Event Highlights: Europe’s Role in US Grand Strategy
This talk by Linde Desmaele, Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program, took place at BU’s Pardee School of Global Studies on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. The question Desmaele takes up in this talk, based on her current book project, is what the so-called “rise of the rest” means for the US-Europe relationship. In other words: If global politics are increasingly defined by what happens in Asia, then what precisely is the purpose of the transatlantic relationship from the point of view of Washington? Her starting observation is the growing consensus that Europe no longer features centrally – or, at least as centrally as it used to during, for instance, the Cold War – in US grand strategy. (By grand strategy, she refers to the means-ends chain that prescribes how to best safeguard a state’s primary, or national, interests.) While she does not dispute the widely accepted notion that Europe’s role in US grand strategy has been downgraded, she notes that this “downgrade” has led to an important re-conceptualization of the transatlantic relationship, namely as a region featuring long-standing relationships that can at times be leveraged in pursuit of non-European goals. Europe’s support of US leadership internationally still matters, she argues.
Linde Desmaele’s talk takes place as part of the Center for the Study of Europe’s ”Europe in the World” lecture series, an initiative of the Jean Monnet Chair in European Security and Defense, Kaija Schilde. The aim of the series, which is supported by the European Commission, is to prompt critical reflection by a larger public on human and regional security informed by cross-national experiences and a variety of disciplinary lenses as well as to introduce or emphasize EU perspectives into ongoing debates around security integration and global challenges.