ABSTRACT
The subject-America and Europe in an era of revolutionary change-is difficult to deal with because these “partners” are undergoing changes that make prediction even more risky than before. Among the many changes that have revolutionized international relations since 1989, those that have affected two key actors deserve some remarks. The most spectacular change is of course the transformation of the Soviet Union, which is undergoing simultaneously a political revolution, an economic collapse, and the disintegration of first its external and its internal empires. The Mikhail Gorbachev years, 1985–1991, may well appear in history books as a brief, happy transition between two opposite “Soviet dangers”-the superpower threat of the Cold War years and the disintegrating, unstable, and unpredictable threat of imperial, political, and economic unraveling. “Structural” theories that look only at the distribution of power among states are bankrupt.
