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Integration in the West: The Conflict of Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Arnold Wolfers
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Extract

From the time of the Marshall Plan to the present, American policy toward Europe has been guided simultaneously by two aspirations. One has been to see western Europe unified, the other—stemming from the conviction that the fate of the United States is inextricably tied to that of Europe—has been to create strong bonds among the Atlantic nations. Until quite recently it was believed that these two aspirations stood in a kind of predetermined harmony to each other: the more tightly the European nations would band together, gaining strength and prosperity from their union, the better it would be for all members of the Atlantic Community; and the more intimately Europe was linked with the United States, the more Europe, as a unit, would stand to gain.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Summer 1963 , pp. 753 - 770
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1963

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References

1 This view of relations between Europe and the United States gained considerable notoriety following the address of McGeorge Bundy before the Economic Club of Chicago on December 6, 1961. See “Policy for the Western Alliance—Berlin and After,” Department of State Bulletin, 03 12, 1962 (Vol. 46, No. 1185), pp. 419—424Google Scholar. It is worth noting that the dumbbell image was evoked by Walter Millis to describe a school of thought in the State Department which, as far back as 1948–1949, “envisaged the [Atlantic] alliance as simply a connecting bar between two massive centers of power.” See Millis, Walter, Mansfield, Harvey C., and Stein, Harold, Arms and the State: Civil-Military Elements in National Policy (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1948), pp. 235–238Google Scholar.

2 The primary political aims of the architects of Europe are well illustrated by the Introduction to the European Commission's 1962 “Memorandum on the Action Programme for the Second Stage” (Brussels, 1962)Google Scholar. “What we call the economic integration of Europe,” the report says, “is in essence a political phenomenon. Together with the European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom, the European Economic Community forms a political union embracing the economic and social spheres.”

3 Some Frenchmen who oppose de Gaulle's force de frappe and various leftist groups in Europe have recently revived the idea of an integrated European defense force. Presumably, however, following de Gaulle in one respect, they would also claim a greater measure of freedom for such a force than United States-supported Atlantic military integration within NATO would at present permit.

4 For similar views see Bundy, McGeorge, op. cit., p. 423Google Scholar, and Hallstein, Walter, “NATO and the EEC,” address before the eighth annual NATO Parliamentarians' Conference in Paris on 11 12, 1962Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, his address in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1962 (White, House Press Release, 07 4, 1962)Google Scholar.

Professor Hallstein (op. cit.) sharply distinguishes between “community” and “partnership.” He finds “community” institutions for the Atlantic area to be as undesirable as they are impracticable; he explains that “partnership” by no means excludes friendly competition while “community” apparently does.

6 Even when one Administration spokesman envisaged the future possibility of a “European force, genuinely unified and multilateral,” he specified that it should be “effectively integrated with our own necessarily predominant strength in the whole nuclear defense of the alliance.” Bundy, McGeorge, “Building the Atlantic Partnership: Some Lessons from the Past,” address before the Atlantic Treaty Association at Copenhagen, Denmark, 09 25, 1962Google Scholar (Department of State Bulletin, 10 22, 1962 [Vol. 47, No. 1215]), p. 605Google Scholar.