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This article discusses the three Europes that informed Kissinger's narrative of world affairs and Transatlantic relations: Europe as history offering vital lessons the USA was called to study and master; Europe as a junior (and subaltern) ally of the USA; Europe as the primary Cold War theater and, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the object of superpowers' détente. The article highlights how these three narratives were used in the attempt to build a new domestic consensus around a foreign policy still driven by basic Cold War imperatives, the limits and contradictions of this attempt, and its ultimate failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1955 and 1960, dozens of new members entered into the United Nations; in the meanwhile, the peaceful coexistence potentially created the conditions to relaunch the role of the UN as a milestone of peace and international security. At the same time, the United States had to modify deeply their approach towards the UN, accepting the idea that the bipolar logic of the Cold War would govern also the most important multinational organization in the world. Paradoxically, the mitigation of the Cold War caused the definitive "bipolarization" of the UN, while even the United States renounced the utopia of a "world government" based on universally shared principles and rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]