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In 2003, the EU's European Security Strategy called for the development of "strategic partnerships" with established and emerging powers to support and reinforce the advancement of European goals and values globally. The extent to which relations with the identified partners are genuinely strategic has been widely debated in both the policy and academic communities. This paper assesses how the EU's strategic partnership with the USA has been impacted by the Presidency of Donald Trump as a significant aberration from the "normal" condition of the transatlantic relationship. Even in the domain of trade politics—arguably where the EU enjoys the greatest scope to act strategically—the status quo ante has been disrupted. Drawing on Michael Smith's frameworks for assessing different elements of strategic partnerships, I argue that during 2017–2021 the EU faced a stern test but also showed signs of strategic adaptation. Yet it fell short of an "ideal" strategic approach to relations with the USA, evincing tendencies towards concentrating on managing the relationship at a technical level and/or reacting to Trump's behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it strategically wise for the USA to stretch its protective umbrella over small nations in Eastern Europe? Prominent critics have faulted US allies for acting recklessly and free-riding on US security guarantees. The evidence presented vis-à-vis the Baltic States, however, challenges these assumptions. This study paints a picture of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as loyalty-obsessed small states that diligently seek to meet their patron's behavioural expectations. By word and deed, they back US strategic goals. As such, they have taken on heavy war burdens in US-led campaigns and sided with Washington in its geopolitical struggle against China. What is more, they bring to the table distinctive capabilities in cyber and intelligence. In sum, this paper suggests that the Baltic States have continuously reimbursed the USA for its defence-cover services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the earliest days of the transatlantic encounter, the nation now called Peru was being formed by the contributions of people from three continents: Europe, South America, and Africa. The imaginary of the Peruvian nation, however, has tended to focus on a dual Inca-Hispanic heritage and bury the stories that lie outside this narrative. In this paper, I reflect on my motivation and practice in writing my novel about the process of nation-building in Peru. This novel, titled The Dust Never Settles, is my attempt to excavate and privilege untold counterhistories and subjugated knowledges and, as I reflect in this essay, could be understood as a performance of my own cultural identity as a Peruvian-British writer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2016, US-Turkey relations have experienced an era of turmoil. Congress, whose role was marginal in the aftermath of the Cold War, has gradually come to shape the bilateral relationship, to the point that it became a disruptive force during the Trump presidency. This is not the first time, however, that Congress has played a disruptive role in the relationship. Already in the 1970s, members of Congress were able to influence its development, prompting significant friction between the two NATO allies, so much so that Turkey sought to move closer to the USSR. This paper argues that in both cases, members of Congress used the bilateral relationship as a weapon to signal its dissatisfaction with the policy pursued by the administration, at a time when Turkey's strategic importance for the US was being called into question. After all, these two eras were marked by a deep polarisation in domestic politics, and a presidential office that was contested and distrusted. On some level, it might be argued that the fall from grace of the presidential office was the prime reason behind congressional assertiveness against Turkey, which was supported by the administration both during the 1970s and late 2010s, even though Turkey's own course of action, as well as the involvement of the Greek, Armenian, and pro-Israel lobbies, also constituted a key driver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the capacity of the European Union (EU) to achieve its ambition to "become the world-leading region on developing and deploying cutting-edge, ethical and secure AI (European Commission. "Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence 2021 Review", 56.)" and secondarily considers the implications of this quest within the context of transatlantic relations. Mapping the EU's current technological and commercial competitiveness in the AI field vis-à-vis China and the USA, we contest the conventional depiction of the EU as a laggard offering a more nuanced view challenging this characterization on empirical and normative grounds. Analysing the extent to which the EU's market and regulatory power—the so-called Brussels effect—sufficiently equips the EU to defend "ethical and secure" AI globally, we argue that regardless of US support or transatlantic convergence in the AI policy space, the EU's efforts represent the last, best hope for a fairer, more secure and open world order in the data-driven, digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of popular culture and celebrity activism in the strategy of the Nicaragua solidarity campaign (NSC) in the 1980s. It argues that the NSC, which worked closely with the Nicaraguan state, gradually replaced their ineffectual political agitation with cultural activities—comprising an eclectic mix of comedy skits and poetry readings, theatre, punk rock, salsa music, and Nicaraguan folklore. A crucial contribution came from artists and celebrity actors, musicians, and writers such as The Clash, Charlotte Cornwell, Graham Greene, or Salman Rushdie. This article shows that artists and celebrities were drawn to Nicaragua solidarity because they saw the Sandinistas as the antithesis to the right-wing nationalist projects of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It argues that their contribution was essential to popularising the Sandinista cause despite the hostile political climate of Thatcherism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the trends and theoretical positions found in the recent academic literature on the status and trajectory of transatlantic relations with the beliefs of 96 German and US foreign policy experts. The qualitative data are derived from open-ended in-depth interviews about the political, economic, and cultural factors that influence transatlantic cooperation and friction. Conducted in Berlin in 2011 and in Washington, D.C., in 2017, the interviews correspond with optimist and pessimist perceptions found in the academic literature and align roughly with realist, respectively, liberal/institutionalist and constructivist theoretical positions in International Relations theory and left/right political leanings. The study concludes with suggestions about the prospects for transatlantic relations, and the methodological benefits of comparing beliefs of foreign policy actors with theoretical paradigms and trends in the academic literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the transatlantic relationship has been under increasing strain. A key point of friction has been Nord Stream 2, a contentious gas pipeline project connecting Russia and Germany through the Baltic Sea. This study seeks to expand the primarily euro-centric scholarly work on Nord Stream 2 by tracing and explaining the objectives, timing, and effectiveness of US sanctions against Nord Stream 2. Drawing on the canonical 'multiple streams' model of the policy process, I find that US lawmakers were primarily driven by Russian interference in US elections, and concerns about Europe's high dependency on Russian energy supplies and the weakened geopolitical position of Ukraine. The annual budgeting legislation provided the window of opportunity to pass the sanctions. The sanctions were initially very effective and resulted in the termination of contracts for companies working with the Nord Stream 2 consortium, but Russian countermeasures have kept the project afloat. This points to the limits of US structural power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the American strategy for developing non-treaty defence and security agreements with Canada and other partners? Kimball's 2017 Canadian–US defence and security agreement (DSA) data tested a rationalist institutionalist model of agreement institutionalization. This research examines DSA diffusion comparing US DS cooperation with competitors and partners from 1955 to 2005. Non-treaty cooperation via exchanges of diplomatic notes/letters, memoranda of understanding, etc., require legislative notification but not approval. Those arrangements permit the flexibility, speed, and adaptation necessary in defence project management (i.e. NORAD, Eurofighter, F-35). For states with limited budgets, bilateral defence contracting with the USA is more efficient economically, than unilateral provision, but partnering incurs risks (entrapment, abandonment, burden-sharing, etc.). This research contributes to the literature on transatlantic relations by reflecting upon patterns of US cooperation with Canada, other partners as well as main competitors. It closes with recommendations based on anticipated changes to polarity and the defence cooperation status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work investigates the transnational history of poverty and social reform by examining the ways in which German, British, and American reformers looked to a local form of German poor relief, called the Elberfeld System, as a model for solving the Social Question. In tracing the emergence and application of the Elberfeld System in its origin city, this work explains how the system was instrumental in defining what it meant to be poor, what responsibilities a community had towards those in need, and the ways individuals sought to rid society of the problem of poverty. Additionally, the transnational allure of the Elberfeld System had a direct impact over the ways reformers in Great Britain and the USA sought to mitigate poverty's effects in their own locations and reveals that state and national frameworks for tacking poverty were actually the result of a sustained transnational dialogue between the leading industrial nations of the late nineteenth century. This work addresses how members of the middle classes believed that their socio-economic position engendered a responsibility in overseeing those in need. By establishing a personal relationship between themselves and the poor, the middle class guided the behaviour of the impoverished in more favourable directions. Rather than allowing the poor to define for themselves their needs and the causes behind it, poverty was defined within the hands of those in positions of authority. The transnational attraction of the Elberfeld System and its relationship to civic responsibility made its solutions to solving the Social Question not a unique German phenomenon but something worth emulating by British and American reformers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the late nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, the world was embracing a modern marvel—the incandescent light bulb. Light by fire was quickly becoming passé, and everyone wanted the new symbol of technology and progress in their homes and workplaces. But one man saw the light bulb from a very different perspective. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, most noted for his invention of cornflake cereal, was an American health reformer who always strived to be on the cutting edge of technology. Already using electricity in various ways at his world-famous Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, Kellogg saw the new electric light bulb as a means to better health through light therapy. Light therapy, or phototherapy as Kellogg referred to it, was nothing new. Doctors in Europe, such as Auguste Rollier in Switzerland (the Sun Doctor) and Niels Ryberg Finsen in Denmark, were already running successful light therapy programs in their clinics by the time Kellogg came on the scene. Regularly positioning himself as a node in a transatlantic network of health reform, Kellogg, upon visiting both institutions to examine their practices, modified and implemented their programs through his Sanitarium. One of the most noted inventions to come from this transatlantic exchange was Kellogg's Light Cabinet or the "Light Bath." Put on display at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, it soon attracted the attention of foreign investors and doctors, and the German Kelloggische Lichtbad was soon found for sale across Germany and Europe. Kellogg's practice of intercultural transfer led to a full circle of transatlantic exchange as an idea originally from Europe, after modification in America, was exported to its place of origin as something new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1846-7, Frederick Douglass crossed the Atlantic on a tour of Britain and Ireland. He returned to the US a free man, having had his manumission secured for £150, money raised by the Richardsons—a Quaker family of anti-slavery activists—in Newcastle upon Tyne. In speeches given on this tour, he referred admiringly to Charles Dickens, his favourite author, and encouraged audiences to read Dickens's chapter on slavery in American Notes (1842). A little earlier, in 1844, Douglass had shared a stage with Emerson at an anti-slavery address in the US and he intersected with Emerson on the abolition circuit through shared acquaintances and friends and through print. Douglass was tracking what Emerson said about slavery in his diaries, while Emerson alluded to Douglass as 'the anti-slave' in his address on 'The Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies' (1844), delivered in Concord. Offering a close examination of Douglass, Emerson, and Dickens, and their transatlantic exchange of ideas, I move away from the usual Anglo-American study of influence to offer new readings of all three writers in an effort to reinstate the intricate interplay of transatlantic literary and cultural movements surrounding abolition. By foregrounding Douglass, my argument identifies new textual crossovers and transracial connections that can occur in the imaginative realm of literature, freed as it is, at least in part, from the oppressions of the world from which it is produced. I freshly situate all three writers in an inclusive triangulation, arguing that Douglass's writing transcends the limitations of his time, in which he imagines, as part of a transatlantic literary network, a radical vision of racial equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On completion in 1956, the design of the Cambridge American Military Cemetery at Madingley intentionally downplayed individual sacrifice in favour of an emphasis on government-led collective endeavour to uphold national ideals. The design commemorated the defeat of the Axis but in the Cold War also reaffirmed these ideals to allies and ideological enemies alike. Yet from the beginning, the meaning of Madingley has been fluid, negotiated and transcendent of the original fixed design. This article explores the impact of major social and cultural change, the rhetorical activity of politicians, institutional imperatives and the desires of local host communities on the meaning of this major node of Anglo-American commemorative culture. In doing so, it traces the growth of an emphasis on individual service and sacrifice that has replaced the original focus on government-led national enterprise with a more portable meaning able to support the desires of different commemorative constituencies. American politicians have used this to garner support for their policies, institutions have used it as a survival strategy and the host nation has used it as a comforting mask to obscure awkward disparities in national power. Although the commemorative meaning of the site has changed radically, it remains a window on the wider conservative dynamics of Anglo-American commemorative culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military exercises are a significant and conspicuous part of the security landscape in Europe. Although attention is typically focused on the force composition and scope of these exercises, this study finds that exercises' adherence (or lack thereof) to the Confidence- (and Security) Building Measures (C(S)BMs) regime, established to provide an acceptable framework for such activities, is of greater significance to NATO's perceptions of threat. Through an analysis of NATO's response to Soviet and Russian exercises between 1980 and 2017, this study demonstrates the unique significance of perceived Soviet and Russian breaches of the C(S)BM regime in shaping NATO's understanding of their intent and potential threat. NATO paid close attention to the military capability displayed within Soviet and Russian exercises and remained wary of the potential for an exercise to be transformed into an invasion. However, the physical components of the exercises themselves rarely further enhanced belief in the overwhelming capability or non-benign intent of the exercising force and did little to spur NATO into concerted reactive action. Instead, NATO's primary and consistent source of concern around exercises was motivated by perceived Soviet and Russian breaches of the letter and spirit of the C(S)BM regime. The regime, therefore, represents a tripwire, with the perceived breach of its terms understood to signal a lack of commitment to rules-based interaction, driving an impression of non-benign intent that is of greater significance to threat perception and NATO-Soviet and NATO-Russian relations than an exercise's scope and composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marshall Plan had repercussions beyond the North Atlantic axis of the USA and Western Europe. This article charts the critical analysis of the Plan's likely repercussions in Latin America produced by the Brazilian industrialist and proponent of economic planning, Roberto Simonsen. Simonsen argued that the demands for raw materials made by the Plan would impede Latin America's development. Instead, he proposed a triangular solution by which the USA would help Latin America to aid European recovery while at the same time boosting its own development. His proposals were not accepted but contributed to the rise of the Latin American developmentalist movement of the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an emphasis on runaway slave advertisements in Quebec's eighteenth-century newspapers as part of the recovery of Canada's marginalised slaveholding past. However, as a close and holistic reading of the newspapers shows, the advertisements circulated alongside a higher number of texts relating to slavery in the wider Americas. The editors of the Quebec Gazette and the Montreal Gazette reprinted texts first published in Britain and France during the international slave-trade debates and from these they constructed a coherent local anti-slave-trade sentiment. Editors placed runaway slave advertisements alongside a general anti-slave-trade sentiment, and these contradictory texts circulated alongside one another. Canadian newspapers, their editors and readers were far more engaged with transatlantic slave-trade debates than has previously been understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]