What role can and should Europe play in the world? This analysis of international politics offers an exposition of the persistent features of power politics which Europe, in the form of the EU, should increasingly have to acknowledge, or adapt to. Using the resources of both political philosophy and diplomatic history, the book urges that the internal developments of western Europe over the last 50 years are making a common standpoint in foreign affairs increasingly necessary. Europe, it asserts, cannot remain preoccupied by international affairs when its future depends on adjusting to an international order over which it has only limited control.