ABSTRACT
The Revolution of 1989 radically transformed the security situation in Europe, at least insofar as the familiar threats and challenges of the Cold War were concerned. In logic, a Carolingian model of European security appears to be, as it has been throughout the postwar period, a necessary condition for European security integration. The more one ponders the building of a Western European defense ensemble, the more one is forced to return to the delicate issue of assuring legitimacy in its construction. Somewhat different is the case of the other large Western European state, Spain, which has until lately shown little indication that European security issues were of particular moment to it. People have just seen that some critics of a Carolingian Europe of defense have based their opposition on the fairness of allowing two states—France and Germany—to surge out ahead of the rest of Western Europe in the matter of building the European Pillar of defense.
