Pan‐European Integration: A Real or Imagined Community?

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The Core ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
Economic Application ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
West European

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION — THE PHRASE WAS USED SO EASILY TO connote a process that might, over a period, incorporate most of the continent. But in the four decades when the cold war segmented Europe the notion of extensive integration seemed irrelevant; in practice integration has been consolidated as an essentially West European phenomenon. The policy scope, the economic application, the security implications and the institutional frameworks of integration became concentrated around the core countries of Western Europe. Similarly the underpinning understandings about solidarity and mutual commitment were formulated on the assumption that a hard boundary separated those Europeans capable of being engaged from those who were prevented from so doing. There were few among those who studied this West European process who kept the wider Europe in mind. Ghiţa Ionescu was unusual in always keeping an eye open to developments in both parts of the continent, a legacy that all of us who worked with him cherish. The burden that he leaves us is of trying to figure out whether integration can be given substance as a process for pan-Europe.

Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War in Europe

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvio Pons
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
National Unity ◽  
The West ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
West European

Soviet policy toward the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1943 to 1948 exemplified Josif Stalin's complicated relationship with the West European Communist parties and Western Europe in general. For a considerable while, Stalin insisted that the PCI follow a policy of moderation. Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the PCI, heeded Stalin's orders and tried to ensure that the Italian Communists pursued a policy of national unity and avoided conflicts that might lead to civil war in Italy. But this moderate approach collapsed after the Soviet Union rejected the Marshall Plan in 1947 and thereby forced the West European Communist parties into extra-parliamentary opposition. Not until after the poor showing of the PCI in the 1948 Italian elections was the party able to regain a viable role. Stalin's conflicting advice to the PCI was indicative of his tenuous grasp of the situation in Western Europe.

scholarly journals “The Ruhr Remains our Nightmare”: The International Metalworkers’ Federation and European Integration in the Early Cold War

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Johan Svanberg
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The aim of this article is to study discussions within the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) about the early postwar process of European integration at the intersection of international cooperation and nationally defined interests. The central question is the future of the Ruhr. This article argues that the developing Cold War, and the conflict between social democrats and communists, limited the reach of international trade-union cooperation but simultaneously strengthened the perceived need among social-democratic trade unionists in Western Europe to coordinate their policies in relation to supposed enemies. European integration in combination with the Cold War also highlighted a need to coordinate the resources of European and anti-communist trade unions in North America. The article shows that the IMF generally supported European integration as a defence against the hypothetical threat from the East, but made attempts to sway the process to include a pronounced social dimension.

scholarly journals Sad delusions: The decline and rise of Greater Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 187936652199975
Author(s):  
Richard Sakwa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Order ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
West European

The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the beginning of the unification of Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev talked in terms of a “Common European Home,” an idea that continues in the guise of the project for a “Greater Europe.” However, right from the start, the transformative idea of Greater Europe was countered by the notion of “Europe whole and free,” whose fundamental dynamic was the enlargement of the existing West European order to encompass the rest of the continent. This was a program for the enlargement of the Atlantic system. After some prevarication, the enlargement agenda proved unacceptable to Moscow, and while it continues to argue in favor of transformation its main efforts are now devoted to creating some sort of “greater Eurasia.” There remains a fundamental tension between Atlanticist and pan-continental version of the post-–Cold War international order in the region. This tension gave rise to conflict and war: in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian War) and again from 2014 (Ukraine), and to what some call the Second Cold War. The continent is once again divided. However, pan-continentalism is far from dead, and although Greater Eurasian ideas have thrived, some sort of Greater European continentalism remains on the agenda. Is this, though, no more than a “sad delusion” or a genuine possibility?

scholarly journals Decolonization, the Cold War, and Africans’ routes to higher education overseas, 1957–65

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Eric Burton
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Cold War ◽  
North America ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
African Students ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Gain Access

AbstractFrom the late 1950s, Africans seeking higher education went to a rapidly increasing number of destinations, both within Africa and overseas. Based on multi-sited archival research and memoirs, this article shows how Africans forged and used new routes to gain access to higher education denied to them in their territories of origin, and in this way also shaped scholarship policies across the globe. Focusing on British-ruled territories in East Africa, the article establishes the importance of African intermediaries and independent countries as hubs of mobility. The agency of students and intermediaries, as well as official responses, are examined in three interconnected cases: the clandestine ‘Nile route’ from East Africa to Egypt and eastern Europe; the ‘airlifts’ from East Africa to North America; and the ‘exodus’ of African students from the Eastern bloc to western Europe. Although all of these routes were short-lived, they transformed official scholarship provisions, and significantly shaped the postcolonial period in the countries of origin.

The Rise and Fall of Western Europe's Democratic Age, 1945–1973

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN CONWAY
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
The Cold War

Why did western Europe become so suddenly democratic after 1945? After the upheavals of the previous decade the rather placid politics that follows the war is at first sight difficult to explain. This article seeks to go beyond the tendency of much historical writing to see the hegemonic parliamentary democracy of the roughly twenty-five years after 1945 as the product of exhaustion, economic prosperity or the constraints imposed by the Cold War. Instead, it argues that a path towards democracy can be detected within the events of the war years which then came to fruition in the rather conservative and limited democratic structures of the postwar decades. This Democratic Age then came to a conclusion in the renewed contestation of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

scholarly journals Conceptual Readings into the Cold War: Towards Transnational Approaches from the Perspective of Latin American Studies in Eastern and Western Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Manke ◽  
Kateřina Březinová ◽  
Laurin Blecha
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Global South ◽  
Latin American Studies ◽  
Global North ◽  
Scale Integration ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
Multiple Actors

Abstract This bibliographical and conceptual essay summarizes recent research in Cold War Studies in Europe and the Americas, especially on smaller states in historiographical studies. Against the background of an increasing connectedness and globalization of research about the Cold War, the authors highlight the importance of the full-scale integration of countries and regions of the 'Global South' into Cold War Studies. Critical readings of the newly available resources reveal the existence of important decentralizing perspectives resulting from Cold War entanglements of the 'Global South' with the 'Global North.' As a result, the idea that these state actors from the former 'periphery' of the Cold War should be considered as passive recipients of superpower politics seems rather troubled. The evidence shows (at least partially) autonomous and active multiple actors.

scholarly journals Does Canada have anything in the way of a strategic warning intelligence culture (and does it need one)?

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
John Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Timely Manner ◽  
Ballistic Missiles ◽  
Operational Issues ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Threat Environment

During the Cold War, Strategic Warning Intelligence (SWI) was a necessary and recognized function within the intelligence community given the threats posed by conventional Warsaw Pact forces in Western Europe and Soviet ballistic missiles. With the end of the Cold War, the focus of intelligence shifted to tactical or operational issues against known threats, and the SWI function and expertise atrophied as a result. With today’s expanding and more complex threat environment, this article examines whether SWI capacities should be reintroduced in order to apprise decision makers of trending threats to national security, albeit based on faint signals, so the necessary policy decisions can be made and prioritized to mitigate said threats in a timely manner.

What Future for Human Rights?

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Nickel
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Cold War

Like people born shortly after World War II, the international human rights movement recently had its sixty-fifth birthday. This could mean that retirement is at hand and that death will come in a few decades. After all, the formulations of human rights that activists, lawyers, and politicians use today mostly derive from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the world in 1948 was very different from our world today: the cold war was about to break out, communism was a strong and optimistic political force in an expansionist phase, and Western Europe was still recovering from the war. The struggle against entrenched racism and sexism had only just begun, decolonization was in its early stages, and Asia was still poor (Japan was under military reconstruction, and Mao's heavy-handed revolution in China was still in the future). Labor unions were strong in the industrialized world, and the movement of women into work outside the home and farm was in its early stages. Farming was less technological and usually on a smaller scale, the environmental movement had not yet flowered, and human-caused climate change was present but unrecognized. Personal computers and social networking were decades away, and Earth's human population was well under three billion.

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