Europe’s recovery from the destruction of World War II was slow, and achieved only with massive U.S. aid. Europe was shattered psychologically as well as physically. Since the late 19th century the major European powers had lost their economic lead to the U.S.A., and probably also to the dynamic Russian Empire. But Russia’s isolation after 1918 and American isolationism had obscured this reality until the end of the war, when these two countries emerged, to many it seemed overnight, as nuclear superpowers, glowering at each other across a prostrate Europe. It seemed as if Europe had been definitively side-lined as a major player on the world stage.

The post-war attempt to unite western Europe economically and politically was designed to challenge what seemed to many to have been an inexorable shift in the global power balance. But even if European unity were ultimately to be achieved through this process—and at first the most that seemed attainable was a limited measure of economic integration between six of Europe’s thirty-odd states—it appeared unlikely that this could ever produce much more than a slowing down of the process of Europe’s relative decline vis-ik-vis the new super-powers.

Yet forty years later the Europe thus launched is being called in aid by a collapsing Soviet Union to save it from disaster and possible famine. Moreover within Europe itself the attractive power of the European Community is proving embarrassingly strong, with applications for membership currently threatening to overwhelm it. And it is towards the much more open economy of western Europe rather than towards the U.S. that many countries in the rest of the world now look when seeking to improve their trading opportunities.