Cover
Titel
Europe's Cold War Relations. The EC Towards a Global Role


Herausgeber
Krotz, Ulrich; Patel, Kiran Klaus; Romero, Federico
Reihe
New Approaches to International History
Erschienen
London 2020: Bloomsbury
Anzahl Seiten
312 S.
Preis
$ 115.00; € 99,95
Rezensiert für H-Soz-Kult von
Guasconi Maria Eleonora, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, University of Genova

In the last decade, a growing amount of literature has focused on the issue of the external relations of the European Community/European Union (EC/EU), thus linking European integration dynamics to broader international history.

This increasing interest towards the global role played by the EC/EU in the international system can be explained as a consequence of the debate on its peculiar nature, neither a state, nor a traditional international organization, but it also depends on the major internal and external threats which the European Union is actually facing.

Much of the literature dedicated to the EU’s external relations generally focuses on the post-Maastricht period onwards, considering the external relations of the European Community and its international role only as a prologue to the establishment of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1992.

The volume “Europe’s Cold War Relations” fills this gap, dealing with the role played by the European Community in the international system from the Treaty of Rome to the Treaty of Maastricht and attempts to demonstrate how the EC became an actor in world affairs during the Cold War and what kind of actor. The book is an ambitious and impressive achievement, not only because it covers all the possible fields of the EC’s external action, from its role played during the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations, to the external dimension of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but also because it represents a successful effort to break off the separation existing between the historiography of European integration and that of the Cold War.

The book is divided in three sections and 14 chapters, written by a mixture of young and well-known established scholars, who represent a wide range of disciplines, from history to political science and international relations. All the contributions rely on impressive archival research and several other primary sources. After an introductory chapter written by Kiran Klaus Patel, Federico Romero and Piers Ludlow which review the debates about European integration history and its relationship with Cold War’s historiography, the volume is divided in three sections, “World Regions”, “Policy Fields” and “Reflections and Conclusions”. Section 1 deals with the EC’s relations with the United States (Kenneth Weisbrode), Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Angela Romano), Southern Europe and the Mediterranean (Elena Calandri), the People’s Republic of China (Enrico Fardella) and Japan (Albrecht Rothacher), providing an extensive overview of the multilateral relationships developed by the Community during the Cold War.

Section 2 examines the external dimension of the EC’s policies, including the role played by the Community during several rounds of GATT negotiations (Lucia Coppolaro), the establishment of a Common European Foreign and Security Policy (Wilfried Loth), the external dimension of the Common Agricultural Policy (Katja Seidel), the analysis of the EC’s enlargement policy (Eirini Karamouzi) and of international development policy (Giuliano Garavini). Finally, Section 3 is a useful and critical analysis of all the chapters and a critical reconsideration of the EC’s role during the Cold War and of the nature of the European project (Konrad H. Jarausch, Charles Maier, Ulrich Krotz).

The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the EC’s foreign relations during the Cold War, giving us a more coherent picture of the Community as an international actor. The result is a nuanced picture, which demonstrates that although the EC was able to stabilize post-war Europe in the aftermath of World War II and to act as a “key consolidator of prosperous democracies” (p. 8) as in the case of Germany and Italy and later of Greece, Spain and Portugal and of most of the East-Central European countries, it never became a primary actor of the power struggles which defined international relations in the post-World War II era and, if considered in a wider, global scenario, its role during the Cold War remained largely regional.

In spite of these remarks, the book clearly demonstrates that “tracing the multifaceted and often discrete ways in which the EC became an actor in world affairs” (p. 2) from 1957 to 1992 it is a necessary exercise, which helps us to better understand contemporary European successes and failures in foreign policy.

Finally, the interdisciplinary approach used in the book, which “connect(s) and compare(s) historical analysis with the concepts and the categories used by International Relations scholars” (p. 2), demonstrates how current research is attempting to overcome the inward-looking approach, too often shown by the scholars of European integration in the past.

This change of attitude can have a significant impact on the way in which European integration history is taught to students, too often explained as a parallel history, separated from the international system, and identified mainly by the technical and economic details of the negotiations in Brussels, or by the bureaucratic institutions, or by the ideals of a small and enlightened political élite.

The volume represents not only an impressive contribution for the debate on the EU’s foreign policy among scholars, but also for an overall reflection on its role in the international system. It is also an important teaching resource, and its particular format will certainly be useful for researchers and teachers in a variety of disciplines.

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