9 - Alliance and autonomy: European identity and U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Truman years

Summary

“Pax Americana” is a resonant term that conceals a crucial question: How much power and control did the United States exert in postwar Europe? U.S. policy involved organizing a coalition of nations, encouraging European leaders who shared the political objectives of the United States, and seeking to isolate those who did not. It meant using economic assistance as well as the appeal of a liberal ideology to reinforce centrist political preferences among European voting publics and working-class movements. At the same time Washington policy makers were supposedly committed to encouraging European autonomy. How did alliance and autonomy mesh? In some instances one goal might have to yield, at least temporarily. Consider, for example, the dilemma presented as late as 1951 by government fecklessness in Greece (admittedly the feeblest of the regimes in the U.S. orbit). William Foster at Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) headquarters in Paris might wire officials in Athens that “any further assumption of responsibility for managing Greek affairs, despite recurring evidence that a weak government prefers to pass responsibility for potentially unpopular decisions, … could ultimately evolve into colonial relationship between Greece and U.S. which, of course, is wholly contrary to American objectives.” But the mission in Athens responded, “It appears to us that, US aid being decisive factor in maintaining Greek stability, ‘intervention’ is a concomitant of our position. Insistence on sound performance is obligation we cannot escape.”