Nazism had demonstrated the horrors to which extreme nationalism could lead. The war itself, with its civilian and military death toll of more than 50 million, renewed the impetus toward some form of international organization. The resulting United Nations, vested with more power than the League of Nations, was to be far more successful in some of its peacekeeping efforts, although inevitably still hampered by the conflicting wills and policies of its sovereign members. The nation-state will undergo sharp limitations of its sovereignty, occupying a twilight zone between full national independence, which is no longer possible, and a real international authority, which has not been achieved and perhaps never will be. The erosion of sovereignty has already begun with the development of a truly global marketplace.
Capital investments cross national frontiers almost unnoticed.
As author Peter Drucker has pointed out, the multinational corporation has been replaced by the transnational corporation, which manufactures and sells anywhere. It is hardly possible any longer to determine just where a particular product and its various components originate, and enterprises that exist chiefly for national prestige are disappearing. Domestic economic issues have become routinely involved in international relations. Thus, we find it quite natural to pressure the Japanese to make life better for their consumers, the South Koreans to abandon crony capitalism, the Russians to collect taxes. Nowhere has economic self-sufficiency been more dramatically reduced than in the European Union.