A constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963

The U.S. presence, moreover, was also needed to deal with the German problem. The EDC concept, Schuman wrote Acheson in January 1952, could not solve that problem by itself. There was a danger that Germany might some day want to secede from the EDC, and by early 1952 the French were in effect asking their Anglo-Saxon allies to guarantee that they would intervene militarily if Germany ever tried to pull out.³⁹³

The U.S. government, however, was reluctant to play this kind of role. The Americans were not in Europe, Acheson said, "to police the obligations of friends but to prevent aggression from without."³⁹⁴ The Europeans were constantly trying to pull the United States in--to deepen the American military presence in Europe, to make sure the United States continued to play a fundamental role there, to build a strong NATO structure in which America was the dominant power. The U.S. presence was the central pillar around which their political system was to be built. But the Americans were wary. The JCS especially did not want to tie U.S. power too tightly to Europe. The Chiefs were interested in safeguarding U.S. autonomy and from the outset resisted European, and especially French, pressure for a highly integrated system, even one under American control.³⁹⁵

The United States, in fact, was pulled into the NATO system reluctantly. America had not set out to build an empire for herself in Europe; U.S. hegemony was never sought as a kind of end in itself. The American government would have liked nothing better than for the Europeans to come together in some kind of federal union and take over the burden of their own defense. But if that was not to happen, there was no alternative to a system based on a strong American presence: there was no other way to construct an effective counterweight to Soviet power in Europe without at the same time allowing Germany to become too strong and too independent. It was to take years, however, before the U.S. government fully reconciled itself to this conclusion.

It was not that no American government in the 1950s ever accepted the idea of a more or less permanent American military presence in Europe. Acheson was won over to this notion in mid-July 1951. In late June and early July, he was still thinking in terms ultimately of a purely European solution. America would eventually withdraw from Europe, he argued, but when she did, some sort of integrated military system had to be left behind. A situation where nothing would remain on the continent "except national forces solely under national control"--meaning especially a German army under German control--had to be avoided. A "workable European army" was thus the aim; "practical steps" toward this goal should be taken even in the short run; and eventually a European system might evolve out of the present U.S.-dominated NATO structure.³⁹⁶

But other high officials were quick to criticize Acheson's basic assumptions. They were not convinced that an essentially European framework was viable or that American policy should be built on the assumption that the United States would pull out of Europe at some point in the future. They doubted whether western Europe was strong enough, even in the long run, to stand up to Soviet pressure by itself. America, therefore, could not afford to think of herself as involved in Europe on an essentially temporary basis. The European army thus had to be thought of as being embedded "permanently rather than temporarily" within the broader NATO framework. And even if the Europeans, in theory, had the resources with which to balance Soviet power on their own, there was a basic political problem which had to be overcome if a purely European system were to be viable. A purely European solution would be feasible only if arrangements were worked out providing for "supra-national political direction" of the European force. Without a "permanent European political structure," the U.S. ambassador in France pointed out, the European forces would "revert to separate national armies" after the American troops and the U.S. commander were withdrawn; this, of course, was something which American policy makers very much wanted to avoid. The problem was that the issue of "European supra-national civilian control" was very hard to resolve. As Acheson himself recognized, it went "so deeply into the foundations of sovereignty" that no quick or easy solution was at hand. Indeed, it was by no means obvious that a viable solution could ever be worked out.³⁹⁷

So in mid-July Acheson's line shifted radically. The new line emphasized NATO and the long-term American commitment to Europe, rather than European institutions like the EDC. Acheson now complained about the growing tendency to "treat European integration and a European Army as final solutions for all problems including that of security against Germany," and to disregard the long-range importance of developing the Atlantic community as a whole. Two weeks earlier, he had accepted the idea that the American presence was temporary, but he now rejected the notion that U.S. participation in NATO would "terminate at some indefinite time in the future." America's "long-term interests" would be "best served" not just by the development of the European Army plan, but by a "policy of permanent association" with the NATO allies for the defense of the Atlantic area as a whole. The reason had more to do with Germany than with Russia: the west Europeans, he now thought, might not be strong enough "by themselves to outweigh German influence" in the future European Army.³⁹⁸

Thus NATO was to be stressed. With regard to what the Europeans were doing, their military effort was what now mattered, and their forces were to be integrated into the NATO framework. The idea of a European Army as a politically independent entity was to be played down.³⁹⁹ This was in line with basic political realities in Europe. The Pleven Plan, as Schuman himself pointed out at the time, had not called for a European "super-state" vested with the power to make war, but simply for the establishment of European administrations to recruit, train and arm the European force.⁴⁰⁰ The EDC, in other words, was to be supra-national only in an administrative sense. There was to be no true pooling of sovereignty on the part of the member states. When the EDC treaty was finally worked out in mid-1952, one of its provisions called for a study of this issue, and in fact a plan for political union was eventually proposed. But as it turned out that idea had even less appeal than the EDC itself.⁴⁰¹

The inability of the Europeans to create a supra-national political structure of their own meant that effective power would remain in American hands. Who but the Americans, who but SACEUR, could fill the vacuum created by the absence of a European political authority?⁴⁰² In fact, the Americans and the Europeans now agreed the European force would have to be controlled by SACEUR and embedded in the NATO system.⁴⁰³

By May 1952, a fundamental series of agreements had been worked out, and the United States was to play a key role in the political system those agreements were designed to establish. The Federal Republic was to be given a good deal of authority over her own affairs, but full sovereignty was not to be restored. The western allies, for example, would retain the right to station troops in Germany and to intervene in extreme cases in internal German affairs. The EDC would be set up, but this would not be a purely continental structure. SACEUR, an American general, would command that European force, and Anglo-American involvement was underscored by the Tripartite Declaration of May 27, 1952, issued at the same time the EDC treaty was signed. In this declaration, Britain and America promised to regard a defection from the EDC as a "threat to their own security" and to take action in accordance with the North Atlantic Treaty. Their troop presence on the continent, and especially in Germany, was explicitly linked to their "interest in the integrity" of the EDC: the troops were a "guarantee against German secession."⁴⁰⁴ The Anglo-Saxons had thus agreed to underwrite the whole EDC system.

These arrangements never took effect. Successive French governments knew that the EDC treaty would be voted down if it were submitted to Parliament, so they kept dragging their feet on ratification. But this was something that the American government--and especially the new Eisenhower government, which took office in January 1953--could scarcely bring itself to accept.

The Eisenhower administration had its heart set on the EDC. This was not because it saw the scheme as the only way the Germans could make a military contribution. The U.S. government was very reluctant to accept alternative ways of providing for a German defense contribution even when they became politically feasible. Indeed, Eisenhower thought that "to resort to a national army was a second choice so far behind EDC that there could be no comparison." From a purely military point of view, a German army deployed within the NATO framework might be the best solution, but for Eisenhower, the decisive consideration was political in nature. The real point of the EDC, he and Secretary of State Dulles both felt, was to weld France and Germany together as the core of a strong European federation that could stand up to Russia on its own, and thus make it possible for American forces to withdraw from Europe in the near future.⁴⁰⁵

So the coming to power of the Eisenhower administration brought about a major reversal of American policy in this key area. Once again, the idea was that the Europeans should come together in some kind of federal union, that they should carry the burden of their own defense, and that the United States should sooner or later withdraw from Europe. The idea of a system based essentially on American power was rejected. The EDC, whatever its shortcomings, pointed in what was for Eisenhower the right direction. If there was a European army, there would eventually have to be European political institutions to control that army; the war-making power would have to be centralized; there would be no way to avoid a certain pooling of sovereignty. The EDC would pave the way toward a political unification of Europe, and since a unified Europe was by far the best the solution to the basic strategic problem, the EDC could not be allowed to fail. And so the EDC was now considered to be of vital importance--for fundamental political reasons, and not because it was the only way in which German forces could be raised.

The French were now reluctant to move ahead with the EDC, but the new administration was determined to do everything it could to get them to go along with the plan. The French said they needed more assurances from America in order to get the EDC treaty ratified. So grudgingly, and with considerable irritation, the Eisenhower government reiterated the old U.S. assurances about maintaining an American military presence in Europe.⁴⁰⁶ But the other side of this coin was a blunt warning to France that a collapse of EDC could lead to an American withdrawal from the continent. The French were also told that if EDC failed, the United States, together with Britain, would simply rearm Germany by themselves.⁴⁰⁷ Dulles was particularly heavy-handed. In December 1953, he publicly threatened that the defeat of EDC would lead to an "agonizing reappraisal" of America's policy toward Europe, and in July 1954 he told Pierre Mendès France, the French prime minister, that "public sentiment in the United States was reaching a point where we could no longer tolerate indefinite delay on French action. A hornets' nest of trouble would be stirred up if German rearmament had to be arranged without an EDC. Indeed, if this actually happened, all further U.S. aid to NATO would be cut off."⁴⁰⁸

But Mendès was not intimidated. In his view, French policy was bankrupt, both in Europe and in the Far East, and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. He felt like the receiver of a bankrupt company: his job was to clean up the mess he had inherited. One of his main goals was to find a way out of the "permanent crisis" the EDC business had caused.⁴⁰⁹ He allowed the EDC to be killed by the French parliament in August 1954, infuriating Dulles, who viewed him practically as a tool of the USSR.⁴¹⁰ But the French leader, as he himself complained, had been completely misunderstood.⁴¹¹ Indeed, Mendès at this point did more than any other single individual to save the NATO system.

Mendès understood that the strategic environment in 1954 was very different from what it had been in 1950. The great rearmament decisions of late 1950 had begun to pay off in 1952. By 1954, American power had been built up to absolutely unprecedented levels. In strategic terms, it was quite clear that the West, and especially the United States, now had very much the upper hand. In this new situation, it was much harder to think of West Germany as posing a threat. Any German force would be totally dwarfed by the great nuclear-armed forces that had grown up elsewhere. Even France herself was going to build up a nuclear force. The key decisions in this area were in fact made by the Mendès France government in late 1954. German military power was no longer the problem. Indeed, in this new strategic environment, German conventional forces were "more necessary than ever" from the French point of view. German rearmament would provide western Europe with some defense in depth, and thus would make France herself more secure.⁴¹²

It was therefore clear to Mendès that the shibboleths of the past were obsolete and would have to be abandoned--although this had to be done with some care, and with an eye to political realities within France. For earlier French governments, one of the main functions of the EDC had been to keep Germany out of NATO; in 1953, a French prime minister had threatened that if, over France's objections, Germany were allowed to come into NATO with her own army--that is, on the same basis as everyone else--the French "would destroy the effectiveness of any German national army by being so strongly in opposition that in practical effect the lines of communication between Germany and the Atlantic would be broken."⁴¹³ To Mendès this sort of attitude made no sense at all. It was out of keeping with the whole thrust of the West's German policy. To some of its supporters, the EDC, moreover, had become a kind of end in itself, more a matter of theology than of practical politics.⁴¹⁴ But to Mendès political realities were fundamental, and it quickly became obvious that the EDC could not be brought into being: the allies would not accept major changes in the treaty, and in its present form no French Parliament would ever vote to ratify it. What all this meant was that some other arrangement had to be worked out--and worked out quickly--that would enable Germany to take part in the defense of the West.⁴¹⁵

In talks with British leaders on August 23, he had already suggested an alternative to EDC. There would be a broader but looser European grouping, one that included Britain. This arrangement, embedded in the larger NATO framework, would in his view probably be acceptable to the French parliament. French political leaders, after all, felt a certain responsibility to be constructive: the EDC had originally been proposed by their own government, and it was embarrassing that France, as the saying goes, was now unwilling to take yes for an answer. The arrangement Mendès had in mind, moreover, was in line with basic British thinking on these issues. British leaders had supported the EDC out of loyalty to America, but their hearts were never in it. A united Europe, in their view, could only develop through a kind of organic process; the rapid creation of supra-national European institutions like the EDC was not the way to proceed. "European federation may grow but it cannot be built," Churchill wrote Eisenhower in September. "It must be a volunteer and not a conscript."⁴¹⁶ So although the British were at first reluctant to part company with the Americans and take the path Mendès was now proposing, after the collapse of the EDC they came around quickly--and indeed presented the idea as though it were entirely their own, which Mendès was happy to let them do, since this would make it more palatable to the Americans.⁴¹⁷

The U.S. government, however, was not at all happy with a solution of this sort, and accepted it in the end with remarkably poor grace. At the time the EDC plan collapsed, Dulles told his top advisors that the very idea of "another route toward German rearmament" was "too perfunctory," that it might be "necessary to disengage ourselves," that "there was no use building up Germany until a reasonable political foundation in Europe was created." There was no point, he said, constructing a "beautiful" NATO superstructure, with armies, standing groups and so on, without the strong political base something like EDC would give it. A "boggy political foundation, lacking the firmness of unity or integration, would create shambles in this beautiful superstructure at the first real strain." The British and French probed to see if the U.S. government would go along with the NATO solution, but Dulles reacted coldly, again threatening a major reappraisal of American strategy, warning that the United States might not remain committed to the defense of Europe, and expressing "grave misgivings" about any solution other than EDC.⁴¹⁸

Dulles was sullen and resentful, but that did not prevent a fundamental settlement from being worked out very quickly in two major conferences held at London and then at Paris in the early fall of 1954. That settlement was embodied in a large number of interrelated agreements and declarations, commonly referred to as the Paris accords.⁴¹⁹ After years of effort, it seemed that the western countries had finally constructed a political system.
The NATO System

The Paris accords ended the occupation regime. The Federal Republic was to have, in a term of art, "the full authority of a sovereign state" over her own internal and external affairs. The settlement, moreover, provided for West Germany's admission to NATO and created the framework for the reestablishment of a German national army. But the allies insisted on retaining important legal rights which limited German sovereignty in major ways.

First of all, the western powers retained the right to intervene in extreme cases if the democratic system in Germany was threatened. In those early days of the Federal Republic, the western governments were not yet convinced that the "basic democratic order" had taken root in that country.⁴²⁰ McCloy and Acheson had therefore felt in 1951 that the allies should be able to intervene if democracy in Germany was seriously menaced.⁴²¹ The unratified May 1952 agreement had explicitly authorized the allied authorities to declare a state of emergency if the democratic order was in danger and to take appropriate action. That provision was dropped when the basic convention was renegotiated in 1954, but this did not mean that this basic allied right had disappeared. Another section of the 1952 treaty gave each of the three western military commanders the right "independently of a state of emergency" to take whatever action was necessary "to remove the danger" if the forces under his command were menaced. This provision in itself, it was argued, would allow the allies to take action if the democratic regime in Germany were threatened, since the overthrow of the democratic order would automatically endanger the security of the western troops. Since this provision was embarrassing to Adenauer, the allies were willing to delete it from the final 1954 agreement provided that it was kept as a "practical arrangement," and the German chancellor went along with this solution. He gave the allies a written assurance that the deletion of the clause would change nothing because it was an "inherent right of any military commander" to take whatever action was necessary to protect the forces under his command. The allies thus had a rather broad and rather loosely-defined right to intervene in extreme cases in internal German affairs.⁴²²

Germany's international behavior was a more fundamental concern. The western powers were worried that the Germans might some day try to reunify their country through military action. Adenauer was therefore asked to promise that the Federal Republic would not use force to achieve reunification or to alter her present boundaries, and the commitment he gave was underwritten by the three western powers.⁴²³ There was an even greater fear that the Federal Republic might be tempted to make a deal with Russia providing for reunification on the condition that Germany cut her ties with the West. The three western allies therefore insisted on retaining their rights on all-German matters. The Federal Republic was recognized in the Paris accords as the only legitimate representative of the German people in international affairs, but had no authority to negotiate a German settlement on her own. The three powers retained the legal right to block any German settlement of which they did not approve, and this applied in particular to a settlement which provided for the neutralization of Germany.

These constraints on German sovereignty were anchored in the most important of the reserved rights, the right to station military forces on German territory. Under the Paris accords, the Federal Republic did not have the legal authority to make the western countries withdraw their forces. This important right was taken quite seriously by western leaders. As late as 1958, when the issue came up of whether a Socialist government in Germany might some day try to work out a reunification-cum-neutralization agreement with Russia, Eisenhower, for example, made it very clear that America would not permit her forces to be "kicked out." "If the Socialists did come to power in Germany," he pointed out, "we might have to put even more U.S. forces in that country." Whatever the Germans themselves thought, the western allies had both the right and ultimately the power to block a neutralist solution.⁴²⁴

But these juridical constraints were only part of the system designed to limit German freedom of action. The military arrangements worked out in late 1954 played an even more important role. West Germany was to be admitted to NATO, but the size and character of the German military establishment would be restricted in various ways. These limits were to be enforced by the Western European Union, a purely European body including both Britain and the Federal Republic, whose main function was to oversee those controls on German military power. The most important constraint related to nuclear weapons. The German government promised not to build nuclear weapons on its own territory, and the WEU was to enforce this restriction.⁴²⁵

The new West German army, moreover, was to be integrated into the NATO structure, and SACEUR's powers were to be considerably strengthened. The new NATO framework would provide an effective means of dealing with the German problem. In an integrated military system, dominated by American power, the Germans would find it impossible to operate independently. The constraints on German freedom of action in such a system would be natural and organic, much more palatable than a control regime that too obviously reflected a deep-seated distrust. The idea of a strengthening of the NATO system as an alternative to EDC had emerged very quickly following the collapse of that project. The NATO commander, General Alfred Gruenther, played a key role in developing the idea and in convincing Mendès France, Eden and indeed his own government to look toward a strengthening of SACEUR's authority for a solution to the problem of German power.⁴²⁶ But the Europeans needed little convincing. Eden, for example, now said that the "only real control over German forces" would come from putting Germany in a military organization together with the United States.⁴²⁷ And Mendès also saw the integrated system, headed by a strong SACEUR, as a fundamental element of a viable western system.⁴²⁸