ABSTRACT
The world spirit, as Hegel would have called it, or God, as others would say, decreed with a fine sense of irony that what should have been the Year of Europe would become the Year of World Crisis. This chapter explains the new trends of the period 1964-1974, and the reasons why they have worsened the European predicament. The first one is the displacement of the center of gravity of world politics, from the diplomatic-strategic field to the chessboards of economic and monetary relations; or if one prefers, the grand entry of economics into the realm of high politics. A second new and damaging trend has been conspicuous in both of the episodes in which the first one had unfolded. The consistency of US policy toward Europe, noted earlier, nevertheless takes on a completely different meaning when the context is no longer that of the 1950s and early 1960s.
