Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe, and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis
This lively account of the 1982 dispute between the United States and several of its European allies about support for the building of the Soviet pipeline to Western Europe is full of facts and well-digested data. It correctly links the episode to long-standing differences in attitudes toward trade with the U.S.S.R. and in the process naturally covers a good bit of familiar ground. An analysis demonstrating how little the United States achieved by its efforts opens the way for the conclusion that there will be increased East-West trade but great political advantage will not necessarily flow from it.
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Relations between Greece and the United States are strained. From the anti-American rhetoric of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), and after a series of irritating incidents, tensions have developed that pose troublesome questions about the course of Greek policy and Greek relations with the West.
Nineteen eighty-four has been a quiet year in U.S.-West European relations--a year during which these Western countries had the luxury of organizing a large number of conferences for intellectuals and public figures to ask themselves whether George Orwell's bleak warnings had actually been prophetic (if they had been, these colloquia could not have been held) and whether Soviet reality resembled Orwell's vision of totalitarianism. What actually happened in the relations among these nations was less interesting than what did not happen.
The end of Hitler's New Order in Europe in May 1945 ushered in a new order in America's relationship to Europe. The arrangements that were designed, debated and put in place during the following four years endure to this day. They are part of the world into which the present generation of foreign policy practitioners and commentators were professionally and intellectually born; and they shape the perceptions and limit the imagination of the general public. NATO, in particular, is a fixture in the international political and strategic firmament. The present Atlantic relationship is not without flaws, but since its framework has the aspect of a given, critiques fix on surface phenomena and proximate factors--apparent weaknesses or apparent strengths. Improvements are considered within the given framework, not as alternatives to it. Even the flaws are felt as mere irritants, inspiring only enraged political opposition or petulant geopolitical daydreams.

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