The United States Faces Economic Unity in Europe

The United States is directly associated with members of the European Common Market through NATO and OECD. The United States is affected by Common Market policies both directly and through Latin America, Japan, and other countries to which the United States is tied. The European Economic Community is an agency for con tinental economic integration, eventual political unity, and, hopefully, continental power and peace. Questions of dis crimination, neutrality, and alliance arise. The Common Market must make decisions on whether to dilute its political unity by admitting neutrals, its geographic unity by accepting non-European countries, its economic unity by accepting underdeveloped nations. In NATO and OECD, the Common Market members must determine whether to speak with one voice or several. As these decisions are made, the United States is in the position of having to strike a balance between co-ordination and integration, between retaining national dif ferences in economic, political, and defense matters and build ing a common instrument and single strategy. Depending upon the degree of unity achieved in Europe—and in Africa and other areas where multinational regional economic unity is dreamed of—the monopoly of decision will pass from the two present great powers. The American response to the challenge can do much to shape the future for generations to come.—Ed.