Abstract
The language we have used for so long about the ‘two halves of Europe’ has misled us about the continent’s balance and shape. The image summoned up is one of two relatively equal parts of the continent, now coming back together; of ‘West’ and ‘East’ rejoining to form a whole which draws upon the constituent elements of both of its previously divided parts. The argument presented here is that ‘Europe’, if defined as an entity which stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals, is — and has been throughout the past millennium — fundamentally unbalanced. Its economic and political core has been in the west, its periphery stretching east across its shifting and ill-defined borders. The devastation of Central Europe in the final years of World War II temporarily altered the tilt, with the two great continental powers of Europe’s eastern and western edge drawn into confrontation across Central Europe. But the recovery of the West European economy, reinforced by the establishment of a relatively integrated political system, has rebuilt a dominant West.
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Notes and References
The argument which follows draws on my Chatham House Paper on The Transformation of Western Europe (London: RUA/Pinter, 1990) and on the larger collaborative project on The Dynamics of European Integration (London: RIIA/Pinter, 1990) from which this Chatham House Paper evolved.
See, for example, Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict, 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), among the latest in a long line which stretches back to Weber and beyond.
J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919).
On these negotiations see William Wallace, ‘Political Cooperation: integration through intergovernmentalism’, in Helen Wallace et al., Policy-making in the European Community (Chichester, New York: Wiley, 1983), and
Philippe de Schoutheete, La Coopération Politique Européenne 2nd edn (Brussels: Labor, 1986).
On this, see William Wallace, ‘European Defence Cooperation: the reopening debate’, Survival, vol. XXVI, no. 6 (November/December 1984) pp. 251–261.
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© 1991 European University Centre for Peace Studies
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Wallace, W. (1991). West European Unity: Implications for Peace and Security. In: Birnbaum, K.E., Binter, J.B., Badzik, S.K. (eds) Towards a Future European Peace Order?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12189-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12189-2_5
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