ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three main arguments. First, the world – and the US and the EU – have changed profoundly in the past 25 years. Second, it is unlikely that any administration in the US will fully retrench, become isolationist or give up its hegemonic status, even if the American people seem to have grown a little more sceptical about the superpower status of the US and the obligations it brings with it. Third, both sides, but especially the US, have accepted that traditional security concerns are increasingly bound up with problems that cannot be addressed by military power alone, although President Donald Trump's proposals for a 10 per cent increase in already extensive US defence spending at the expense of budgetary cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department suggest that he may not agree as easily, and therefore may increase the potential for divergence in the future.
