‘1973,’ declared Henry Kissinger in late April of that year, ‘is the year of Europe’—a time, he insisted, for the allies to join in ‘a fresh act of creation … equal to that undertaken by the postwar generation of leaders of Europe and America.’ Now, in 2008, we are on the eve of a new era that awaits the decisions that will define Europe and its relations with the United States after the departure of George W. Bush, Europe’s least-liked postwar US president, and take us beyond the war in Iraq, one of the most divisive issues in Euro-Atlantic relations ever.
