THE CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN NATION-STATE IS OBVIOUSLY A subjective notion. Objectively it would mean a complete breakdown in the capacity of the state to provide the minimum assurances for individual and collective endeavour and a situation in which the choice was between total anarchy and external intervention. Such situations have been known in some states outside Europe; it was at the origin of the Congo crisis of 1960–61. No Western European state has been in this situation since the re-establishment of selfgovernment in West Germany. Even when there has been a challenge to a regime verging on the revolutionary as in France in 1958, the only question was what alternative force of order would emerge to enable the life of the French state to continue.