Henry Kissinger’s Three Europes

This article discusses the three Europes that informed Kissinger’s narrative of world affairs and Transatlantic relations: Europe as history offering vital lessons the USA was called to study and master; Europe as a junior (and subaltern) ally of the USA; Europe as the primary Cold War theater and, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the object of superpowers’ détente. The article highlights how these three narratives were used in the attempt to build a new domestic consensus around a foreign policy still driven by basic Cold War imperatives, the limits and contradictions of this attempt, and its ultimate failure.