Old Europe, New Europe and the US: Renegotiating Transatlantic Security in the Post 9/11 Era

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Continue shopping Checkout Continue shopping. Chi ama i libri sceglie Kobo e inMondadori. Available in Russia Shop from Russia to buy this item. Some European states contested the securitization of this issue, as seen with the prevalence of public protests against the war in France and even in Britain, thereby indicating that Europeans have not accepted the language used to elevate this policy issue into emergency practices.

This deepened the split between actors who were undecided about their position within the GWOT.

The Iraq War is seen as the height of the special relationship, and yet the two states were on unequal footing: Blair had intended to engage in the war so as to push the US to a more multilateral path, but in reality only yielded a very small influence, as seen with his failed private opposition to the siege of Fallujah in , which was one of the bloodiest battles of the war and has now been identified as a turning point in public opinion on the Iraq War as it brought home the reality of the casualties sunk into the conflict Porter Having examined the dividing discourse of the GWOT and the Iraq War, we look now to how the process to war in Iraq fell outside of the legitimate path to war as outlined in the multilateral conceptions of Just War theory.

This war brought to light competing conceptions and prioritisations of the rule of Just War, particularly the concepts of jus ad bellum, the right to wage war, and jus in bello, the right conduct in war. After the attacks of 11 September , the Bush administration created a discourse of fear and othering that allowed them to put the security of their citizens above all other multilateral commitments.

In their invasion of Iraq, they showed a blatant disregard for the processes of waging a legitimate war that have been meticulously crafted to maintain stability and peace in the post World War Two security environment. The Europeans asserted that the use of force should be a last resort, and used only when sanctioned by the UN Security Council. This division over the legality of the war is a key point of contention between the two allies. It is important to note here that the Europeans are not opposed to war or military means as a whole.

In fact, before the war in Iraq, Germany was the second-largest force provider in operations around the world Riecke The Europeans therefore are not inherently pacifist, but rather highly value the conditions of the Just War theory. The concept of just cause and right intention means that war should not be pursued for national interests, but rather only to re-establish a just peace. However, in the Iraq War, the application of a pre-emptive military attack did not hold strong.

The war in Iraq is therefore better described as a preventive war, which is not justified by the just war theory. The Iraq War certainly fits this description: The concept of a preventive war undermines the principle of sovereignty, a key doctrine underpinning the international system since the peace of Westphalia in The importance of sovereignty was another key dilemma between the allies over the jus ad bellum of the war in Iraq.

For the Europeans, who have been at the forefront of the concept of a rule-bound international community, the American justification of war was worrisome. It seemed to mean there were two different sets of rules operating in the system: Additionally, the Americans framed their rhetoric of war within similar language of the concept of Responsibility to Protect R2P , a governing norm that stipulates that sovereignty is not an absolute right, but is rather conditional if the state does not protect its population from human rights violations, including atrocities like genocide, war crimes and cases of ethnic cleansing.

In referring to this rhetoric, the Americans attempted to justify their violation of Iraqi sovereignty by framing their invasion in terms of the abuses of the Iraqi democratic regime. Attempting to create a moral equivalent to the R2P norm also undermined the American case and invited unwanted comparisons with other past legitimate breaches of sovereignty. Overall, this intrusion on the sovereignty of Iraq demonstrated to the Europeans that the framework of the GWOT brought on a new kind of American exceptionalism, whereby they were exempt from the international regimes and multilateral legal frameworks that they had been at the forefront of developing in the post World War Two context.

Though the Europeans shared a common enemy, and agreed with the cause of the fight against terrorism, their support was limited because of the perceived disregard for international law and norms by the Americans, as seen with their jus in bello. This is evident in the controversies of Abu Ghraib, a prison complex near Baghdad that was the site of a prisoner torture and abuse scandal that undermined the role of the United States in the global war on terror.

The inhumane treatment of suspects and prisoners of war was emblematic of the concerns about the way in which the war was justified: The principle of last resort, stipulating that war should be the last resort after all other channels have been exhausted, would imply the use of proportional means in the war — meaning a use of force and intensity as equal to that of the provoking attack Acharya Many Europeans were shocked at the scale of the violence, with an estimate of over , Iraqi combatant and civilian fatalities as compared to the 3, lives lost on the attacks of 11 September and 6, lives lost in the subsequent conflict in Iraq Iraq Body Count: These vastly different numbers do not seem to imply the use of proportional violence.

Despite offering troops through the Article 5 clause of collective self-defence, the United States decided to go into Afghanistan without the approval of many of their European partners. Similarly, in the lead up to the Iraq War, there was no main consultation with the allies. Though we have shown how divisive the Iraq War has been within the context of the GWOT, there are other facets of the fight against terrorism where the transatlantic partners have enjoyed successful cooperation. Firstly, it is important to note that the United States engaged in Iraq alongside a Coalition of the Willing, which included over 30 states, many from Eastern Europe.

In this way, there was military cooperation from European countries, even though they may not be the countries at the forefront of the transatlantic relationship. Secondly, the transatlantic partners have shown to be cooperative in the area of surveillance and intelligence gathering. Their intelligence cooperation has substantially increased since the 11 September attacks, building on the international institutions fostered in the Cold War, with the Europeans adopting distinctly American-oriented policies like the EU Data Retention Directive of , outlining the rules on the retention of data processed from electronic or public communications networks Aldrich Though the legal bases for the regulation of intelligence and privacy are different on either side of the Atlantic, they have similar goals in the sharing of information.

European Foreign Affairs Review

Therefore, even in this realm of cooperation, the transatlantic partners seem to find divergences between their outlooks on the threat of terrorism and what actions are justified within the GWOT. These powerful actors choose to hang together, because despite any divergences in the importance of norms, or differing discourses of threat, they have a multitude of other shared values: Overall, the transatlantic partners seem to have come to the conclusion that a split partnership is not possible or practical while they still face such an important common threat.

The Iraq War can either represent a massive point of departure, or it can show how no alliance is without its disagreements, and the strength of the relationship lies in their ability to maintain peace despite such disagreements. Here, I choose to side with the scholarship of Vincent Pouliot. Though the Europeans publicly disagreed with the American approach to the conflict in Iraq, they never chose to wage war on them. Instead, their response was simply not to engage in the war and to publicly criticize the Bush Administration.

In the aftermath of Iraq, the allies have continued to cooperate as the two main pillars of the Western world in managing terrorism, particularly through cooperation on surveillance and intelligence gathering. Though the Iraq War certainly is an important source of dispute, it may not be any more severe than any other publicly vicious disagreements, such as the Suez Canal crisis of or European opposition to Vietnam War of to Overall, the allies seem to agree on the premise and the threat of terrorism, but disagree over the extent to which the targeting of the United States allows them to operate outside of widely accepted international rules and norms.

The legitimacy of the United States and the securitization of the GWOT as a whole suffer because of these normative violations. However, in the end, their relationship is still incredibly valuable. As the core of the democratic world, they have a very close economic and cultural relationship that seems to take precedence over any issue-specific disagreements. The divisions over the Iraq War are just another in a long line of divergences in the history of their long alliance that do not seem to threaten the overall stability of this old alliance.

Bergen, Peter The Longest War: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd. The Transatlantic relationship from Bush to Obama. Donnelly, Faye Securitization and the Iraq War: Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol.