David Calleo's prognosis on the future of Europe.

Fundamentally, Calleo argues that the disintegration of the Soviet Union acted as a means to "thrust" Western Europe into a closer alliance of cooperation . Calleo uses the EU in its current form to demonstrate that "integration succeeds when member states can compromise around broadly shared interests, particularly those shared by France and Germany" (178). It can be said that the changed security landscape following the Cold War and the premise that with the Soviet Union's collapse, …

…a tangible benefit. In January 2005 with President Bush's visit to Europe, one can say that perhaps the said compromise is on the political agenda and that the United States has realised, or perhaps remembered in-line with their traditional foreign policy, that American hegemony will be difficult to sustain without the backing of the European states who favour a multilateral approach to international political conflicts. REFERENCES: Calleo D; Rethinking Europe's Future; Princeton University Press, Oxfordshire, 2001 Momentum