Taming the Hyperpower: The 1990s
Keyword(s):
This chapter discusses the confluence of events that shaped relations between France and the United States in the 1990s. These include the war in the Persian Gulf, which had barely subsided when a downward spiral into ethnic strife seized the inhabitants of Yugoslavia. At the same time the United States and France engaged in diplomatic brinkmanship over trade and waged a contest over reform of the Atlantic Alliance. Transatlantic sparring often occurred on many fronts and one struggle tended to complicate the other. The discussion in this chapter will be thematic rather than chronological, beginning with war, and then security, followed by trade, the “indispensable nation,” and more war, and concluding with the topic of the hyperpower.