This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Europe Journey to an Unknown Destination given by Andrew Seanfield

was originally broadcast in 1972.

Tonight I want to take a further look at the foreign policy problems of the enlarged European community.

I'm going to be concerned mainly with Europe's relations with

Asia and with the Soviet bloc. In Asia, the most urgent problem for the community is probably

Japan. The Japanese are, with the Americans, the only important advanced industrial nation in the

non-communist world, which is not in the enlarged

community. Being more dependent on foreign trade than the United States, Japan is likely to feel

the element of discrimination which is built into the community system even more cleanly.

Being less important as a market for Europe, also much less significant

as a financial power, and finally, having no military relationship with Europe, its bargaining position

is much weaker than that of the Americans. Indeed, so far, it has been the Americans who have

been chiefly instrumental in reminding Europe

that it has some obligations towards Japan.

The European community's illusion of living in a private world of its own,

while the international system was something which others, notably the Americans were supposed to look after,

was especially noticeable in

its attitude towards the Japanese. Of late, the Americans have been telling the Europeans more

and more insistently that Japan, and by that they mean Japanese export trade, is another burden

which they will no longer carry alone. The community,

they insist, must recognise that it has a duty to make its contribution. Part of the trouble

...