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The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in November 2008 lifted hopes around the world that the new administration would usher in a transformational era in American foreign policy. President Obama proved to be particularly popular in Europe, where both the elite and the masses held high hopes that the charismatic, centre-left president would erase the bitter legacy of the Bush years. The new administration engaged the transatlantic community early and often, looking to Europe as its preferred partner in addressing the most daunting foreign policy challenges. Due to a lack of leadership in Europe, sagging political will, and declining capabilities, this article queries whether Europe will respond constructively to Obama's substantive agenda for Transatlantica, which calls for a renewal of the transatlantic community as a means for addressing global threats and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that at the beginning of the 1960s Western Europe, and Germany in particular, retained a crucial role in American global strategy, and that keeping the Atlantic alliance solid and cohesive remained a key goal of the new Kennedy administration that took office in January 1961. Europe at this time was still the main arena of the cold war. Yet this constant objective of American cold war strategy had to be balanced against other realities of the new phase of the global confrontation, such as the emergence of the 'third world' and the new threat represented by Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). In this process of readjustment there began a gradual, but significant, downsizing of the relative weight of Europe in American grand strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]