European Union Politics Course

How did the emerging Cold War influence the European integration process in the 1950s?

Post-war state of affairs appeared to be contributing to the promotion of supra-national cooperation, and important development was undeniably made towards the economic and monetary integration of Western Europe during the fifteen years after the German Reich collapsed. As an outcome of two world wars, Europe was left in ruins and nearly six years of martial conflicts and clashes had left its nations in social as well as economic crisis. Emergence of cold war also acted as a catalyst towards European integration process in the 1950s. European countries were tattered by this Cold War which was basically an ideological struggle between capitalism in the West and communisms in the East. In fact, these circumstances proved to be ideal setting for the integration process even though, struggles of the cold war would mean any supranational cooperation would take place between Western European nations only (Ludlow, 2007).

Events such as Marshall Aid and European military planning indicate that the threat of the Cold War did precipitate the integration of the period. In fact, cold war acted as a blessing in guise for Europe which unified the countries against Russia. Moreover, it also accelerated the integration process which remained from 1940s to early 1990s. The aftermath of the 2nd world war brought a great destruction to the continent and it was necessary to avoid catastrophic participation. The time called for untied and peaceful Europe which was only possible if it avoid aligning itself with either USA or USSR. Peace was undeniably the primary purpose behind integration which was evident in the Stockholm Appeal which invited all the countries to come on a single platform to ban worldwide nuclear weapons.

In 1947, Marshall Plan was proposed by USA which aimed to harmonize the economy of entire continent of the Europe. It removed the trade barriers within the continent so that economy can foster at a greater pace and overcome the 2nd world war setbacks. This proved to be a very important factor in the European integration even though it was not the primary aim of the USA. American wanted to cease the communism in the continent (Ludlow, 2010).

As mentioned before, the main divergence between European Council and Russia during 1950s was in term of capitalism versus communism. The founding members of EC were resolute to remove all barriers to European market. In order to harmonize the economies, they first must develop their relations with each other so that they could carry out successful trade among them. Particularly, Germany wanted access to the steal market of Western Europe which forced it to be part of the integration rather than turning to Russia. Many more events of 1950s also influenced the integration process like formation of NATO. Subsequent to the formation of NATO, integrations process received a setback but the aftereffect reversed in 1949 when went Germany joined NATO. France and Germany finally came to a common platform to ...