journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen
peut y avoir de nation Europe comme il y a une nation France, mais que seules des institutions
européennes communes peuvent être le ciment de l’unité. Dans cette perspective,
Monnet est bien le premier homme d’Etat de l’interdépendance.
Gérard Bossuat
Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne
Pascaline Winand. – Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the United States of Europe. Houndmills,
London, Basinstoke, The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1993, p. XVI+432. ISBN 0-333-61357-0.
19,00 £.
This monograph deals with the most severe test to which America’s policy vis-à-vis Western
Europe so far has been submitted – a policy that traditionally aimed both at integrating
Europe and, simultaneously, at strengthening the ties of the transatlantic alliance. This test
coincided with one of the most critical phases in the process of European integration as
such, which began with the coming into effect of the Treaty of Rome and ended with de
Gaulle’s famous first veto on Great Britain’s application for membership of the EEC. It is
one of the book’s conclusions that the French President’s “non” amounted to a resounding
defeat for America’s European policy as well. Would this frustration have been avoided if
America had learned its lessons from the defeat of the EDC in 1954? Based on a careful
study of the available documentary and archival evidence, the author’s answer is that American
policy makers indeed learned from that experience, as far as tactics were concerned, but
that they did not perceive any real alternative to the basic policy line they had so far pursued
– a policy of creating a situation of strength by unifying non-communist Europe and then by
anchoring it firmly to the Atlantic alliance, in other words of implementing what President
Kennedy called his “Grand Design”. As the author proves, a recurring motivation behind
this policy was the concern about the future of Germany, the fear that any other policy might
lead to the danger of “losing” Germany to the Soviet Union. If the United States wanted to
implement its policy, it had to avoid giving the impression of imposing its will on the Europeans;
that is to say it had to stay away from the middle of the stage, but it had nonetheless
still to speak, as David Bruce put it (p. 309), from the prompters box.
From this position and not the least with the German problem in view, the United States
conducted what the author considers a primarily politically motivated diplomacy which consisted
of supporting the creation of the Common Market and discouraging British efforts to
set up EFTA as a rival organization. Thus Macmillan’s request for Britain’s admission to the
Common Market could justly be regarded as a preliminary victory for America’s European
policy.
The most telling portion of this penetrating study covers the road that led from that victory
to de Gaulle’s veto and to the gradual abandonment by America of Kennedy’s Grand
Design. The author makes the point that it was the interdependence of economic, security
related and political considerations that was responsible for its ultimate failure. Above all, as
she shows, it was the problem of nuclear armaments and the accompanying striving for great
power prestige. The United States defended its exclusive world power status, Great Britain
tried hard to maintain it, Gaullist France scrambled for it; as soon as the opportunity arose,
West Germany was suspected of reaching out for it, once Adenauer had stepped down. The
author recounts at length how the Eisenhower and the Kennedy administrations attempted to
contain their allies’ ambitions – Eisenhower somewhat ambivalently, Kennedy with more
resolution by trying hard to cut short nuclear armaments proliferation and, above all, by preventing
the Federal Republic from becoming a nuclear power. Kennedy’s problem was that,
in the name of a transatlantic partnership, he also wanted to maintain a semblance of equal-