If European integration was significantly affected by the Cold War, it also had an impact upon the evolution of the East-West conflict itself. There are at least three instances where the growth of co-operation amongst the states of Western Europe had a discernable effect on the character of either East-West or West-West relations within the Cold War. The first of these was the impact of the EEC’s early success on Western Europe’s economic prosperity and political self-confidence; the second was the way in which West Germany used the Community framework to begin the slow process of regaining the will to act autonomously in the foreign-policy field; and the third was the importance of Western Europe’s all-too-visible success in eroding the cohesion and, eventually, the stability ofthe Eastern bloc. Each ofthese deserves to be examined a little more closely.
Many factors contributed to the changing relationship between Western Europe and the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Changing patterns of trade and investment, the steady advance of decolonisation, and the shifting nuclear balance were all of some importance, as was the tendency ofboth superpowers to play out their rivalry in theatres ever further removed from Western Europe. But the dramatic success of the EEC, especially during the 1958-64 period, was undoubtedly a major ingredient in the growing confidence of many Western European politicians during the 1960s. No longer did the six member states of the Community feel bound to look, both individually and collectively, to the other side of the Atlantic in order to learn how a modern and advanced economy should be run. Instead, their own, largely home-grown recipe for growth and development seemed to be functioning extremely well. Indeed, there were even signs that the United States might be ready to copy aspects of Western Europe’s policy recipe success rather than vice versa: John F. Kennedy, for instance, was quite open about the way in which his vision of a new drive for trade liberalisation at a global level borrowed ingredients from the EEC’s success. And this new, slightly smug, gratification of Western European politicians at Western Europe’s economic and political progress all too easily inclined them to look askance at US policy more generally and to steer a somewhat more autonomous international course. The debates about NATO reform, nuclear non-proliferation, the multilateral force (MLF), the merits of collective bloc-to-bloc as opposed to bilateral detente, and the best response to Eastern bloc calls for a European security conference were all influenced by this diminished European subservience vis-a-vis the United States.
Germany’s steady emergence as a foreign-policy actor ready to speak its own lines internationally, which occurred during much the same period, also owed a great deal to the European integration process. For it was in Brussels and in response to the exigencies of EEC politics that the Federal Republic made its postwar diplomatic debut as a player of note. In the early years of both the Cold War and the integration process, Bonn’s international profile had been kept deliberately low. On East-West questions as well as on the key European controversies, the West Germans had seldom sought the limelight and had preferred whenever possible to join their voices with a larger chorus rather than to behave in a fashion which brought to the fore their national interests, aspirations or fears. Germany’s role in defusing the EEC crisis of 1963 had, however, been the first significant break in this pattern.268 With France in temporary disgrace and the Community all but paralysed after the row that had broken out following de Gaulle’s veto of Britain’s first membership application, the German foreign minister, Gerhard Schroder, took the lead in calming the situation and creating an environment in which the EEC could resume its onward movement. In the process, Bonn acquired a taste for Community leadership. It took a while for this new German confidence to extend to diplomacy beyond the confines of the EEC. But it does seem likely that the foreign-policy activism demonstrated by Brandt, first as foreign minister and then as chancellor, was built in part upon the foundations laid by Schroder and others within an EEC context.
European integration also contributed to that image of Western European success, stability and prosperity that did so much to destabilise Communist rule in Eastern Europe as the Cold War came to an end. Few East German dissidents, Polish trade-unionists or Czech demonstrators are likely to have known much about the European integration process as they began the chain of actions which was to lead to the collapse of the Eastern bloc. They would, however, have been conscious of the way in which the quality of life within the other half of their continent vastly outstripped their own. They were probably also aware of the disparity between Western Europe’s renewed international confidence in the latter half of the 1980s, built on the back of
J Soviet successor states I European Free Trade Association (EFTA) I European Union
I European Union (candidate members)
1. The expansion of European integration
Progress in Brussels, and the ever-greater gloom and pessimism that characterised debate about the future of the Soviet bloc. And the fear of Germany, which had been so heavily used by the Soviets in earlier eras to justify their military presence in Eastern Europe, seemed steadily more anachronistic in the face of a Federal Republic which, thanks in part to the success of its own European policies, had become the great advocate of multilateralism and international co-operation rather than national expansion.
All ofthese factors seem likely to have played some part in both the surge of popular protest and the total loss of nerve on the part of the ruling regimes that was to so dramatically alter the political face of Europe in 1989-90. Certainly, it was notable how quickly the successor regimes that emerged from the revolutions that had brought the Cold War to its end both adopted the rhetoric of a 'return to Europe’ and began the practical steps that would lead in the first part of the twenty-first century to their adherence to the EU. The expansion of the EU in May 2004 to include eight former members of the Communist bloc should in many ways be seen as the moment when the Cold War division of Europe was definitively consigned to the history books.
European integration and the Cold War have thus never been entirely immune from interaction. They were certainly both autonomous processes. Neither caused the other, and the end of one has not brought about the collapse of the other. Each was also open to multiple other influences and dynamics, whether internal or external. But it appears clear that their paths intersected at multiple points throughout the four decades of their simultaneous evolution. No detailed analysis of either can therefore afford to disregard both those instances when the East-West struggle had an impact upon the development ofEuropean integration and those where the transformation through integration of the western half of the European continent deeply influenced both its rapport with the Western superpower and its standing as a rival and magnet to the countries ofthe Soviet bloc. European integration was profoundly shaped by the early Cold War and continued to be affected by the East-West struggle over the next forty years; its success, moreover, played a role in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end and has guided the destinies of both halves of the once divided continent in the years since 1989.
World History
