Taming the Elephant? The European Union and the Management of American Power

Abstract

Abstract A number of questions arise when the European integration project is conceptualised as a means of managing American power. The image of the US as a ‘rogue elephant’, coined by Raymond Vernon in 1973, suggets that the European project has always had this as one of its central (if often unstated) aims, and that this remains the case in the 21st century. There are identifiable trends in European integration and the management of American power in a historical context related to four key shaping forces: reflex, resistance, risk reduction and re‐configuration. The current conjuncture in EU‐US relations can be explored in terms both of the foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration and the evolution of the EU's foreign and security policies. It can be argued that the continuing relevance of these four shaping forces has taken a distinctive form in the past four years, which has created a series of contradictions in EU responses to the US ‐ most recently and dramatically over the conflict in Iraq. But these contradictions also touch on broad questions of world order and global governance. It is possible to employ this framework to illuminate recent and current policy issues as well as to assess possible scenarios for the future management of power in EU‐US relations.