The United States and the European Integration: Pursuing the Strategy of Regional Hegemony

Abstract

The United States have been an important actor in the debate on the
nature of the European integration process since the beginning of the
process. Washington’s policy, however, has always seemed equivocal: on
one hand it actively supported and encouraged the process, but on the
other hand it tried to contain some specific European ambitions and steer
the process in a desirable direction. The objective of this article is to offer a
possible explanation of the long-term US policy towards the European
integration process. In the first part, it presents the theoretical concept of
the US „regional hegemony strategy“ and identifies four goals of the grand
strategy within the limits of the concept. In the second part, it tests the
validity of the concept on six historical case studies by confronting the
intentions of the US policy in each case with the four identified strategic
goals. The analysis shows that even though the focus of the American policy
towards the European integration changes according to different historical
context, the American policy follows the general tenets of the regional
hegemony strategy.