Review – Europe and America: The End of the Transatlantic Relationship?

I regularly listen to BBC Radio 4 in the morning, and NPR before I go to bed. The way the media on opposite sides of the Atlantic described the recent G-7 summit of world leaders in Cornwall points to diverging goals by the attendees. While it is true that everyone was offering a narrative of better collaboration after the Donald Trump era, in what was President Joe Biden’s first overseas trip, it is also true that the G7 leaders wanted different things to come out of the meeting. The differences on display in Cornwall and the damage done to transatlantic relations by the Trump era are the main topics explored in Federiga Bindi’s 2019 edited volume Europe and America: the end of the Transatlantic Relationship? The title’s question mark foreshadows the differences that will be discussed. The book is divided into two parts, the first of which considers the foreign policies of eight members of the European Union (including the United Kingdom) and focusses on each state’s national foreign policy priorities. The second part covers Russia and the United States, and also contains a conclusion by Bindi that casts a broad historical and geopolitical net that captures the foreign relations of many of the aforementioned countries, as well as Latin America and Africa.