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European Integration Essay

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After the tragedies of World War II, European leaders have made striving efforts to prevent such a catastrophic event from occurring on their continent again. The best solution seemed to be highly mechanized cooperation among the highest European powers to assure that future conflict, and perhaps war, could not arise between them. If all the states ran themselves in a manner cooperating with their neighbors, conflict could be avoided. To prevent other nations from not cooperating, treaties and institutions would have to be designed for each area of international interest such as trade, communications, security, and so forth. As the century progressed, more organizations, institutions and associations were developed and soon leaders …show more content…

Liberals believe that nations inherently wish to cooperate as it benefits both actors more than if they conflict each other in any given arena. The thought is that each state is interested in maximizing its own individual gains and therefore does not mind if another state benefits more than itself in a game . If both benefit the most in cooperating, as is the case in the prisoner's dilemma, they will both cooperate, and peace will be maintained . This basic liberal assumption of the importance of individual gains is the main support for European integration. If all states cooperate in all arenas, leading to a collectively sovereign "Europe", the individual gains of each state will be adequate enough to avoid conflict among themselves making it easier to approach the rest of the international system together peacefully.

In the event of an integrated Europe, constructivists recognize that to completely avoid conflict, each state will have to succumb to a "European identity" and all individual identities will have to become merely "cultural gems" within the European system. This, they argue, can be achieved with the success of several steps including economic, judicial, and security integration . The first step has already been attempted with the establishment of the Euro, the common European currency, which has been outperformed by its

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