ABSTRACT
The stability and endurance of security communities has been generally attributed to the strength of the institutional structure and the “thickness” of the collective identity shared by their members. Strong commitment to multilateral rules of conduct and democratic values are assumed, for instance, to bear a direct influence on members entertaining dependable expectations of peaceful change (Adler and Barnett 1998; Williams 2001). Internal crises may still occur but they are peacefully resolved by diplomatic means ranging from negotiations informed by a logic of appropriateness (Neumann and Williams 2000) to showdowns based on representational force (Bially Mattern 2005). In other words, institutions and identities restrict the options available to the members of the security community to resolving disputes. This view has been partially challenged by the recent evolution of the relationship between the United States on one hand, and Canada and Europe on the other hand. The foreign policy direction pursued by the United States (US) under the leadership of President George W. Bush since taking office in 2001 and especially the US military intervention in Iraq in 2003 appear to have strained the relationship between the United States and its allies to the point that some IR scholars have even started to call into question the very idea of transatlantic security community (Cox 2005).
