International integration and the dynamics of peace: behavioural trends in the European Community

What theme is increasingly dominating the behaviour of international politics? The answer appears to be the task of peace-building at the global level. Reality shows how far we are from completing that task, however. Our inability to complete the task is still, alas, the case in the 1970s. It is true that the international system has changed from one dominated by a bipolar-cold war to a multipolar-interdependent system since the middle of the 1960s. Global peace, however, still seems to be only a remote possibility. There is ample evidence of this, and the Middle East war of 1973 is only one illustration. The major task in international relations is to find the reasons for the difficulty in establishing world peace. One cannot attempt an explanation without collecting relevant data and analyzing them in the manner of hypothesis-testing. It seems, however, possible to ap proach the standard of behaviour for peace by asking what structurally hinders peace-building. This requires explanation of the negative aspect of peace. What we should do first is to set up a hypothesis : if there is a serious lack of rational dynamics within which conflicts of interest between nations can be peacefully controlled and resolved through diplomatic bargaining, then there would be a higher probability of war. The validity of this hypothesis has been recurrently proved by the traditional type of international system. It reflects itself in the system of "politics without government".1 In fact, conflicts of interest among nations have been largely handled within the framework of power politics. In this framework, force as means of maximizing national interests tends to be considered legitimate by foreign policy-makers. One can call this the structure of randomness.2 It is interesting to note that the structure of randomness has been challenged at times by new ideas and dynamics in the history of