The end of World War II brought about a series of changes: the territorial boundaries of European countries, especially those of the Soviet Union and Germany, as well as Poland, Romania, and a few other countries, were altered. The United Nations replaced the defunct League of Nations as a new international forum to maintain collective security. President Harry Truman, linking Nazism and Fascism with the poverty of Germany and Italy both after WWI and during the Great Depression, argued that "poverty breeds totalitarianism," and authorized George Marshall, secretary of state, to implement an economic program to provide aid to the poverty stricken European countries after WWII. European countries started a process of decolonization, shedding most of their Asian colonies in 1945, and most of their African colonies by 1960. While nationalism was raging across most colonial countries which strove for their independence, trans-national ideologies of free world capitalism and Communism also started to take hold: by 1947, the world was divided into these two camps. They competed with each other to obtain new follower countries. Although they never fought against each other directly, they supported warring parties on different sides in various regional wars, such as in Latin America and the Middle East. In this new international struggle, power politics continued to play a role. Now it was two superpowers, each with a number of followers. Although the United Nations was based on collective security, its role of maintaining peace and preventing war was limited. One can even say that balance of power played itself into the very formation of the UN. Upon its inception, there were five founding members at the United Nations Security Council, which have the ultimate say on war or peace. In order to balance the power of the USSR in the Security Council, Franklin Roosevelt also got China in as a member, along with Britain, France, and the U.S. Arguably, another interpretation of Roosevelt's decision was that being the largest Asian country, China's membership in the Security Council gave Asia some representation there. Against this international background of raging nationalism, decolonization, attempts at collective security and continued power politics, Europe was slowly evolving into a common community. It started with economic cooperation in 1956 among several European countries. The devastation of the war, among other things, led to great European economic decline. Decolonization certainly did not help to prop up the prestige of European countries in the postwar world. Economic cooperation was meant to boost the economies of all the participating countries. This cooperation was increased after the downfall of Communism, marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the disintegration of the USSR (1991). As the world moved into a global capitalist economy, the European states found themselves confronted with other regional blocks, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement, 1992), and the Asian countries on the Pacific Rim. In order to compete more effectively, they also banded more closely together, and established the European Union in 1993. This not only allowed no tariff trade between members, but also free flow of labor between the member countries, among others. In 2002 they started to use a common currency, the euro, in all financial transactions. The euro will eventually replace all other European currencies. By 2002, there were 15 members of the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Ten more: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus, will join in 2004. Intially motivated by economic cooperation, the EU now has a common currency, a parliament, and practically an army, the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) whose membership overlaps with many in the EU. Are we going to see a "unification" so to speak, of European states in the future? After all, it was at first economic motives that led many north Germanic states to form the Zollverein, the customs union on the basis of which German unification was later achieved. The answer, at least at first glance, is not necessarily so, and at least not in the near future. One of the reasons is the deep differences between the member countries of the EU. The current, relatively wealthy members of the European Union are facing fears of being overwhelmed by new members in the east that are far poorer, and that may send waves of immigrants westward, taking jobs and creating new pressures on economies that are, at the moment, far from robust. It is the common economic competition that they are faced with from other regions of the world that has kept them together. Culture certainly is a factor but not a predominant one. The EU members include both Protestant and Catholic countries, but not Muslim ones. In fact the EU has persistently refused to give Turkey, a Muslim state, membership, although Turkey is a Eurasian state and historically had close ties to Greece. Whether the EU really will really lead to a unified European state or not, the definition of nationalism has certainly changed or is bound to change. Homogeneous states seldom exist in the world any more, if they ever did in the past! Most European states are faced with large populations of immigrants from their former colonies, who are often Islamic. Creating a new definition of the nation and national cohesion in multi-ethnic, and multi-religious European states becomes a very important task for most European countries today.