hat the fear of nuclear disaster has been reduced with the end of the Cold War, but this change has only increased the likelihood of continuing togetherness among the nations of Western Europe in both the political and economic realms.
Mayne provides a history of the development of the Common Market, beginning in the early 1950s with the Schuman Plan for a European Coal and Steel Community. Specifically, the Common Market aims most at "establishing within it a single integrated economy under common rules and institutions; and of adopting a common policy---as well as a common external tariff---in their economic dealings with the rest of the world" (12-13). The increasing internationalism of both economic and political relations is a boon to the efforts of the nations of Western Europe to continue to establish such open and cooperative relations. Whatever the obstacles remaining to these efforts, it is inevitable that those nations will deepen their relationships.
Still, perhaps Mayne is somewhat too optimistic in his argument that the national boundaries of the nations of Western Europe will as much as be eliminated, creating a "United States of Europe." To this reader, those nations simply have too many historical and cultural differences, and too many nationalistic tendencies, to make this radical development likely.
Where Mayne is probably accurate is in his argument that the increasingly united and cooperative interrelationships of these nations---especially with the inevitable inclusion of Great Britain---will alter the economic and political landscape in terms of regional and global relations. Mayne also accurately summarizes the Common Market in this succinct sentence which holds true as much today as it did in the early 1960s: "In sum, the European Community, like all institutions, is a complex creation which bears many different traces of its past" (52).
The fact is that the Common Market will intensify its regi...