The Troubled Alliance: Atlantic Relations in the 1980s (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 265 Eban's modest appraisal of the possible does not necessarily translate into cynicism. On the contrary, more ambitious and unrealistic goals seem to obscure what actually can be accomplished given a system of sovereign states pursuing national interests. For instance, Eban points out that while "incantations" against Soviet violations of human rights may be repetitive and self-evident, their absence "can only serve to demoralize those in the Soviet Union who strive to humanize the regime within the limits of feasibility." Similarly, Eban is able to indicate the weaknesses of international institutions without denying the potential and necessity of these international organs in addressing fundamentally global issues. Eban's work entails little that is novel in the literature on postwar U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Soviet relations, arms control, or the Middle East. However, this does not detract from the value of his overall analysis. Some sections shine with insight, such as Eban's comment on the plight of the modern diplomat, squeezed into obscurity by the coincidence of the rise of mass media and the growth of ministerial foreign policy. Such bright spots in and of themselves render this work worthwhile. The Troubled Alliance: Atlantic Relations in the 1980s. Lawrence Freedman, ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. Reviewed by William Hoffman, M.A. candidate, SAIS. The recent internal struggles of nato over the deployment of intermediaterange nuclear missiles in Europe, the Soviet-European gas pipeline, as well as the continual trans-Atlantic battles economics have prompted another round of hand-wringing over the alliance's future. Troubled Alliance, to its credit, avoids this common theme. In his introduction, Lawrence Freedman notes that jvato's current problems are not new, but that the "international context" in which the alliance now operates differs from that of the past. The problems stem more from the new circumstances and from the fact that the alliance's difficulties in recent years have occurred more or less concomitantly. The essays in this book, therefore, address questions of alliance management rather than the "remote question of whether or not the alliance will survive." The essays of The Troubled Alliance are gathered from a June 1983 conference on European-U.S. relations at London's Chatham House. They touch upon three general issues: perceptions, economics, and security. The articles dealing with European and American perceptions provide a basic background for questions of balance between the two sides of the Atlantic. However, they offer little that is new. For the most part, they are forays into the alliance's history and focus less on today's situation. The contributions on economic and security questions give more policy analysis. Particularly valuable are Andrew Britton's thorough examination of international financial questions between the United States and Europe and Josef Joffe's review of European security dilemmas, an essay in which he convincingly rejects several currently popular notions for reforming jvato's strategy. ...