What’s in a Name? Walls, Immigrants, Ethnicity, and the Issue of US-Transatlantic Relations

Abstract

Taking as its point of departure the 2016 presidential election in the US, this chapter aims to trace the contours of the American debate over ethnicity and the “national identity” as that debate has been said to have an important bearing on the country’s foreign policy decision-making. Emphasis here is upon American foreign policy toward the transatlantic community of states. Three periods are analyzed, in reverse chronological order: (1) the post-Cold War period (1991 to the present); (2) the Cold War period; and (3) the period between the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 and America’s entry therein in April 1917. Despite the widespread belief that ethnicity has become, over time, a more important factor in US policy toward Europe, this chapter concludes otherwise, and shows that the height of ethnic “influence” over US European policy was reached a century ago, during the searing “culture wars” that raged over whether America should enter the European balance of power by intervening in the War. To the extent ethnicity continues to condition US European policy today, it has much to do with the geopolitical institution known as the Anglo-American “special relationship”.