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

Introductory note – Introduction – Einführung 5
Introductory Note
Klaus Schwabe
The third issue of this journal is devoted to the impact of the Cold War on the process
of European integration, as seen from the perspective of the four major powers
– the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. All shared primary
responsibility for the shaping of the destiny of Europe in general and of Germany’s
future in particular. In the light of the recent radical shift in international power, the
Cold War may appear to have lost most of its contemporary political significance –
to have become mere history. But inspite of this appearance a more comprehensive
understanding of the Cold War period retains a particular relevance at a time, when
substantial decisions on the course of European integration are pending. Maastricht
II will have to decide whether or not the expansion of the European Union, widely
supported, as it is, will be accompanied by a tightening and deepening of its organizational
structure – a process of tightening, in which the introduction of a common
European currency will be but one important element.
Whatever direction these developments may take, they will be initiated and
implemented in an international setting that differs drastically from the scenario
that prevailed for more than four decades from 1945 until the coming down of the
Berlin wall. During the Cold War the communist threat provided a stimulus for
European integration. As this threat is now a thing of the past, the crucial question
as regards the future of our continent is whether European integration will retain its
momentum, although one of its incentives, the Cold War and the way it was experienced
until 1989, has ceased to be a factor in international relations.
A more detailed and nuanced understanding of the history of European integration
during the Cold War era, therefore, may offer some ‘guidance’ for present-day
political leaders: One can argue that, if the Cold War, as an oversimplified popular
view tends to believe, was indeed the sole motivating force behind the drive for
integrating Europe, chances for advancing that process at present are slim. If, on
the other hand, historiography can provide evidence for the impact of other forces,
unrelated to the Cold War, that encouraged European integration – forces that have
preserved their vitality beyond the collapse of the Soviet block –, then the outlook
for progress in the construction of genuine European Union is much more solidly
rooted, and the ultimate goal of a democratically based political union of Europe
may be more than a chimera.
It has become a truism to single out the Cold War as the most potent force that
triggered the efforts to achieve a union of those European nations that had not been
subjected to Soviet control after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Would there have
been an American interest in the stabilization of free Europe, if the West had not
clashed with the USSR over the control of the Eastern Mediterranean? Would there
have been a Marshall Plan if the victorious powers had not proved unable to agree
on the future of Germany at the Moscow Conference in March 1947 and, thereby,
had left in the heart of Europe an economic and political vacuum which seemed to