Excessive costs of empire building, including the disastrous losses of military struggle from 1914 to 1945, impoverished and weakened the European overlords to such an extent that they could no longer maintain their footholds in Africa. At the same time African minorities in various parts of the continent launched independence movements under the slogan of self-determination, drove out the European occupiers, organized political states and declared that Africa must be governed by and for Africans. Much of Africa, at the time, was organized along tribal lines, which cut across the boundaries drawn by the European imperialists between their colonial territories. The resulting chaos temporarily removed Africa from any meaningful role in the planet-wide contest for pelf and power. Africans are politically sovereign. Economically and culturally they remain dependent on their former European masters. Politically, western civilization is in a state of flux. Its European homeland is basically divided by potent fears, ambitions, feuds and conflicts, and separated geographically from North America and Asia. Despite several attempts to unify the continent politically, Europe was disrupted, fragmented and weakened by two general wars in a single generation. The European empires were politically and economically upset by widespread colonial revolt in Asia and Africa. Spectacular achievements of socialism-communism, particularly in East Europe and Asia, added to the previous fragmentation a new line of division between capitalist West Europe and socialist East Europe. This process of fragmentation is giving separatist forces ascendancy over the forces of integration and unification. In Roman and Egyptian civilizations, the period of survival conflict led to the centralization of wealth and authority. After five centuries of suicidal competitive struggle, the European homeland of western civilization is criss-crossed by sharp lines of division. Furthermore, the shift of production and military power from Europe to North America and Asia reduces the probability of speedy European integration. In the more important centers of western civilization the chief item of public expenditure is preparation for a war of air, water and land machines that may extend technologically into a nuclear war. While we have no precedent that would enable us to gauge the consequences of an extensive nuclear war it seems reasonable to assume that it would further fragment an already fragmented European continent. The heavy burdens of militarism which western civilization is presently carrying, have unbalanced budgets, which lead to inflation and to onerous burdens of debt and taxes. It seems unlikely that a group of warfare states like the top western European powers can escape the economic contraction which presently threatens them and regain solvency and stability through fiscal reforms or readjustments in tariffs and trade.