Estranged Friends?
Kaase,
Max and Andrew Kohut. Estranged Friends? The Transatlantic Consequences
of Societal Change, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers,
1996.
After an extended period of relative security and certainty, the transatlantic
partnership now faces a series of challenges and tests of its stability
and reliability. Europe is in the middle of a historic process in which
the framework and the factors that determinate foreign policy, as well
as the foreign policies themselves, are subject to fundamental change.
Similarly, the United States is currently in search of a new role in a
changed international environment.
The two studies in Estranged Friends? examine the fundamental foreign
policy attitudes of both ordinary citizens and elites on both sides of
the Atlantic. In his essay, Max Kaase provides a thorough and precise
analysis of the basic social preconditions that underlie the formulation
and establishment of a new foreign policy. On the basis of representative
surveys, Andrew Kohut provides a detailed and comprehensive description
of the attitudes and the values of American citizens and elites with regard
to the global role of the United States. Kaase and Kohut stress the necessity
for future transatlantic coordination and action; without intensive consultation
and cooperation, there is a risk that the mature partnership will relapse
to the level of national selfishness.