Abstract
This article reviews the general characteristics of the ‘crisis’ faced by the EU when confronted by the George W. Bush administration in the US, and considers it in relation to the EU's capacity for collective international action. On the basis of a range of examples, it appears that the EU's foreign policy ‘crisis’ was limited to one end of an extensive spectrum, and that in other areas there is considerable evidence of success in maintaining solidarity and proposing alternative policies. The article concludes by proposing an approach to EU collective international action that can account for and accommodate this unevenness, and which might be applied to EU–US relations more generally.
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Notes
For treatments of the broad developments in these and other issue areas over the course of the Bush administration, see the following: Allen and Smith (2001–2004); McGuire and Smith (2006, forthcoming); Peterson (2005, forthcoming); Peterson and Pollack (2003). The treatment here is based on these and on a range of newspaper sources, and is designed, because of its place in the argument, to identify overall trends rather than precise developments.
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Smith, M. european foreign policy in crisis? EU responses to the George W. Bush administration. Eur Polit Sci 5, 41–51 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210058
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210058