US transatlantic leadership after Iraq
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836714558639 |
| Author | Philippe Beauregard,Jonathan Paquin |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Cooperation and Conflict
2015, Vol. 50(4) 510 –530
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836714558639
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US transatlantic leadership
after Iraq
Jonathan Paquin and Philippe Beauregard
Abstract
This article explores whether the United States has been able to exert transatlantic leadership
since its head-on diplomatic collision with several European capitals over the 2003 Iraq war.
Considering that the decision to invade Iraq was made by the Bush administration, this article
also explores whether there has been consistency between the Bush and Obama administrations
over transatlantic leadership. To answer these questions, this article reports on a computer-
assisted content analysis of the 415 official statements issued by the core transatlantic allies,
namely the United States, France, and Britain, in response to four major crises that have occurred
in the Middle East and North Africa in the post-Iraq era. This analysis provides qualitative and
quantitative evidence leading to four main conclusions. Firstly, US leadership has endured in
the post-Iraq era. Secondly, in most cases, France and Britain have aligned their diplomatic
positions with those of the United States. Thirdly, the analysis confirms that there is a special
Anglo-American relationship. Fourthly and lastly, there has been consistency between the Bush
and Obama administrations, with the exception of the US response to the Libyan crisis, which
suggests the emergence of a US ‘leading from behind’ transatlantic strategy.
Keywords
Britain, content analysis, foreign policy, France, transatlantic alliance, United States
Introduction
It is commonplace to argue that the Atlantic alliance has been going through a period
of crisis due to a growing divergence between the interests of the United States and
those of Europe (Andrews, 2005; Cox, 2005; Fehl, 2012; Ikenberry, 2008; Kagan,
2003). Among the events that most dramatically highlighted this divergence was the
US war in Iraq (Gordon and Shapiro, 2004), which led to a head-on collision between
Washington and several European capitals. France, one of the main opponents of this
war, publicly lobbied members of the Security Council to oppose a US resolution that
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Paquin, Department of Political Science, Université Laval, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck, 1030, av.
des Sciences-Humaines, Québec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada.
Email: Jonathan.Paquin@pol.ulaval.ca
558639CAC0010.1177/0010836714558639Cooperation and ConflictPaquin and Beauregard
research-article2014
Article
Paquin and Beauregard 511
would have authorized the Bush administration to militarily intervene in Iraq in 2003.
This diplomatic clash led well-known observers such as Henry Kissinger and
Zbigniew Brzezinski to respectively define this episode as the ‘gravest crisis in the
Atlantic Alliance’ and as ‘unprecedented in its ugliness’ (quoted in Thies, 2009: 3; see
also Cox, 2005).
Alongside these pessimistic assessments, however, other experts have expressed very
different opinions on the fate of the Atlantic alliance. Pouliot (2006), for instance, argues
that the Iraqi episode in fact illustrated that the transatlantic community is alive and well,
given that it managed to peacefully resolve this political dispute. According to Lindberg
(2005), the collision over Iraq was nothing more than the result of rhetorical speeches
and inflammatory language that had little or no effect on reality. Thies (2009), for his
part, argues that the alleged crisis over Iraq was symptomatic of a permanent ‘alliance
crisis syndrome’ among the community of scholars, which he defines as ‘exaggerated
claims based on unexamined premises and backed by superficial comparisons drawn
from the history of the Alliance’ (p. 3).1 These varying interpretations stem from differ-
ent perceptions of transatlantic relations.
Despite several analyses and policy-oriented papers on the state of transatlantic
relations, few studies have provided a systematic empirical assessment of the issue.
This article therefore proposes to fill this gap by focusing on the leadership and
alignment dynamics within the alliance. More specifically, it attempts to answer the
following two questions: firstly, has the United States been exerting diplomatic lead-
ership in post-Iraq transatlantic relations? In other words, have the main Atlantic
allies aligned their positions with those of the United States or, on the contrary, have
they chosen to distance themselves from Washington? Secondly, in light of the fact
that the decision to invade Iraq was made by the Bush administration, has there been
consistency between the Bush and Obama administrations on the question of trans-
atlantic leadership?
To this end, this article begins by providing a definition of the main concepts mobi-
lized in the research, such as those of leadership and alignment. It then turns to a dis-
cussion on transatlantic leadership and diplomatic alignment behavior and reports on a
quantitative and qualitative computer-assisted content analysis of the diplomatic
responses to foreign crises by the three core Atlantic allies, namely the United States,
Britain and France. As is argued in detail in the empirical section, these states are the
backbone of the Atlantic alliance because they are, among other things, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) nuclear powers and the only permanent
Western members of the Security Council of the United Nations (UN). This article
studies the response of these core allies to four important regional crises and conflicts
that have shaken the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the post-Iraq era: the
2005 Lebanese crisis; the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah conflict; the 2011 Egyptian revolu-
tion; and the 2011 Libyan civil war.2
Our analysis finds that, with regard to the diplomatic management of MENA crises,
there has been no widening rift between the United States and Europe in the post-Iraq
era. On the contrary, our analysis reveals strong transatlantic cohesion and shows that, in
most cases, the United States has exerted leadership in managing these crises.
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