The 1991 Gulf War is often framed as a moment of American unipolarity, with the United States (US) considered the sole superpower after the Cold War. It was also a test of European political cooperation. We challenge the view that the European Community’s (EC’s) failure to coordinate was solely institutional. Drawing on British government records, UN documents and archive-based scholarship on France and Germany, this article employs a Neoclassical Realist framework (which explains foreign policy as international pressure filtered through domestic politics) to demonstrate that divergent responses were driven by domestic ‘transmission belts’: Britain’s Atlanticist role, France’s status anxiety, and Germany’s constitutional culture of restraint. The findings reveal a ‘Triadic Fracture’ where path-dependent strategic cultures paralysed multilateral institutions. The case holds lessons for today’s debates on European strategic autonomy and the war in Ukraine. Without a convergence of strategic cultures, institutional reform alone cannot enable Europe to act together militarily.
This article revisits Virginia Woolf’s 1929 extended essay A room of one’s own to examine the persistent under-representation of women in international politics through feminist perspectives in international relations. Drawing on Woolf’s metaphor, the article establishes a parallel between her argument about women’s need for economic independence and personal space for intellectual production and the structural conditions required for women’s participation in political decision-making. With the integration of feminist international relations scholarship, the article critiques mainstream theories in the discipline and highlights how global governance continues to be shaped by gendered norms of power. It argues that, without structural transformations that enable women’s voices to have genuine influence, women’s representation in decision-making positions is insufficient. Ultimately, the article demonstrates the need to rethink the architecture of global power to create a fairer and more effective international political system.
ABSTRACT: This article looks at the demographic composition of middle-ground identities in Northern Ireland, challenging the narrative that the ‘Northern Irish’ designation represents a truly shared, cross-community shift away from historical divisions. Using Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey data from 2020 to 2024, the analysis reveals a significant generational difference among individuals from a Protestant background. Younger Protestants are increasingly adopting moderate identities, by claiming a ‘Northern Irish’ national identity over British, claiming ‘no religion’, disavowing unionism for a ‘neither’ political stance and favouring the constitutional status quo of devolved government. This generational gap is largely absent among those from a Catholic background. Younger Catholics generally maintain traditional nationalist and Irish identities, sharing the political attitudes of their elders, including a preference for reunification. This suggests that middle-ground identities are becoming disproportionately concentrated among younger Protestants, raising questions about their long-term viability as inclusive identities.
European strategic autonomy has been discussed prominently in the context of defence issues and the EU’s relationship with NATO and the US. Despite being a contemporary phenomenon in the EU’s foreign policy debate, it has only recently become of central importance in academic analysis. The broader concept of strategic autonomy has evolved from a foreign-policy principle in the EU’s 2016 Global Strategy, to the economic realm with the bloc’s new commitment to ‘open strategic autonomy’ in 2020. This article will examine the newly created imbalances in US-EU relations and how they are impacting the vision of strategic autonomy in Europe. Under the growing weight of the US in the relationship, Europeans feel increasingly incapable of acting, while the US feels increasingly less interested in what Europeans think about security issues. Under Joe Biden’s administration, there was a willingness and forbearance to keep the transatlantic partnership with Europe intact. This has now fundamentally changed, for example with President Donald Trump’s unilateral approaches to the Gaza and Iran conflicts and the resolution of the Ukraine conflict. John J. Mearsheimer’s offensive realism positions the international system as irredeemably anarchic, compelling states to pursue power maximisation to ensure survival. Offensive realism also offers insight into the structural constraints on the EU’s geopolitical ambitions as anarchy rewards power accumulation and penalises dependency. The article will also analyse the most divisive issues confronting the EU and the Franco-German alliance, which have roots in the worldview of the two countries. German post-war identity rests partly on a military alliance with the US and partly on a strong aversion to public debt; President Emmanuel Macron’s vision of a sovereign Europe is a logical extension of long-standing French trade protectionism and ambivalence towards a permanent role in Europe for the US. Resolving these different outlooks is now key to the EU’s future and to European strategic autonomy.
In 1930 James Scullin, Australia’s first Catholic prime minister, completed a week-long visit to Ireland. This article assesses the significance of the visit for the politics of the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland and Australia. The visit of the first overseas leader of Irish descent to the Irish Free State was hailed by contemporary media as one of the most significant events in the political life of the infant state. The Irish government already had reason to be grateful to Scullin who had been of assistance in a serious constitutional dispute with the British government. Scullin openly supported unification of the island of Ireland, which proved controversial when he visited Northern Ireland. These events were largely forgotten by the time of Scullin’s death in 1953. This article attempts to explain why Scullin’s Irish visit was largely forgotten and why it deserves to be restored to popular memory.
