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Europe Without America?: The Crisis In Atlantic Relations

John Palmer
Reviewed by By Fritz Stern
Fall 1988
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John Palmer
Oxford
1988
217 pp.
$22.50

Why the coy question mark of the title-when it is also the prescription of this manifesto cum analysis? The author, former European editor of The Guardian based in Brussels, writes from the conviction (and perhaps the hope) that "the Atlantic Alliance . . . could now, in the later 1980s, be facing a period of potentially terminal decline." He also foresees "the slow decay of Atlanticism." Under these circumstances, an independent, unified and perhaps neutralized Europe should arise-something that only a new left is likely to achieve. Palmer is aware of the corruption and decline in Eastern Europe, but hopes for reforms and sees East European dissidents as favoring his hope for a new European order. An intelligent exposition of important minority views that would find themselves attracted to Gorbachev's invocation of "this common house, Europe." The book-despite its bias, oversimplification and occasional historical lapses-can be read as a useful challenge to any kind of complacent Atlanticism.

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