This is a book that should have been overtaken by events, because it was planned and largely written after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe but before its collapse in the Soviet Union. Yet it has not, at least, in important respects. Written by German and Russian scholars who had long supported a fruitful, cooperative Soviet-German relationship, the book presumes an effective partnership between a post-imperial Soviet Union and the rest of Western Europe. Because the authors appear to have been right about Europe's new agenda and prescient in seeing the institutional changes this would require, the book still has value. Notwithstanding last-minute allusions to the post-1991 reality, however, what the authors have not been able to address are the implications of the former Soviet Union as part of the problem of European instability, not merely its solution.