Atlanticism
Atlanticism, also known as Transatlanticism,[1] is the ideology which advocates a close alliance between nations in Northern America (the United States and Canada) and in Europe on political, economic, and defense issues.
[5] Prior to the World Wars, western European countries were generally preoccupied with continental concerns and creating colonial empires in Africa and Asia, and not relations with North America.
Likewise, the United States was busy with domestic issues and interventions in Latin America, but had little interest in European affairs, and Canada, despite gaining self-governing dominion status through Confederation in 1867, had yet to exercise full foreign policy independence as a part of the British Empire.
[6] In the aftermath of World War I, while the US Senate was discussing whether or not to ratify the Treaty of Versailles (it ultimately did not), some Congressional Republicans expressed their support for a legally binding US alliance with Britain and France as an alternative to the League of Nations's and especially Article X's open-ended commitments; however, US President Woodrow Wilson never seriously explored their offer, instead preferring to focus on his (ultimately unsuccessful) fight to secure US entry into the League of Nations.
[7] The experience of having American and Canadian troops fighting with British, French, and other Europeans in Europe during the World Wars fundamentally changed this situation.
[9][10] Atlanticism has undergone significant changes in the 21st century in light of terrorism and the Iraq War, the net effect being a renewed questioning of the idea itself and a new insight that the security of the respective countries may require alliance action outside the North Atlantic territory.
Some commentators, such as Robert Kagan and Ivo Daalder questioned whether Europe and the United States had diverged to such a degree that their alliance was no longer relevant.
[21] German-Russian economic relations became an issue in the Atlantic relationship due to Nord Stream 2,[23] among other disagreements such as trade disputes between the United States and the European Union.
In the long debate between Atlanticism and its critics in the 20th century, the main argument was whether deep and formal Atlantic integration would serve to attract those still outside to seek to join, as Atlanticists argued, or alienate the rest of the world and drive them into opposite alliances.
[35] Realists, neutralists, and pacifists, nationalists and internationalists tended to believe it would do the latter, citing the Warsaw Pact as the proof of their views and treating it as the inevitable realpolitik counterpart of NATO.
[34] Broadly speaking, Atlanticism is particularly strong in the United Kingdom[33] (linked to the Special Relationship) and eastern and central Europe (i.e. the area between Germany and Russia).
[36] There are numerous reasons for its strength in Eastern Europe: primarily the role of the United States in bringing political freedom there after the First World War (Wilson's Fourteen Points), the major role of the U.S. during the Cold War (culminating in the geopolitical defeat of the Soviet empire and its withdrawal from the region), its relative enthusiasm for bringing the countries of the region into Atlanticist institutions such as NATO, and a suspicion of the intentions of the major Western European powers.
[42] Well-known Atlanticists include former U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan; U.K. Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown;[43] former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson; former Assistant Secretary of War and perennial presidential advisor John J. McCloy; former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski;[44] former NATO Secretaries-General Javier Solana[45] and Joseph Luns;[46] and Council on Foreign Relations co-founder Paul D.
