ty. One of its two most important countries, Germany, has a powerful and frightening recent history which demands in Delamaide's view that all other participants, especially the equally strong France, take full charge of their own place in the region's future as a balancing force. He contends that the already solid Franco-German relationship is both warm (for many centuries of history before World War I) and pivotal to ongoing peace and prosperity (pp. 178-179).
Delamaide then pauses to discuss two vital "special districts" that each have strategic importance both as part of their own superregions and also as separate centers in their own right. London, he contends, holds a unique claim as the "Finan
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