“America First” is “America Alone” Foreign policy is like physics: vacuums quickly fill. As the United States retreats from the international order it helped put in place and maintain since the end of World War II, Russia is rapidly filling the vacuum. Federiga Bindi’s new book assesses the consequences of this retreat for transatlantic relations and Europe, showing how the current path of US foreign policy is leading to isolation and a sharp decrease of US influence in international relations. Transatlantic relations reached a peak under President Barack Obama. But under the Trump administration, withdrawal from the global stage has caused irreparable damage to the transatlantic partnership and has propelled Europeans to act more independently. Europe and America explores this tumultuous path by examining the foreign policy of the United States, Russia, and the major European Union member states. The book highlights the consequences of US retreat for transatlantic relations and Europe, demonstrating that “America first” is becoming “America alone,” perhaps marking the end of transatlantic relations as we know it, with Europe no longer beholden to the US national interest.

"Explores European foreign policy and the degree of European Union success in proposing itself as a valid international actor, drawing from the expertise of scholars and practitioners in many disciplines. Addresses issues past and present, theoretical and practice-oriented, and country- and region-specific"-- Provided by publisher.

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.

In our globalized world, borders are back with a vengeance. New data shows a massive increase of walls and barriers between countries after 2001. However, at the same time, the flow of people and the growth of trade have continued at impressive rates, and arguments for more open borders remain relevant. In The Border, Martin Schain compares how and why border policy has become increasingly important, politicized, and divisive in both Europe and the United States. Drawing from an intensive analysis of documents and interviews, he argues that border control is a growing international movement. In Europe, the European Union is under scrutiny, and many countries seek to block the entry of asylum-seekers from wars in the Near East. In the US, Donald Trump pledged to build a wall along the Mexico border, restricted the entry of Syrian asylum-seekers, and more generally tried to ban Muslim immigration. Moreover, on both sides of the Atlantic, trade barriers appear in the political agendas of major parties. Schain delves into these interlinked phenomena, showing that migration, identity, and trade have been packaged and transformed into hotly contested issues of border governance and control.

The emergence of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) in the last two-thirds of the 1990s and continuing into the new century, has been a complex process intertwining politics, economics, national cultures, and numerous institutions. This book provides an essential background for understanding how security issues as between NATO and the European Union are being posed for the early part of the 21st century, including the new circumstances following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. This study should be of interest to those interested in the evolution of U.S.-European relations, especially in, but not limited to, the security field; the development of institutional relationships; and key choices that lie ahead in regard to these critical arrangements.

In the past three decades, the world has witnessed many rapid and invasive changes, and seems to be changing countries have adapted their foreign policies to these changes. Building on a clear typology of foreign policy change and a consistent theoretical framework, this book offers a comparative analysis of foreign policy change in Europe throughout the post-Cold War period. Along the lines of our analytical framework, country experts discuss how and why the further ever more rapidly in ways that seemed only imaginable in movies. This book investigates how European foreign policies of eleven European countries have changed over the past thirty years. This book hereby advances our understanding of the phenomenon of foreign policy change and identifies the most important drivers and inhibitors of change.