The Weimar Triangle launched in the early 1990s became a metaphor for grand plans of European integration succumbing to classical European great power politics. As with Woodrow Wilson at the beginning of the 20th century, the Bush and Clinton Administrations encouraged the Weimar Triangle process as part of the effort to create a stable Europe. Some seven strategic developments at the dawn of the 21st century provided the opening to reassess the significance of the Weimar initiative for the transatlantic security space, i.e. the interdependence of Europe and America in pursuing their mutual security. Indeed, the argument is made here that from euphoria to embitterment, the metaphor of Weimar now enters a third phase, a type of “return to Weimar” whereby Poland shows and utilizes the space for strategic choice, and thus by “leveraging Weimar” can play a central role in encouraging European stability. The Obama Administration, pursuing a foreign policy strategy depicted here as transcultural realism, encourages “the return to Weimar” as a tangible tool of statecraft to pursue American interests, to encourage the emergence of a confident Poland on the international scene, to further European integration, and to solidify the transatlantic security space and thus American security.

The Weimar Triangle was created in 1991 to encourage a new space where both cold war and classical divisions in Europe could be overcome and thus further the vision of a continent “whole and free.”