Creating a Neoliberal World Order? Discussing James Cronin's GLOBAL RULES

James Cronin’s Global Rules: American, Britain, and a Disordered Word  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014) greatly contributes to our understanding of post-war European and international politics and provides strong arguments for doing contemporary history.  It recounts the “special relationship” between the USA and the UK, an oft-mentioned but insufficiently historicized mechanism for Anglo-Saxon management of European and global relations. It has enabled the UK to stay in big power games, given the US capacities for mobilizing support inside Europe, the UE, and the Atlantic alliance, provided both countries with leverage with others, and stood the tests of decades and internal strains. Global Rules answers important questions about the special relationship in the ending Cold War and disseminating neoliberal visions of a new contemporary order around market-based democracy and human rights. This panel will ask large questions. If the US has usually been the “dog” and the UK the “tail,” what payoffs have gone to the UK for loyalty, especially in difficult moments like Vietnam, economic crisis in the 1970s, the end of Cold War, and Iraq?  How has the relationship been organized to sustain commitment and confront change? How has it worked within organizations such as the EU, UN, OSCE, the IMF and World Bank, OECD, and NATO ? How is it positioned today in the face of globalization, multi-polarity, and the collapse of post-Cold War stability? This panel will discuss in the active presence of its author.