THE ARGUMENT WE ARE ABOUT TO PRESENT UNDER THIS perhaps surprising title is based on a syllogism whose two premises are now visible to all in their sad reality.

The first premise is that because of their political organization in small and medium-sized sovereign states, the countries of Western Europe are losing the chance of adapting themselves independently to the requirements of the third industrial revolution. In this they are falling far behind the United States of America, a welfare state like them and belonging to their political culture – and Japan, whose different political culture makes the comparison less appropriate. Technological dependence brings with it lack of independence in all directions – and especially in military capacity which is now dominated by the two nuclear superpowers. The belated individual efforts of some of the European states to modernize their industries with their own means and with different socio-economic ideologies – conservative monetarism in Britain, socialist Keynesianism in France – have aggravated unemployment in the one and inflation in the other, and provoked much popular dissent against the central governments. The centralized nationalistic system became increasingly inadequate: for the problems are common ones that require common solutions; and as the problems are functional, they abhor ideological approaches.