A very good history, but I think its flaw is the common delusion among a certain class of US thinkers that "whatever the US and the CIA want, they get." The fact that foreign actors have agency of their own is conveniently waved away.
So your article is inordinately heavy on what the US did, but whatever Europeans did is brushed aside as being at America's behest.
Germany HAD been defeated in a war that it started, and "installing" Adenauer was a completely reasonable thing to do. Europeans wanted a very limited trade union, and that's what they created. The US certainly was supportive of that, but I think you've given the impression that the US imposed it on them single-handedly.
Like I explained, there was no European movement for unification even in 1945, beyond Coudenhove and his crazies.
This is much as if I say "we're going out to have drinks at the Irish pub" and, after two hours of argument in which I put all possible pressure on you, you go "yes, we're going to have drinks at the Irish pub, but only because I made the decision." Which, I guess, technically, you did. But, you see, the Americans we're already speaking of a US of Europe even before anybody in Europe was ready to lower tariffs, and the whole drive was in the hands of potty-trained DC men like Jean Monnet. Not a coincidence that they all went to have drinks at the Irish pub.
I would need access to all the French, German, and Italian media from back then, if they're even digitized, in order to argue this. (And even if they were online like newspapers.com, they'd probably be images and not text, so I couldn't use Google Translate on them).
You can show that Americans were speaking first of a US of Europe (and you have), but we can't show the reluctance of European leaders to give it anything but lip service. And also we can't prove the counterfactual: "Would they have created the free trade union sans US pressure?"
In other words, I think this is a one-sided "The US and its CIA control everything" account of the formation of the EU.
An interesting take, but maybe a little too simplistic?
I'd like to hear your comments on de Gaulle's avowed intent, where the EEC was concerned, of excluding the "Anglo-Saxon Hegemony". In his autobiography he makes it very plain that his whole design was to create a political bloc to counter what he saw as the American imperialist aspirations in Europe. He was determined not to allow Washington any economic toehold in Europe, especially not through Westminster, which he regarded as the completely untrustworthy lickspittle of the US. He had a vision of an economically united global European power to put the upstart New World in its place and keep it from any further expansion of its international influence. Ted Heath had a similar vison in relentlessly pursuing a YES vote from the British people. He sold us (yes, I bought his BS, and worked tirelessly to convince everyone I knew to vote YES, but at least I had a French father and a French wife to justify my position) on the idea that being part of this pipe dream European community would free us from the yoke of domination of the bratty colonials who couldn't even speak our language properly.
It would have required a Machiavellian genius of the highest order, operating through successive disparate administrations and congresses, to have hoodwinked the multiple elected governments of the various European states into doing America's bidding in the mistaken belief it was their idea and to their direct benefit.
Let's not forget, either, that Truman's state department, back at the beginnings of this US effort, was riddled with active card-carrying communists*, whose Moscow masters would surely have taken a very dim view of the US successfully "herd[ing] its European vassals together", and who would thus have had orders to undermine any such efforts.
* Joe McCarthy's "list of over one hundred card carrying communists in the State Department" was very real and very accurate. See "Blacklisted By History" M. Stanton Evans, Crown Publishing Group, New York 2007
De Gaulle only became president of France in 1959. By this time, the whole process had been set in motion and was unstoppable, and he could only try to and nudge it in a direction favorable to France. He's a great example of the problem with the EU: like every other French president since, up to Macron, he though he could control the EU while the EU was rotting France from the inside, to the point where the Republique is now.
Similarly, Ted Heath became PM in 1970, with minimum political capital, and is mostly a figure of opprobium within his own Tory Party.
I don't think the argument that a large empire with essentially endless wealth to spend and the world's strongest military, the most sophisticated technological power ever, would be incapable of sustaining a state policy for a few decades is very strong. Many weaker empires and states have been able to, I don't see what makes America uniquely dumb for this endeavor.
One of the cleverest acts of Empire ever and all ours 🇺🇸 was tricking Europe and indeed others into thinking we’re all allies and equals. Of course the same people convinced much of the world and indeed many Americans there’s such a thing as the “UN”.
There isn’t.
Now all of this should have ended with the USSR and Warsaw Pact, as it happened it took the clumsy Ham Fists of Obama, Nuland and the madness of the Ukrainian Russian war to pull back the curtain.
I’m American and want this to end, Trump and Vance can be as obnoxious as needed. I’m not sure what is unclear?
To any Europeans reading this, if it isn’t obvious we’re 🇺🇸 trying to get out of a toxic relationship by being complete boors, we 🇺🇸 are…
Perhaps we should steal all your money and blow it on cocaine, whores and crypto scams, but…
A very good history, but I think its flaw is the common delusion among a certain class of US thinkers that "whatever the US and the CIA want, they get." The fact that foreign actors have agency of their own is conveniently waved away.
So your article is inordinately heavy on what the US did, but whatever Europeans did is brushed aside as being at America's behest.
Germany HAD been defeated in a war that it started, and "installing" Adenauer was a completely reasonable thing to do. Europeans wanted a very limited trade union, and that's what they created. The US certainly was supportive of that, but I think you've given the impression that the US imposed it on them single-handedly.
Like I explained, there was no European movement for unification even in 1945, beyond Coudenhove and his crazies.
This is much as if I say "we're going out to have drinks at the Irish pub" and, after two hours of argument in which I put all possible pressure on you, you go "yes, we're going to have drinks at the Irish pub, but only because I made the decision." Which, I guess, technically, you did. But, you see, the Americans we're already speaking of a US of Europe even before anybody in Europe was ready to lower tariffs, and the whole drive was in the hands of potty-trained DC men like Jean Monnet. Not a coincidence that they all went to have drinks at the Irish pub.
I would need access to all the French, German, and Italian media from back then, if they're even digitized, in order to argue this. (And even if they were online like newspapers.com, they'd probably be images and not text, so I couldn't use Google Translate on them).
You can show that Americans were speaking first of a US of Europe (and you have), but we can't show the reluctance of European leaders to give it anything but lip service. And also we can't prove the counterfactual: "Would they have created the free trade union sans US pressure?"
In other words, I think this is a one-sided "The US and its CIA control everything" account of the formation of the EU.
An interesting take, but maybe a little too simplistic?
I'd like to hear your comments on de Gaulle's avowed intent, where the EEC was concerned, of excluding the "Anglo-Saxon Hegemony". In his autobiography he makes it very plain that his whole design was to create a political bloc to counter what he saw as the American imperialist aspirations in Europe. He was determined not to allow Washington any economic toehold in Europe, especially not through Westminster, which he regarded as the completely untrustworthy lickspittle of the US. He had a vision of an economically united global European power to put the upstart New World in its place and keep it from any further expansion of its international influence. Ted Heath had a similar vison in relentlessly pursuing a YES vote from the British people. He sold us (yes, I bought his BS, and worked tirelessly to convince everyone I knew to vote YES, but at least I had a French father and a French wife to justify my position) on the idea that being part of this pipe dream European community would free us from the yoke of domination of the bratty colonials who couldn't even speak our language properly.
It would have required a Machiavellian genius of the highest order, operating through successive disparate administrations and congresses, to have hoodwinked the multiple elected governments of the various European states into doing America's bidding in the mistaken belief it was their idea and to their direct benefit.
Let's not forget, either, that Truman's state department, back at the beginnings of this US effort, was riddled with active card-carrying communists*, whose Moscow masters would surely have taken a very dim view of the US successfully "herd[ing] its European vassals together", and who would thus have had orders to undermine any such efforts.
* Joe McCarthy's "list of over one hundred card carrying communists in the State Department" was very real and very accurate. See "Blacklisted By History" M. Stanton Evans, Crown Publishing Group, New York 2007
De Gaulle only became president of France in 1959. By this time, the whole process had been set in motion and was unstoppable, and he could only try to and nudge it in a direction favorable to France. He's a great example of the problem with the EU: like every other French president since, up to Macron, he though he could control the EU while the EU was rotting France from the inside, to the point where the Republique is now.
Similarly, Ted Heath became PM in 1970, with minimum political capital, and is mostly a figure of opprobium within his own Tory Party.
I don't think the argument that a large empire with essentially endless wealth to spend and the world's strongest military, the most sophisticated technological power ever, would be incapable of sustaining a state policy for a few decades is very strong. Many weaker empires and states have been able to, I don't see what makes America uniquely dumb for this endeavor.
One of the cleverest acts of Empire ever and all ours 🇺🇸 was tricking Europe and indeed others into thinking we’re all allies and equals. Of course the same people convinced much of the world and indeed many Americans there’s such a thing as the “UN”.
There isn’t.
Now all of this should have ended with the USSR and Warsaw Pact, as it happened it took the clumsy Ham Fists of Obama, Nuland and the madness of the Ukrainian Russian war to pull back the curtain.
I’m American and want this to end, Trump and Vance can be as obnoxious as needed. I’m not sure what is unclear?
To any Europeans reading this, if it isn’t obvious we’re 🇺🇸 trying to get out of a toxic relationship by being complete boors, we 🇺🇸 are…
Perhaps we should steal all your money and blow it on cocaine, whores and crypto scams, but…
Thank you. One George Ball “ the past has another pattern” had some things to say about it too ha ha.