Allies at Odds The United States and the European Union [Hardcover]

Why, despite their similar goals, do the policy preferences of the European Union and United States diverge on so many multilateral issues? To answer that question, Allies at Odds? thoroughly examines recent international efforts in arms control, environmental protection, human rights, and military cooperation. Evidence from 20 separate cases supports the expectations of the realist approach to international politics, which focuses on the role of power above all. Neither cultural factors nor international institutions have as much influence as some expect. This finding was as true during the Clinton Presidency as during the Bush, indicating that focusing on personalities overlooks more substantial and longer-lasting differences between the Atlantic allies.The U.S. and the EU: On the Brink of the Trans-Atlantic Rift? International Relations Approaches and Transatlantic Relations Arms Control The Environment Human Rights Military Cooperation Conclusion

Allies at Odds is an extremely impressive and timely inquiry into the recent strains in the Transatlantic alliance. The book investigates the troubling reality that Europe and America, despite their professed similarity in goals, have increasingly drifted apart in their preferences on multilateral issues since the end of the Cold War. To explain this puzzle, Mowle deduces hypotheses from the realist, liberal institutional, and epistemic theoretical approaches and applies them to four multilateral issue areas: arms control, the global environment, human rights, and military cooperation. He finds that realism best explains the behavior of the United States and, surprisingly, of Europe as well. All serious students or international relations and practitioners of foreign policy will want to read and come to terms with the analysis presented in this concisely written and well-argued book.

- Randall Schweller, The Ohio State University

Major Mowle's well-researched and challenglÃ1