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The United States and Europe After the Cold War

John W. Holmes
Reviewed by By David C. Hendrickson
July/August 1997
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John W. Holmes
University of South Carolina Press
1997
225 pp.
$34.95

The Alliance is dead! Long live the Alliance! Such, in effect, is the argument of this short and dyspeptic study of the transatlantic relationship since 1989. The author, a retired U.S. diplomat long concerned with European affairs, argues that the old military alliance is essentially moribund, and that a new and improved economic relationship ought to be built between the United States and European Union. The author is too pessimistic in forecasting an inevitable withdrawal of U.S. forces from the continent, and too optimistic in thinking that an improved economic relationship can form a plausible substitute for a political and security relationship, but the work provides a thoughtful guide to the various forms of Euro-American partnership that have been considered in the last several years.

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