The US was a dominant actor in the European integration game in the 1950s, although not normally a formal participant at the negotiation table. The Americans promoted integration based on Franco-German reconciliation and sought to prevent the emergence of nationally controlled nuclear weapons in Germany and France and developments toward an independent European ́Third Force ́. Based on material from American, British, French and German archives the book covers the negotiations about the European Defence Community, the Western European Union and Euratom/the Common Market.
This edited volume uses newly released archival material to show linkages between the development of the European Union and the Cold War. Containing essays by well-known Cold War scholars such as Jussi Hanhimaki, Wilfried Loth and Piers Ludlow, the book looks at: France, where neither de Gaulle nor Pompidou felt committed to the status quo in East-West or West-West relations Germany, where Brandt’s Ostpolitik was acknowledged to be linked to the success of Bonn’s Westpolitik and Britain, where the move towards Community membership was tightly bound up with a variety of calculations about the organization of the West and its approach to the Cold War. Nixon and Kissinger’s policies are set out as the background of US policy against which each of the European players was compelled to operate, explaining how Washington saw European integration as part of the over-arching Cold War. European Integration and the Cold War will appeal to students of Cold War history, European politics, and international history.
This volume examines the origins and early years of the Cold War in the first comprehensive historical reexamination of the period. A team of leading scholars shows how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and sociopolitical environments of the two world wars and interwar period.
Much of the literature on the emerging role of the EU as a non-proliferation actor has only a minimal engagement with theory. This collection aims to rectify this by placing the role of the EU in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons within an analytical framework inspired by emerging literature on the performance of international organisations.
Volume I considers the history of the European Union from an outside-in perspective, evaluating which outside forces shaped and guided the process of European integration. Taking an innovative, thematic approach, this volume will be of interest to students and researchers of European integration.
Is Brexit the beginning of the end for the EU? Fully updated and revised, this new edition of John R. Gillingham’s swingeing study explains why the European Union is so profoundly unsuited to the modern political economy. In a devastating historical account of political failure, he takes readers back to the union’s postwar origins, when it was considered the best means to guarantee peace, demonstrating how the flaws of the institution date to its origins. Today, these inherent failings leave it unable to deal with the most pressing issues of our time: the refugee crisis, Britain’s exit, the foundering eurozone, and the increasing disquiet among its member states. In a globalised marketplace where technological innovation transcends state boundaries, the EU is no longer fit for purpose. It is time to let the union dissolve.
The University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to bring Ernst Haas's classic work on European integration, The Uniting of Europe, back into print. First published in 1958 and last printed in 1968, this seminal volume is the starting point for anyone interested in the pre-history of the European Union. Haas uses the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) as a case study of the community formation processes that occur across traditional national and state boundaries. Haas points to the ECSC as an example of an organization with the "power to redirect the loyalties and expectations of political actors." In this pathbreaking book Haas contends that, based on his observations of the actual integration process, the idea of a "united Europe" took root in the years immediately following World War II. His careful and rigorous analysis tracks the development of the ECSC, including, in his 1968 preface, a discussion of the eventual loss of the individual identity of the ECSC through its absorption into the new European Community. Featuring a new introduction by Haas analyzing the impact of his book over time, as well as an updated bibliography, The Uniting of Europe is a must-have for political scientists and historians of modern and contemporary Europe. This book is the inaugural volume of Notre Dame's new Contemporary European Politics and Society Series.
This book examines the role played by civil nuclear energy in Britain’s relationship with Europe between the end of the Second World War and London’s first application to join the European Communities. Tracing the development of the British nuclear programme as it emerged as a global leader in constructing the world’s first atomic power stations, it analyses how the threat of energy shortages throughout the 1950s presented ministers with a golden opportunity to utilise nuclear cooperation as an instrument to influence the political shape of Europe. Importantly, this book will show how this chance was missed by ministers due to a combination of disorganization and diplomatic pressure, as well as a perennial lack of domestic resources. In so doing, this book joins the long-disconnected historiographies of European integration and nuclear energy to offer a new perspective on both scholarly fields.
This book describes the emergence of research policy as a key competence of the European Union (EU). It shows how the European Community (EC, the predecessor of the EU), which initially had very limited legal competence in the field, progressively developed a solid policy framework presenting science and research as indispensable tools for European economic competitiveness and growth. In the late 20th century Western Europe, hungry for growth, concerned about the American technological lead, and keen to compete in the increasingly open international markets, the argument for a joint European effort in science and technology seemed plausible. However, the EC was building its new functions in an already crowded field of European research collaboration and in a shifting political context marked by austerity, national rivalries, new societal and environmental challenges, and emerging ambivalence about science. This book conveys the contested history of one of the EU’s most successful policies. It is a story of struggle and frustration but also of a great institutional and intellectual continuity. The ideational edifice for the EC/EU research policy that was put in place during the 1960s and 1970s years proved remarkably robust. Its durability enabled the rapid takeoff of the European Commission’s initiatives in the more favorable political atmosphere of the early 1980s and the subsequent expansion of the EU research funding instruments and programs that permanently transformed the European research landscape.
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, this volume addresses the lessons of EU history, its current challenges and its future perspectives. Leading scholars from the disciplines of history, political science, political economy and law consider important aspects of European integration. Areas examined include the evolution of the law of integration, Europe's influence on political transitions, economic governance, social governance, the system of Treaty reform and its limits, the future role of the Court of Justice, enlargement and the vexed question of Turkish accession. This book, which takes an interdisciplinary approach, seeks to draw on the lessons of history, while shedding new light on the current and future challenges facing the European Union.
