ABSTRACT

This chapter compares the European Community (EC) of Ten members relative to the other superpowers, particularly relative to the United States and the Soviet Union, to see if the EC is in the same class. The only country seriously challenging this European cultural dominance is China. But China has been kept within bounds; unlike Western Europe it has not brought its culture around the world at swordpoint and together with its merchandise, nor did it ever really succumb to the Western ideological onslaught. The political fission of the world after 1945, with new centers established in Washington and Moscow, was a political fission, with heavy economic and military components, but this was never really a cultural fission. Eastern Europeans have been looking to Western Europe as a source of culture, and Western Europe has all the time been looking to itself, except for technology and pop.