Jeffrey D. McCausland

With the end of the Cold War, a popular parlor game in foreign ministries, think tanks, and academia has been to develop a theory of international relations that best explains the new international order. Although there is widespread agreement that the United States is the world's most powerful country in military, economic, and diplomatic terms, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, there is little agreement as to how the rest of the world will react to America's lead. Concepts such as "balancing," "bandwagoning," "buck-passing," and "free riding," to name just a few, have been advanced and debated. And although none presents a unified field theory, each explains some aspect of international relations. Theory has an even more difficult time explaining the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom (UK), especially its remarkable endurance over the past 6 decades. The U. S.-UK partnership flourished during World War II, deepened during the long twilight struggle...

The idea for this volume grew out of a previous collaboration between Jeffrey McCausland and Douglas Stuart. Arguing that the bilateral relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom was both underappreciated and understudied, they organized a series of conferences in 2005 which brought together a group of well-known American and British academics, journalists, and policymakers to discuss political, military, and economic aspects of the "special relationship." The conference proceedings, published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U. S. Army War College under the title U. S.-UK Relations at the Start of the 21st Century, proved to be extremely popular- requiring a second printing and generating followon public discussions on both sides of the Atlantic.1 Conversation during these public events tended to focus on one basic question and a couple of ancillary questions: Was the U. S.-UK relationship unique? If so, in what respects? And why?

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a remarkable speech at Kansas State University on November 26, 2007. In his address, the Secretary underscored the pressing need to greatly expand the nation's "soft power" capabilities. Secretary Gates did not speak at length about current Department of Defense programs or the need to increase the defense budget dramatically. Rather, he called for significant increases in the capacity of other government agencies to work with the military in the rebuilding of societies in Iraq and Afghanistan and be prepared to counter the appeal of international terrorism globally. Clearly the attack on the World Trade Center and subsequent conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan changed forever how Americans think about "national security." These events expanded not only the number and scope of issues, but also the overall complexity of the process.