ABSTRACT
With the emergence of the Euro-Atlantic unipole at the end of the Cold War, the agenda changed for the European non-pole powers. Instead of choosing sides-which at least the Western part of the continent had been able to-it was now a matter of deciding how and to what extent a state should adapt to the one and only pole. Even at this point there were nuances, of course. Some states were preferably US-adaptive and some were rather EC/EU-adaptive, if the two segments disagreed. Still, in the grand perspective of the East European revolutions there was no doubt that the US and ‘Europe’ were playing for the same winning team-that of the ‘West’. In spite of other disagreements they could now work together on the project of building democracy and stability in Europe as symbolized by the parallel EU and NATO enlargements. Later, in particular during 2002-03, the unipole assumption was called into question. Bifurcation may actually be a realistic European scenario (Chapter 10). However, when dealing with the first decade, roughly, of the post-Cold War era the European states faced a Euro-Atlantic unipole.
