As Geir Lundestad reminds us in chapter 1, the Atlantic alliance has known recurrent controversy since its inception. Still, the diplomatic crisis of 2002–3 was of a different character than its predecessors. Prior to the war to dislodge Saddam Hussein from power, the USA's key NATO partners had never adopted as a matter of official, publicly stated policy the aim of thwarting the United States on a matter Washington had described as of supreme importance; but that is precisely what took place in the fall of 2002 and spring of 2003. The behavior of the George W. Bush administration prior to the invasion of Iraq was likewise extraordinary. Many senior US policy officials seemed not merely to accept that many of the United States' chief allies were opposed to the action; they appeared to revel in that fact. The diplomatic conflict with European opponents of the war, and especially the French, at times appeared more exhilarating than the prospect of removing the “butcher of Baghdad” from power.

The subject of this chapter is the evolution of US grand strategy and especially American policy toward its leading Atlantic partners, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In addressing these subjects I will draw attention to structural considerations, or in other words to the distribution of power in the international system. The bipolar distribution of power that reigned throughout the Cold War encouraged certain behaviors; the shift to a different distribution of power encourages others.