POLITICS OF 1970
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We have become so used to discussing European affairs in terms of mili–
tary disengagement, German unification, and so forth, that there is a
tendency to overlook the less dramatic but ultimately more important
structural changes which have been going on since 1945, on both sides
of the Iron Curtain. One discerns a certain reluctance in official and
other quarters to concede that Eastern Europe may in some sense have
to remain part of what the Kremlin calls "the camp of socialism," even
if the Russian occupation armies should be withdrawn. There is hope–
based, it seems, on little except wishful thinking-that the Poland of
Gromulka will eventually follow the example of Tito's Yugoslavia. A
similar lag in official thinking inclines the policy-makers to discuss
European affairs as though countries like Britain, France, or West Ger–
many still mattered in the way they did before 1939. At the same time
their basic stability tends to be underrated. The fact is that despite some
superficial evidence to the contrary, West European politics tend increas–
ingly to be of the municipal kind. By 1970, when economic unification
may be expected to have reached its goal, at any rate on the continent,
the various national legislatures are unlikely to be able to harm the
interests of their respective countries in any domain that really mat–
ters, though they will doubtless continue to reflect popular passions
on the subject, e.g., of financial support for church schools. In brief,
the European nation-states tend to lose ground politically as they be–
come more democratic and at the same time less sovereign. This process
does not necessarily enhance the safety of the whole area-in a major
war waged with nuclear weapons all Europeans will simply have to rely
on their luck; but it does indicate that such a world disaster is unlikely
to be triggered by purely European events.
This way of looking at the situation naturally goes counter to
much excited talk about present and future upheavals-an alarmist state
of mind currently fed by 'events in France, where the North African
war threw too heavy a strain on the shaky institutions of the Fourth
Republic. Like Spain and Italy, though in a minor degree, France is
still liable to suffer political upheavals of the classical type which in a
fully integrated and democratized Western Europe are unlikely to recur.
In this respect, too, the present phase is transitional. One need only com–
pare the French situation with that in politically stable north-western
Europe on the one hand, and with the perennially troubled Iberian
peninsula on the other, to grasp the importance of those social changes
which are gradually transforming the whole of Western Europe in such
a manner as to preclude political breakdowns and revolutions of the
classical type. The process is not uniform, but despite occasional violent
