ABSTRACT

Western Europe remains a collection of largely self-encased nation-states. The various governments of Western Europe have found it useful to establish common institutions to deal with their common problems for the following reasons: most of them are advanced industrial societies and have open economies. There is a difference between a corporation and a club, between a government and a committee. Europe may be seen as a giant from afar, especially by those who, through some irony he would have bitterly enjoyed, mistake its function for de Gaulle's vision. A superficial observer might marvel at the way in which the Europeans seem to have left behind the feuds and alienations of their past. The speed of change is one of the reasons the past seems so little relevant, but there is another related, but slightly different reason: a gradually growing sense of radical discontinuity. The American creed has survived because the United States has been a success story.