Euro-Confusion

Abstract

The first coherent post-war voicing of a ‘European’ attempt to gain a security identity was made by René Pleven, the French prime minister, in 1950. The impetus for the initiative was the problem of how to rearm Germany and how to design an institutional setting that would satisfy German demands to be able to provide for their own defence (or at least make a contribution), while also assuaging French fears of a recrudescence of German militarism. An additional area of uncertainty was how long the US would maintain troops in Europe, for until 1950 the assumption in Washington was that the presence of US military personnel in Europe was a temporary measure, pending the creation of a Western European defence entity.¹ Although the emphasis has changed, the same basic concerns can be found in the early 1990s.