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In light of the larger contextual picture of increased geostrategic rivalry with China, this article focuses on the question whether transatlantic cooperation responses towards the geostrategic challenge of China can possibly be coherent at all. How can we explain coherent actions (or lack thereof) between actors across the Atlantic in their foreign policy towards China? The central idea then is to explain transatlantic cooperation responses to the geostrategic challenge of China from a coherence angle, providing us with a perspective by which we can understand why actors on both sides of the Atlantic invest in policy coherence, or rather not. We argue that this coherence angle on transatlantic relations is particularly promising as it combines a focus on actors and structural dimensions that is able to offer explanations by whom, where, and why policy coherence is achieved. By looking into two different cases, the so-called concerted sanctions case and the AUKUS case, we find both, transatlantic coherence and incoherence, respectively, in response to the strategic challenge of China. Overall, this article has important policy implications, as it can point to the underlying factors in transatlantic policy-making that push or obstruct coherence.

The author analyzes the current trends of the globalization of trade, capital, mass media, communication, transport, tourism and economic migrations. However, there is the backlash to the globalizing processes: cultural particularism which has mobilized traditions and triggered violent outbreaks of hostilities. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama has pointed out that today the key challenges to liberal democracy are a miscellany of particularistic fundamentalism, national extremism, totalitarism and authoritarian paternalism. Samuel Huntington also warns about the dangers of particularism. Within such a framework, the phenomenon of "ethnic cleansing" is only an extreme form of the trend which has marked the 20th century - ethnical homogenization as a reaction to the problems of multiethnic communities. The author is of the opinion that this development need not represent an obstacle for the dialogue and communication among cultures. (SOI : PM: S. 168)