The feud that erupted in late 2002 and early 2003 over war in Iraq was the worst US–European crisis in half a century. The scale of the confrontation was wide, the polemics vitriolic, and the associated ill-will deep. The clash was a real test of the new Pax Americana and the new hegemonic style of the Bush administration. Indeed, that style itself was the biggest single variable in the schism. The neoconservative policy shift after 9/11 transformed the United States from being the guarantor of the status quo, its traditional role, into a revolutionary power and supplanted the USA's collaborative Cold War leadership with a more muscular, unilateral, and crusading exercise of hegemony. Both the shape and substance of American foreign policy during the run-up to the war alienated many of Washington's traditional allies and helped undermine support for the United States among European governments and publics alike.

The preceding chapter, by Geir Lundestad, outlines the broad context of these developments. The immediate background included a wide variety of mutually reinforcing transatlantic policy disputes and increasingly acrimonious claims about US and European identities. Muscular Americans mocked craven Europeans and objected strenuously to what they saw as a surge in anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, ingratitude, and disloyalty in Europe. Conversely, the European political class felt degraded by the sheer contempt for Europe it encountered in the administration of George W. Bush.