The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?

The last great constant of the postwar order is breaking before our eyes. What set American hegemony apart from the old colonial empires and the former Soviet bloc—or at least what once distinguished it—was the United States’ willingness to invest in a system of voluntary alignment. States were, as a rule, not coerced into submitting to the US-led order. They retained the freedom to place themselves under the protection of American power. Washington was prepared to involve Europeans as (junior) partners in maintaining a global order dominated by Western interests. While the relationship was not one of equals, the United States still took allied interests into account. This was not a system of subjugation but of integration—one in which every state acknowledged US leadership but retained the capacity to articulate its own concerns Suite.