the deeper question was whether Europe and Europeans had lost control of their destiny, whether thirty years of murderous intra-European conflict had not passed the fate of the continent over to the two great peripheral powers, the US and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was quite content to await such a prospect—as Kennan noted in his memoirs, the pall of fear hanging over Europe in 1947 was preparing the continent to fall, like a ripe fruit, into Stalin’s hands. But for American policymakers, Europe’s vulnerability was a problem, not an opportunity.
Europe was concerned about losing sovereignty to the US and USSR.
