The European Union, Multilateralism and the Heterogeneous Multilateral System

The attacks of 9/11 that sent the US spiralling into a neo- conservative vortex of pre- emptive warfare, regime change and unilateral military action had a well- documented spillover into the European Union (EU) (Peterson & Pollack 2003; Calleo 2004). The (in)famous reference by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ‘new Europe’ and ‘old Europe’ became the shorthand notation for the divisions in Europe over the 2003 invasion of Iraq,1 led by the US and including among its ‘coalition of the willing’ the UK and Poland. Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro sum up the complex web of political negotiations that took place across Europe and in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in New York during the months leading up to the war (Gordon & Shapiro 2004). They conclude that the divisions that emerged inside Europe and across the Atlantic were in no way inevitable. By the end of 2003, the EU, only a few months away from These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Economic history · Economics · European union · Foreign policy · International trade · Multilateralism · Negotiation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Transatlantic relations · European Union Policy and Governance · History · Law