The European Community and the Uncertainties of Interdependence

Abstract

The enlargement of the European Community from six countries to nine, including Britain, comes at a time when the whole world system appears to be in flux. In Europe, a series of agreements culminating in the codification of the status of West Berlin is virtually closing that phase of history associated with the phrase ‘the cold war’, though they do not settle the ambiguities of the long-term balance between the Eurasian super-power, the Soviet Union, and the rest of the European peninsula, especially if, as it now seems, the position of the United States is to be uncertain. While Europe seems to be settling down, in the Far East new stars of the first magnitude, China and Japan, are coming to the fore on a scale comparable almost with the super-powers themselves. The Sino-Soviet quarrel, the American recognition of Mao’s China, and the latter’s triumphant entry into the United Nations, mark the coming of age of the Far East as the major centre of the world balance. These changes accompany a major modulation in relations between the super-powers themselves. America, disillusioned with the notion of policing the world, seems potentially to be consummating the retreat of the West begun with the collapse of the great European empires after the war.