ABSTRACT
The critical issue for every student of world order is the fate of the nation-state. This chapter looks at the fate of the six nation-states in continental Western Europe, first by examining the basic features of their national situations, then by commenting upon the process of European unification, later by discussing its results, and finally by drawing some lessons. Western Europe in the postwar years has been characterized by features that have affected all of its nations. The first feature—the most hopeful one from the viewpoint of the unifiers—was a temporary demise of nationalism. The second feature common to all the West European national situations, yet affecting them differently, was the "political collapse of Europe". The divisions and contradictions described above were sharpened by a third common feature which emerged in the mid-1950s and whose effects developed progressively: the nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union.
