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120 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (2005-2006)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry120 and id is 1 raw text is: Transatlantic Bipolarity and the End of Multilateralism JOHN VAN OUDENAREN More than two years after the bitter controversy over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, some of the rancor has gone out of the transatlantic debate over unilateralism. President George W. Bush has affirmed that working with other governments is his administration's first choice in foreign policy, while the European Union (EU) has made effective multilateralism the center- piece of its new security strategy.' The United States in effect has bowed rhetor- ically to European concerns about go-it-alone policies emanating from Wash- ington, while the EU has tacitly conceded the American complaint that much multilateralism is ineffective. Beyond the improved atmospherics, however, neither side has grappled with the structural roots of transatlantic differences over unilateralism. These roots are not-or at least not primarily-to be found in the contrast between a Europe that lives in a post-Hobbesian paradise in which multilateralism works and an America mired in a Hobbesian world that still requires unilateral action. Rather, they can be traced to the growing incom- patibility between a multilateral system that was designed in the early postwar period and the political and economic realities of the 21st century. Since the early 1950s, the United States and its European partners have been part of what might be called an Atlantic multilateral system, anchored in and in turn reinforced by an Atlantic community.2 However, two long-term 'See Bush's Whitehall Palace speech in London, 19 November 2003; Effective Multilateralism to Build a Better World: Joint Statement by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, 20 November 2003; and European Council, European Security Strategy: A Secure Europe in a Better World, 12 December 2003. 2 See Karl Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 9, 10, 117-161. JOHN VAN OUDENAREN is chief of the European Division at the Library of Congress and an adjunct professor at the Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown University. He is the author of Uniting Europe: An Introduction to the European Union and numerous articles, chapters, and reports on Europe, Russia, and U.S. foreign policy. Political Science Quarterly Volume 120 Number 1 2005 1

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