Europe On its Own

This paper sketches out three ten-year scenarios for European strategic reactions in the face of a United States that is retrenching, withdrawing from Europe, and focusing its attention elsewhere. The first scenario describes Europe’s fragmentation and failure; the second scenario sketches out success through further integration; the third option describes a weakened and fragmented Europe, but one that begins to regroup. The key questions to be examined are: What will Europe do? And what will that mean for the United States, as well as for the international order it created and underwrote for a century?