A Study on the Dynamics of European Unification Since World War II

Abstract

In the wake of World War II, the new world order of bipolarity excluded the European countries, which had previously dominated the world economically, politically, strategically, militarily and psychologically. Europe emerged from the ravages of war, torn, partitioned, weak and vulnerable. Economically, the affects of the war were devastating ... "one estimate placed the monetary costs of World War II at more than six times the $400 billion figure of World War I." Militarily, Europeans feared the expansionist tendencies of their Soviet neighbors as they watched their countrymen closed off to them behind the iron curtain. Thus, it soon became apparent that European nations were no longer capable of asserting independent "national" solutions to the problems incurred by the war; European nations were compelled to pool their resources and thus share the burden of rebuilding Europe. With the realities of political and economic chaos, Western Europe sought the comfort of the United States nuclear umbrella and U.S. economic aid. It is in view of such realities that the calls for European Unification were sounded and the steps toward integration were slowly taken.

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