Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Briefly the problem is this: no one concerned—the Soviet Union, the United States, or Europe itself—can permit Germany to be unified again in the foreseeable future. A united Germany would be a force of instability and danger to everyone, including the Germans, because it would be the most powerful nation in Europe and, balanced between East and West, might at any time fall into collaboration with one of these to the intense danger of the other; or, if the Russian-American antithesis remained irreparable, a united Germany could put extreme pressures on its lesser neighbors between the two Superpowers. The peace and stability of Europe thus require the permanent division of Germany, something on which the Soviet Union is adamant to the point of resorting to force to retain it, although the official policy of the United States is still committed to a reunification of Germany, partly in the belief that the loyalty of West Germany to the Atlantic Alliance can be retained only if the United States remains explicitly committed to a future reacquisition of East Germany by West Germany. In fact, the eagerness of the latter to acquire the former is dwindling, although very slowly, since the east is now so poor that it could bring little but poverty to West Germany’s booming prosperity.

This separation of the Germanys can be made permanent only if each is incorporated, as fully as possible, into a larger, and distinct, political system. But the smaller countries of Europe, particularly the Netherlands and Belgium, do not wish to be united with Germany in any federated system that includes only one other large Power, such as France (or even France and Italy), since an alignment of West Germany and France in such a federation could dominate the small states completely. Accordingly, the small states “want Britain, as a democratic counterweight to Germany, within any West European federal structure. But De Gaulle, as he made evident in January 1963, will accept Britain into a West European federation only if Britain becomes clearly a European Power and renounces its special relationship of close collaboration with the United States and if it is also willing to subordinate its position as leader of the British Commonwealth of Nations to its membership in the European system. The abandonment of its “special relationship” with the United States and with the Commonwealth, the two major concerns of the English Establishment for more than forty years, was too heavy a price to pay for membership in the European Economic Community and would have been an unacceptable reversal of established policy in return for something that Britain sought without great enthusiasm.

The integration of Western Europe began in 1948 as a consequence of the growth of Soviet aggression that culminated in the Prague coup and the Berlin blockade. The United States had offered Marshall Plan aid with the provision that the European recovery be constructed on a cooperative basis. This led to the Convention for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) signed in April 1948 and the Hague Congress for European union held the following month. The OEEC, which eventually had eighteen countries as members and in 1961 was reorganized as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), sought to administer American aid and further economic cooperation between sovereign states. The Hague meeting of May 1948, with Winston Churchill and Konrad Adenauer as its chief figures, called for a united Europe, and took a very minor step in that direction by establishing a purely advisory consultative body of ten (later fifteen) states, the Council of Europe, as a parliamentary assembly at Strasbourg.

These steps were clearly inadequate. In 1950 Robert Schuman, then French foreign minister and later prime minister, who had been a German subject during World War I, suggested that a first step be taken toward a federation of Europe by putting the entire coal and steel production of France and Germany under a common High Authority. The real attraction of this project was that it would so integrate this basic industry that it would make any war between France and Germany “physically impossible.” One element in this project was to reconcile the anti-Germans to the economic rehabilitation of Germany which the continued Soviet aggressions made increasingly necessary. It would also provide a solution to the Franco-German disagreement over the final disposition of the Saar. From this came the European Coal and Steel Community. This was a truly revolutionary organization, since it had sovereign powers, including the authority to raise funds outside any existing state’s power. This treaty, which came into force in July 1952, brought the steel and coal industries of six countries (France, West Germany, Italy, and Benelux) under a single High Authority of nine members. This “supranational” body had the right to control prices, channel investment, raise funds, allocate coal and steel during shortages, and fix production in times of surplus. Its power to raise funds for its own use by taxing each ton produced made it independent of governments. Moreover, its decisions were binding, and could be reached by majority vote without the unanimity required in most international organizations of sovereign states.

The ECSC was a rudimentary government, since the High Authority was subject to the control of a Common Assembly, elected by the parliaments of the member states, which could force the Authority to resign by a two-thirds vote of censure, and it had a Court of Justice to settle disputes. Most significantly, the ECSC Assembly became a genuine parliament with political party blocs—Christian-Democrats, Socialists, and liberals—sitting together independent of national origins.

By 1958 the ECSC had abolished internal barriers to trade in oil and steel among the Six (such trade increased by 157 percent during the first five years) and had set up a common tariff against imports of coal and steel into the Six. Production of steel increased 65 percent during the five years, and the process of using ECSC funds to modernize the coal industry and to close down exhausted mines (moving hundreds of thousands of miners out of mining and into other employment) had begun.

When the Korean War began in 1950, the United States demanded formation of twelve German divisions to strengthen NATO in Europe. The French, who feared any rebirth of German militarism, drew up an elaborate scheme for a European Defense Community (EDC) that would merge the German recruits into a European army under joint European control. Like ECSC, the European Defense Community was to be a supranational agency that would eventually take its place, along with the ECSC, within a European government. The general pattern of this super-government was established in the EDC project itself, with a bicameral European parliament and a president to preside over a European Cabinet Council. Unfortunately for these plans, the Left and the Right in the French Assembly joined together to reject the EDC treaty (August 1954). The Left was opposed to EDC because any union of Europe would reduce Soviet influence on the Continent, while the Right, led by the Gaullists, were unwilling to see German armed forces reestablished without any guarantee that Britain and the United States would retain forces within Europe to balance the new German forces. Failure of Britain to recognize explicitly its inevitable commitment to European defense early in 1954 allowed EDC to die.

A symbolic, but ineffectual, step was made to calm these French fears in September 1954, when Sir Anthony Eden instigated a Western European Union (WEU) of seven states (the Six plus Britain) as a consultative group to oversee German rearmament. As part of this agreement the British promised to keep four divisions in Europe until the year 2000 if necessary, but within three years one of these divisions was pulled out and the other three fell substantially below full strength.