets and largely European ideas, Europe's great crisis between 1914 and 1945 brought about a major role reversal that left the western powers on the continent less masters in their own house and more servants of an all-powerful, liberal, hegemon situated 3,000 miles away across the Atlantic. There was no inevitability about all this. Nor were the states of Europe (Germany least of all before 1945) particularly willing to accept something like a new American century. Still, there was no escaping the fact about who was increasingly shaping international relations and who was not. In fact, long before the end of the Second World War, one could already detect a geopolitical shift taking place. As Trotsky (1984) observed in the 1920s, the most important consequence of the First World War (aside from the Russian revolution itself) was not just to make Europe ripe for revolution – true in theory, if not in practice – but to tilt the balance of power away from the old world towards the new. As in many things, Trotsky was a man ahead of his time, and it was to take another war to complete the process he envisaged.

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The Global 1989
Continuity and Change in World Politics
, pp. 97 - 111
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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