Toward a United, But Plural, West

Abstract

The Inevitable Alliance: Europe and the United States beyond Iraq. By Vittorio Emanuele Parsi. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. 216 pp., $69.95 (ISBN: 1-4039-7022-X). Vittorio Emanuele Parsi is perhaps the best known scholar of international relations in Italy today. He is a professor at the Catholic University of Milan, a regular columnist on foreign policy for the Catholic newspaper Avvenire , and a frequent participant on television talk shows in which he engages Italy's leading politicians. His latest book, The Inevitable Alliance, deals with US–European relations in the wake of the Iraq invasion. The original Italian version, although published in 2003, was not simply an “instant book” on current politics. It reflected Parsi's thoughtful engagement with the philosophical and pragmatic issues that divide the United States from its main European allies and was guided by a subtle understanding of the alliance's history. The Inevitable Alliance is composed of three chapters. The first one, “From the End of History to the End of the World,” reviews the changes that distinguish the Cold War era from the …