Is there?
It seems to me that were it to be specialized differently in a different translation unit to all of a sudden do more than advertised, wouldn't that be an ODR violation?

-----Original Message-----
There is a simple workaround: a static variable in a class template:

template <typename T>
struct A {
    static int var;
};
// A<int>::var can be referenced without the initializer being defined at this point

template <> int A<int>::var = 7;