Memory in U.S. Transatlantic Relations since 9/11

Abstract

Scholars have mapped out the post-9/11 rebuilding, dynamic, and deployments of the U.S. government’s soft power apparatus, now geared towards public diplomacy. Instead of traversing this already well-covered ground, this chapter will focus on two under-studied cases of the use of memory in U.S. transatlantic relations by non-governmental actors: the 2003 campaign by Western European intellectuals to use memory to politically ‘break with’ the United States over its invasion of Iraq with a coalition that included a group of Atlanticist European nations; and the use of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Year by American conservatives to conduct “shadow memorial diplomacy” in Central and Eastern Europe that articulated an alternative U.S. foreign policy in 2011. These cases can help scholars, memory professionals, policy makers and diplomats better understand, anticipate and appreciate the potential and actual interventions into international memory politics by non-state actors.