Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-266) and index.

Images of Europe: Skeptics versus Skeptical Optimists -- Escape from History -- Europe's Miracles -- American Skepticism -- Birth Pangs and Birth -- Prologue: The Fall of the Wall -- The French-German Tandem -- The EC and the Single Market -- Prologue: Maastricht -- The Maastricht Conference -- The Maastricht Hangover, 1992-93 -- Present at the Second Creation: NATO -- The U.S. Engagement -- Bosnia -- Poland and Enlargement -- Ukraine and Other Neighbors -- NATO-EU Synergy -- Present at the Second Creation: The EU and European Monetary Union -- Crisis, 1994 -- Multispeed Europe, 1994-96 -- EMU as an Engine -- Deepending and Widening, 1996-97 -- Present at the Rebirth: Poland and Central Europe -- Extraordinary Politics -- The Turnaround -- Ordinary Politics -- Catholics and Jews -- NATO and the European Union -- Absent at the Rebirth: The Eastern Slavs -- Time of Troubles -- The Chasm between the Poles and the Eastern Slavs -- The Ukrainian Example -- The Death of Reform -- How Far East Will the West Go? -- Commencement de Siecle: EU "Domestic" Evolution -- EMU -- Germany, France, and Britain -- Widening and Deepending -- Union 2000: Kosovo and Transatlantic Coopetition -- The "Revolution in Military Affairs" and U.S. Leadership -- European Security and Defense Identity -- Common Foreign and Security Policy -- The New American Connection -- EMU -- Economy and Trade -- Coopetition.

The rejuvenation of Europe as a totalitarian century ends and a global century begins is a remarkable story. This book brings together the three dynamics of the extraordinary European development: the European Monetary Union, the deepening of intra-EU cooperation, and the widening of the EU and NATO to take in Central European members. It looks at the broad political and policy implications of the EMU and shows how this historic step is being viewed in the United States.

Elizabeth Pond, a longtime observer of events in Europe and Russia, sees these developments as the beginning of a new postnational European system that is replacing the centuries-old nation-state system. She traces the end of belligerence and anarchy on the European continent as compulsory cold war cooperation becomes a habit and as French-German reconciliation becomes the pattern for reconciliation between other old enemies. Pond follows the conversion of NATO into a reluctant peacemaker in Bosnia and the decision of the United States to remain a European power. She describes the leap of faith needed to create the European Monetary Union and charts the magnetic attraction of both NATO and the EU in shaping the democratic, economic, and social revolutions in Central Europe. She warns about the strains that will face the trans-Atlantic relationship when the euro equals the dollar as a reserve currency. And she concludes by agreeing with former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Barteszewski that we are witnessing, after the original birth of European consciousness a millennium ago, the rebirth of Europe.