Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence.

• Author: Beloff, Max

No one can seriously doubt the existence of a crisis in the affairs of the European Union. As the implications of the treaties on which it is based, including the Maastricht timetable for economic and monetary union, become ever more widely appreciated, and as the ordinary citizen in most member countries begins to participate in the debate over the future of the Union and its institutions (a debate hitherto largely confined to the United Kingdom), the glow of the European ideal begins to fade and the demand for precise definitions as to what it is all for becomes louder. We are all Euroskeptics now.

The only country seemingly unaware of this change in public attitudes is the United States of America. Washington continues to act on the assumption that a "United States of Europe" is the continent's inevitable destiny, and American ambassadors continue to proclaim in London, and no doubt elsewhere, that nothing must be allowed to frustrate this "manifest destiny," even at the expense of the solidarity of the English-speaking and Atlantic worlds.(1)

Ever since I began studying this process nearly forty years ago, I have been puzzled by the uncritical acceptance in the United States of the view that only with common institutions exercising sovereign power could Europe flourish economically, and play a proper role in its own defense. For while it is understandable that the United States should welcome the apparent decision of the countries of Western and Southern Europe to end their age old strife -- did not Americans twice have to intervene to redress the balance? -- the assumption that, without the institutions of Brussels, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg, these countries would once again be preparing for armed conflict is on the face of it wholly implausible.

I first looked at this question during a stay in Washington in the autumn of 1961, when it was still possible to discuss it with many of those who had taken part in the events leading up to the creation of the Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Community, and Euratom. It was obvious that in deciding to come to Europe's assistance with the Marshall Plan, both the administration and Congress had hoped that by treating Western Europe as a single entity they would lay the foundations for a "United States of Europe." Thus, having failed to give the organization intended to maximize the productive use of Marshall Aid -- the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) -- supra-national powers, they found much to appeal in the ideas of Jean Monnet that led to the Schuman Plan, with its strong supra-national element. After relations with the Soviet Union were further envenomed by the outbreak of the Korean War, the idea of a European Defense Community (EDC), both to provide a cover for the rearmament of Germany and act as the core of a European political community, appealed further. When these plans failed through French resistance, the United States accepted the alternative method of securing German participation in Europe's defense by the creation of the Western European Union.

During this period of considerable creativity, Americans took some time to establish their preference for a "united Europe" over an Atlantic Community of some kind, which would have been more congenial to most British opinion. Understandably, what mattered most to Washington was how such constructions would fit into the struggle to prevent Western Europe from falling under Soviet domination, while making it possible to shift some of the burden of the continent's defense to the Europeans themselves, without either eliminating all hope of German reunification or resurrecting a powerful, independent and united Germany. With an ingrained...