ABSTRACT
Europe can be a new and more important element in the trans-Atlantic relationship, and it may even be able to function as a powerful new partner in the global concert. The new Europe will play a determining role in German-American relations. For a German chancellor and a German nation must see a different Europe from the one they saw before, and those changes in Europe are much more important than the changes in the world as a whole. The public and private facilities that are taken for granted in the West, the personal possessions and the ease of existence, are part of a world that is completely different from that which exists in Central and Eastern Europe. The new Europe also has an American presence, which it did not have before 1914. That presence was a vital element in the preservation of Western Europe's freedom and in the restoration of Eastern Europe's.
