ABSTRACT
This chapter argues, and provides some evidence, that while transactions between societies have indeed grown dramatically throughout this century, nationalism, separatism, and international dis-integration have also been prominent. Nationalism can be defined both as attitudinal attributes of individuals—strong primary or exclusive loyalties to the ethnic group, nation, or to its legal embodiment, the state—and also as governmental policies that are designed to control, reduce, or eliminate a wide range of foreign influences and transnational processes on a society. The systems metaphor has the advantage of placing the state in a setting that is broader than the traditional one in which only diplomats, heads of state, and military forces interact. The argument that increased interdependence is likely to reduce international conflict is also open to serious question. Few postwar diplomatic developments have excited as much intellectual enthusiasm as has the regional integration of Western Europe.
