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104 Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen text and makes little effort to help the reader distinguish between what is essential and what is not. Yet the very amorphousness of the book is a source of strength and an aid to discovering the man behind the myth. Roussel’s Monnet is the figure familiar to readers of the Memoirs – the practical visionary of few but powerful ideas centering on the need for a United States of Europe; the activist without office but endowed with immense powers of persuasion; the autodidact unbound by pedagogic and academic convention; the New Man, forward-looking, internationalist, and, at least partly, Americanized, in short, l’Inspirateur. The author, an eager disciple, finds little to criticize or even discuss concerning Monnet’s innumerable campaigns, projects, proposals, interventions, and other diverse activities. Their merits are mostly taken for granted and failure or shortcoming ascribed, sometimes tacitly, to a persistence of less advanced outlooks. This book is far from being an exercise in hagiography, however, and in particular lacks the aphoristic slickness that lends a prophetic quality to the figure presented in the ghostwritten, indeed team-written, autobiography. In drawing extensively from Monnet’s personal letters, the so-called notes rose (which he apparently is the only researcher yet to have consulted), Roussel has allowed the man, for the first time posthumously, to speak on his own behalf. The Inspirer is by no means always eloquent, logical, or technically expert. The letters cited by Roussel nevertheless impress one with Monnet’s sheer doggedness. Students of the man have long been struck by the intense loyalty he commanded from his devoted band of followers. Roussel reveals the effort that went into winning over the skeptical, or only partially converted, like Kissinger, Couve de Murville, and Beuve-Méry. It is now clearer how among policy-makers, Monnet gained the respect of the many as well as the devotion of the few. The last four chapters of the book add much to our understanding of Monnet. He can no longer be written off after the mid-1960’s a meddlesome senior statesman even though obvious indicators point to that conclusion. His greatest contribution, the ECSC, belonged to the past. His main interventions in the 1950’s and early 1960’s – EDC, Euratom, and MLF – failed. With the collapse of Kennedy’s Grand Design his political power-base in Washington eroded. The Kiesinger and Brandt cabinets were less interested in Westintegration than Ostpolitik. De Gaulle, the arch-enemy, was in power, had blocked the British bid to enter Europe, eliminated supranationalism, indeed all but immobilized the EC. This book provides a convincing mass of evidence that in these years of inaction and frustration Monnet deserves unique credit for having kept alive the European idea. Roussel shows that in making converts like Helmut Schmidt and Harold Wilson on the one hand and post-De Gaulle gaullists like Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing on the other, “Europeanism” became the shared property of all but the communist parties. Thus the basis was laid for subsequent annual meetings of heads of state at the European Council as well as special relationship between Giscard and Schmidt and Kohl. The author further suggests that the specialized studies carried out under the aegis of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe accomplished much of the spadework for the Werner Plan for economic and monetary union. His evidence lends credence to the conclusion that Monnet’s tireless advocacy did succeed, as always hoped, in changing mentalities. It was only just that The Inspirer lived long enough to experience the incorporation of the integration idea into Europe’s political culture. Roussel’s approach to portraiture is incomplete, however. Monnet was more than political operative and visionary. He was, or at least was thought to be, an institution builder – a man who could provide workable solutions. What is remarkable, in light of his immense achievement in transforming Europe, is how many of them failed. The book has little to say on this point, or in general about anything on the operational level. We learn very little about how Monnet ran the French Plan. Roussel takes the ECSC’s success for granted even though
Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 105 many studies, included one singled out for exceptional praise in the text – Henri Rieben’s Des ententes de maîtres de forges au Plan Schuman – demonstrate that the old steel cartels, whose directors objected strenuously to Monnet’s dirigisme, provided its operating mechanisms. The author treats EDC as a self-evident good, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, shows none of the skepticism for Euratom evident in François Duchêne’s elegant and insightful Monnet, and is respectful of the Multilateral Force proposal for a Euro-navy, which even most members of Monnet’s inner circle ridiculed. How, in spite of such failures, The Inspirer retained the power to inspire is something that must be explained. If what Monnet learned from the school of life gave him the edge, it would behoove a future biographer, just for starters, to examine closely those of Monnet’s early professional experiences that touch upon developments that would subsequently give characteristic shape to the history of the twentieth century. Few young men of his generation were in so many places and did so many of those things that were on the cutting edge of Europe’s future – variously spending time on three continents and filling roles as Kriegsmanager, international civil servant and banker, turnaround expert, takeover artist, and workout specialist. Without this background Monnet would never have become a powerful voice from behind the scenes in wartime Washington and because of it he disposed of the managerial expertise that enabled him to stay a step ahead of his followers, made him indispensable at times even to his enemies, and enabled him to mold rather than respond to change itself John Gillingham University of Missouri (USA) François DUCHÊNE. – Jean Monnet, the first Statesman of Interdependence, avantpropos de George W. Ball, W.W. Norton & Company, New-York, London 1994, 478 p. ISBN 0-393-03497-6. 30,00 US$. Personne ne peut ignorer désormais le livre de François Duchêne sur Jean Monnet. François Duchêne, un proche de Jean Monnet, nous offre une remarquable mise en perspective de la vie et de l’oeuvre de Monnet, bien documentée et présentée avec rigueur. Malheureusement la production historiographique française récente n’est pas exploitée, mais ce livre n’est ni superficiel ni apologétique. C’est un livre de réflexion. Le titre intrigue. L’auteur fait de Monnet le premier homme d’Etat de l’interdépendance entre les nations ou les peuples. Jean Monnet, un Français!, sans mandat politique, aurait dépassé les clivages nationaux, pour éveiller à la solidarité le monde occidental. L’ouvrage se présente en treize chapitres dont dix consacrés à l’action de Monnet et trois à son message pour l’avenir. Bien que brèves, les pages consacrées à l’avant première guerre mondiale au service de la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson sont importantes. Elles éclairent son succès auprès du Président du Conseil, René Viviani. Monnet a su mettre la Hudson Bay Company au service des Alliés, en pleine bataille de la Marne. L’amitié de Monnet avec Clémentel, ministre du Commerce et des Postes, protégea Monnet à la tête de la délégation française à l’Allied Maritime Transport Council. Dans l’affaire des achats d’avions américains en 1938, l’auteur attribue clairement à l’action de Jean Monnet, de Paul Reynaud et d’Edouard Daladier, l’expansion extraordinaire de l’industrie de guerre américaine. Malheureusement, seulement une centaine d’avions américains était disponible le 10 mai 1940! Le projet d’union franco-britannique du 16 juin 1940 est un projet de circonstance, face au nazisme, plus qu’un acte en faveur de l’unité fédérale européenne. Monnet fit son possible pour faire partir en Afrique du Nord les membres du gouvernement français disposés à poursuivre le combat. Ces épisodes dramatiques révèlent le rôle historique de cet inconnu, un rôle sous-estimé. Pourquoi de Gaulle n’a-t-il pu entraî-
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JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION HIS
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Introductory note - Introduction -
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Integrating Europe or Ending the Co
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Cold War Threats 51 Cold War Threat
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Page 57 and 58: Cold War Threats 55 Program monies
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Page 61 and 62: Cold War Threats 59 could be immune
Page 63 and 64: Cold War Threats 61 tional organiza
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Page 67 and 68: Cold War Threats 65 IV The story of
Page 69 and 70: Cold War Threats 67 administration
Page 71 and 72: Cold War Threats 69 ing concerns re
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Page 127 and 128: Abstracts - Résumés - Zusammenfas
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Page 133 and 134: Books received - Livres reçus - Ei
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