Late last week, French President Emmanuel Macron angered President Trump by calling for a European army. When the two met at the Elysée Palace Saturday, Macron soothed his U.S. counterpart by suggesting his proposal would help with burden-sharing in NATO.
Macron — who’s taking his play out of mid-20th-century NATO/EU history — is right, but only if Europe wants to further integrate.
The end of World War II ushered in a new era. The devastation wrought by Europe’s second war within three decades combined with the start of the Cold War had western leaders asking: (1) How do we best protect against communist expansion? (2) How do we avoid another catastrophic war? Many think only the first of these two questions led to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, but as world-renowned historian Dr. Lawrence Kaplan explains: “If there was a long-run purpose in the North Atlantic Treaty … it was the hope of breaking down the barriers of national sovereignty that had plagued the West since the advent of the nation state and that were held responsible for most of the disasters of the twentieth century.”
Indeed, several mid-20th-century European leaders saw European unification as the answer to their problems. Britain’s Winston Churchill asserted in 1946, “We must build a kind of United States of Europe.” With this thinking, a number of “communities” began welding Europe together.
First came the European Coal and Steel Community, which included France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany in 1952. While the treaty aimed to improve the economies of its participants, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman aptly described its additional goal of preventing future wars through European integration: “The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.”
More treaties created more “communities” in the years to come. They all increased European integration, finally merging as the European Union through the Maastricht Treaty in 1993.
But some communities — like the European Defense Community (EDF) — failed. Its purpose, to quote the 1952 treaty, was to “ensure the security of the member States … within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty.” The proposed treaty died in 1954 because the French National Assembly, which valued French sovereignty over a federal Europe, delivered the coup de grâce by refusing to ratify it.
It’s ironic then that a French president is now the one reviving the idea of a European army, but the irony doesn’t make him wrong. If mustered along the same lines as the EDF treaty, this army would solidify Europe’s future commitment to NATO. Such an army could result in Europe paying its fair share to NATO without eroding U.S. interests — a double win for America.
Be it good or bad for the U.S., the real crux gets to one of the major causes of Euroscepticism — are EU states now willing to surrender so much national sovereignty? If so, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement that she will not seek re-election, combined with this talk of a European army, could set up Macron to step in as the new de facto leader of a unifying Europe. This seems like a long shot, but then again, so is creating your own political party out of thin air and winning the presidency of France. Seems these kinds of wild plays are within Macron’s wheelhouse.
Gregory Jackson | Utah Valley University
Gregory R. Jackson, Ph.D., is assistant director of national security studies and assistant professor of integrated studies at Utah Valley University. He also hosts the podcast, “History That Doesn’t Suck.” Follow him on twitter @ProfGregJackson
