ABSTRACT
The terrorist attacks on 11 September 20011 and the succeeding Global War on Terror (GWOT) marked a watershed in US foreign policy (Bolton 2008: 171). In the eyes of many observers, America became unbound (Daalder and Lindsay 2003): Multilateralism and soft power as elements of foreign policy were put to one side, whereas plurilaterism or unilateralism and military means came to the fore. Against this backdrop, the Iraq War in 2003 constituted the high tide of the new foreign policy, its turning point, and the beginning of the end of the “Bush revolution” (Gordon 2006). As long-standing allies followed these unexpected changes in George W. Bush’s first term with considerable irritation (Davies et al. 2008: 309; Malone and Khong 2003), they are also puzzling from a theoretical point of view. Since America’s unipolar power position remained unchallenged, reference to the international system cannot explain the foreign policy excursion. Furthermore, the changes coincide neither with an important election nor with a significant shift in public foreign policy preferences. Thus, they also escape an easy domestic explanation.
