Transatlantic Transitions

Back to the Global Future?

Imtiaz Hussain

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9789811066078
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811066085
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Explores ?transatlantic transactions as cause and consequence of globalization

Delves into north-south and south-south transatlantic relations

Highlights mindsets (like ideas) behind transactions (as in flows)

© The Author(s) 2018

Imtiaz HussainTransatlantic TransitionsGlobal Political Transitionshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6608-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Transatlantic Hues and Paradigmatic Cues

Imtiaz Hussain¹

(1)

Independent University of Bangladesh, Global Studies & Governance Program, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Broadening the three Pollack-Shaffer-Peterson phases of post-World War II ‘transatlantic studies’, this opening chapter exposes some news-making nuances taking a toll: the increasing sophistication/complexity; treating the United States as a sine qua non actor; the emerging exogenous factors influencing the zone; and the capacity of procedural and structural change as a catalyst. Accordingly, three new study dimensions to enrich the ‘transatlantic studies’ field are posited: (a) going backwards from World War II to the American discoveries; (b) extending the transatlantic zone, dominated by northern flows, to the central and south Atlantic flanks; and (c) admitting ideas/mind-sets to the stock of extant material or diplomatic ‘flows’. Since many ‘transitions’ crop up with the extended framework, how the subsequent chapters will treat them ultimately gets spelled out.

End Abstract

The ‘Transatlantic Field’

Transatlantic relations can be traced at least as far back as to Christopher Columbus , Hernán Cortés , and other European voyagers first stepping foot on ‘New World’ soil. Since contemporary political economists, socio-economists, and historians clutch these pioneering connections in projecting pathways to the modern world, there is no reason why the emergent ‘transatlantic’ study field cannot do likewise.¹ In the final analysis, a brand-new theater would be opened, new curtains could be drawn exposing fresh food for case and comparative studies, while new light should always be shed on old, settled puzzles.

If, for example, we take Immanuel Wallerstein ’s capitalist world economy , we note how the dependence of a European ‘core’ on a ‘periphery’ flung across the Western Hemisphere demanded a lot more transatlantic attention than, for example, the United States’ (US) return to a seemingly abandoned ‘Old’ continent would do with World War II .² In the same vein, Raúl Prébisch ’s dependencia argumentation , which may have become a spent post-Cold War force across a wide spectrum of Latin America ,³ both substantively and theoretically,⁴ still had the effect of converting east-west transatlantic flows into a lingering north-south transatlantic stream in spite of ISI (import substitution industrialization ) throttles. Though the Monroe Doctrine symbolized the twilight of colonial transatlantic relations, US influences , whether in the form of pan-American dollar diplomacy ,⁵ or socialism-scourging Cold War crusades ,⁶ the entire range of international relations evoked since 1923 gave more of an impetus to north-south transatlantic studies than the east-west we have unwittingly been locked into. ‘Transatlantic Studies ,’⁷ whether in east-west or north-south forms, have become very much like Winston Churchill described Russia to be in October 1939, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

One way to capture more out of this phenomenon may be to free it from its time capsule. Mark A. Pollack and Gregory C. Shaffer , two of its foremost exponents, discerned three phases on the evolution (what they interpreted in terms of ‘governance ’), beginning from the ashes of World War II and continuing into the twenty-first century.⁸

In the first phase of US economic dominance from 1945 to 1965, the necessary condition of political order was established in 1949 through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) , while what may be called the sufficient condition of economic growth, emerged through the 1958 European Economic Cooperation (EEC) .⁹ Just as the European countries were becoming more economically robust and politically assertive in the 1960s, the United States , given all its other global commitments, found its edge dissipating on both fronts. Pollack and Shaffer used the 1965 Empty Chair crisis to indicate a dividing line between US economic dominance and its protracted two-decade decline¹⁰—until another policy-making crossroads. The year was also the dividing line between unanimity and qualified-majority EEC decision-making, as Pollack and Shaffer reminded us. The 1986 Single European Act (SEA) not only confirmed the EC voting approach shift,¹¹ but also coincided with the start of a third governance pattern, depicting greater US-EU economic symmetry.

Fast-forwarding another 15 years, the 9/11 restructuring of this order and the 2003 Iraq War prompted Pollack, now in conjunction with John Peterson , to speak of ‘a final wedge’ being driven “into the transatlantic alliance .”¹² Whether a fourth ‘governance’ form had emerged or not, one did not have to wait another 15–20 years for another change: by 2016, both sides were deeply enmeshed in Transatlantic Trade and Investment Prosperity (TTIP) negotiations, though not necessarily any closer to a deal. Similarly, when freed from an EC/EU (European Community/European Union ) anchor, the ‘transatlantic studies’ field exposes more hues and deeper wellsprings, suggesting, through trends across 75 years, of a subsequent phase or two for the remainder of the twenty-first century.

Before jumping that far ahead, stocktaking some of the implications of the Pollack-Shaffer-Peterson governance phases may steady the explorative sojourn. At least four attract attention. First, transatlantic relations were becoming more sophisticated and complicated. Second, the United States had emerged as much of a sine qua non transatlantic actor as West Europe in the EC/EU format . Third, the transatlantic domain could no longer be described nor prescribed by only endogenous dynamics: exogenous forces began linking the part (transatlantic ) to the whole (international/multilateral/global). Reaffirming these developments, a fourth implication accents the rapidity of change—both procedurally and structurally—as a catalyst.

Turning to the first implication, Pollack and Schaffer place transatlantic relations within an ‘economic interdependence ’ context,¹³ with ‘domestic, bilateral and international dimensions’. That these engage ‘a variety of actors’ (“from chiefs of governments to lower-level regulators, business representatives, and civil activists…”), foster ‘conflict as well as cooperation’, and produce ‘losers as well as winners,’ only confirms the transient and contentious nature of interpretive outcomes. In an increasingly cluttered domain, that may still be the best explanatory outcome, shedding the most light. “Anyone who wants to understand how complex interdependence operates at the beginning of the twenty-first century,” observed Robert O. Keohane about the paradigm he introduced in 1977 with Joseph S. Nye ,¹⁴ had to understand “how intergovernmental, trans-governmental, and transnational politics interact to produce authoritative outcome in the Atlantic area.”¹⁵ Those were the three dimensions Pollack and Shaffer presented as transatlantic ‘images,’ the first eliciting behavior that has been called inter-governmental (that is, top-tier governmental officials in state-to-state interaction), the second trans-governmental (autonomously acting mid-tier governmental officials), and the third transnational (non-governmental organizations): as in the original ‘interdependence’ model , military priorities were subordinated to a wide variety of other issues, the number of actors expanded beyond the ‘great powers ,’ and multiple issues were not only brought to the negotiating table, but also generated wide variety of linkages, be they between states or non-state actors, bilaterally , through small groups (as in the G7), or with multiple actors (as, for example, in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD ). As a footnote accenting the internationalizing tendency of all the above dynamics, the G7 often became the G8 when Russia was invited to attend; and with Mexico and South Korea joining the OECD ranks, pressure was clearly building within old paradigms to slowly embrace new pressure points by bulging outward—clearly making pressure an inevitable yet silent long-term catalyzing force within any concurrent analytical framework.

Second, extant transatlantic studies unwittingly projected the United States as the western anchor while the eastern partner varied depending on the issue—whether just Great Britain , as in the 2003 Iraq War , or the European Union, as with the TTIF negotiations, or even broader still in the recent Ukrainian crisis with the NATO frontier stretching to the Ural Mountains , while in 1998, the United States made Argentina a non-member NATO ally, the first not only in the ocean’s remote south but also receiving north-south transatlantic considerations as a contending component within any transatlantic context. Western Atlantic membership automatically spilled over from the United States to Canada , as, for example, Donald Barry’s works show.¹⁶ Of cours...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Transatlantic Hues and Paradigmatic Cues
• 2. Southern Transatlantic Flows: Silver Bullets
• 3. Transatlantic Settlers, Slaves, and Courtyard Knaves: Telescoping Space
• 4. Central America in Transatlantic Transactions: Global Commodity Central?
• 5. North-South Transatlantic Trajectories: Comparative South American Experiences
• 6. Muslims in the ‘Transatlantic’ Zone: Differing Stripes?
• 7. Transatlantic Democracy: Of Soft Contenders
• 8. Conclusions: Transitions and the ‘Transatlantic’ Playground
• Back Matter