European Defense and Security Integration: a Retrospective Review

Abstract

Although the end of the Second World War brought long-awaited peace to Europe, a new totalitarian threat, the Soviet Union, emerged almost immediately. After the former anti-Hitler coalition allies found themselves on different sides of the “iron curtain”, the countries of the democratic camp faced a difficult task: how to mobilise the efforts of the war-ravaged countries of “free Europe” and enable them to fend off a possible Soviet expansion. Given the fears that the societies of European countries might compel their governments to satisfy any demands of the Soviet Union for the sake of avoiding another war, it was crucial for the West to project unity and demonstrate readiness to resist the Soviet onslaught. hence the inevitability of the United States’ involvement as a guarantor of Western Europe’s security. Thus, the very first projects of European military-political integration – the Treaties of Dunkirk and Brussels – were to become no more than the basis for the gradual involvement of the U.S. It is noteworthy that even after the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the idea of purely European integration was not off the table. The reasons for this, however, are quite pragmatic. While Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, the originators of the idea of unifying Europe, considered the ultimate goal of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Defense Community (ECC) to be the formation of a supranational European federation, the European countries and especially the United States considered the ambitious EDC project exclusively as a way of solving the more pressing problems, such as the rearmament of West Germany and its gradual integration into NATO. This, coupled with the general unpreparedness of European countries for such a close union, led to the failure of the EDC, which would largely determine the course of European integration for decades.