ABSTRACT
Since the seventeenth century Europe has been the scene of the most murderous, geographically widespread, and destructive wars in human history. There is a golden triangle within the European Community, whose vertices are at Milan, London, and Frankfurt. Within this triangle hums the economic motor of the European Community. German ascendance in European affairs was heralded by Prussia's victory over the French in 1871. Greater dependence on European institutions deprived France of bargaining power to pursue the second preference and obliged it to alter its diplomatic course in order to consolidate its grasp on the third. There is a geopolitical logic to European integration. Europe's statesmen have been able to solve the riddle of the Rhine only by discarding the realpolitik of the past and donning what in appearance is a modem-day and Europeanized version of Wilsonianism. It might be objected, however, that geopolitics, though relevant to the past, is hardly relevant to the present or the future.
