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While that cannot happen overnight, Western Europe may finally be able to cooperate in taking over much of its own defense—thus shouldering more of the huge military burden that the U.S. has carried since the cold war began. "The shape of Europe's future is essentially the business of the Europeans," Richard Nixon has observed. If De Gaulle's return to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises clears the way for a new Western European consensus outside his outsized shadow, the U.S. may finally see what it set out to achieve after World War II: a Continent once more self-sustaining, at peace with itself and the world.