Letter to the Editors, New York Review of Books, November 2005 Alan Ryan's review of Tony Judt's history of post-war Europe, and perhaps the book itself, are partial in both main meanings of that word. The review lingers on eastern Europe, and gives short shrift to the evolution of European unity, from its origins in the "pointless" Coal and Steel Community to a United States of Europe "not remotely in prospect". There is no mention of what EC/EU membership has done for Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece... It is consistent with this partiality that Slobodan Milosevic should get all the blame for "the breakup of Yugoslavia and the nastiness that followed" and the Germans in Bonn be totally exonerated, although their recognition of Croatia and Slovenia so clearly pointed the way to that nastiness, by leaving Serbia/Yugoslavia out of the equation. Alan Ryan writes: ..."it is hard to believe that [Hans-Dietrich] Genscher in 1991 could have persuad
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head