ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the issues outlined above by moving from a general assessment of West Europe's position within the Atlantic system to a more specific and empirical treatment of Reaganism and West European responses to US foreign policies during the early 1980s. It identifies some of the organizing assumptions of the Atlantic system and some of the models of Atlanticism to which they give rise. The chapter explores some of the particular problems raised by the role of West Europe within the Atlantic system, in the context of the system's development. Throughout the history of the postwar Atlantic system, the place both of the West European states and of any such entity as "West Europe" itself has been fundamentally ambiguous. The earliest pressures for construction of a West European entity within the Atlantic system came in the economic domain, with the conditions attached to the Marshall Plan and the European Recovery Program.
