number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

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John Gillingham
paid for respectability gained by participation in the Schuman Plan, as written into
the Treaty of Paris, was the continuation of occupation controls over heavy industry
until the High Authority deemed them no longer necessary. 14
The CSC and the European Defence Community
The CSC did not begin operations in Luxembourg until late-August 1952, by
which time its importance in American policy had been overshadowed by planning
for the European Defence Community (EDC), which paralleled the build up of
NATO decreed after the outbreak of the war in Korea. The Euro-army had a preeminently
political purpose, to make West German rearmament palatable to France
and the rest of Europe. One need not dwell on the obvious military shortcomings of
a combat unit in which companies in the same battalion (or "battle group") could
not have communicated in the same language. The main point is that the polyglot
force was never intended to exercise operational independence but to remain under
NATO command and be firmly embedded in its organizational structure. The alternative,
which remained alive as an option, would have allowed West Germans to
form nationally homogenous units but only within the NATO framework. In any
case, well before the big Korean build up had been completed, the United States,
and therefore NATO too, shifted to a strategy of massive retaliation in which
ground forces served merely as unwitting tripwires. 15
The diplomacy surrounding the European Defence Community had less to do
with how war should be waged than how the peace should be secured. The United
States bore the bulk of the costs for the massive post-Korea rearmament in Europe
because, quite simply, its NATO allies lacked the wherewithal to pay for their share
of it. In the twelve months after the outbreak of hostilities, the European NATO
allies doubled defense expenditure from four and a half billion dollars to nine billion
dollars. At this point, American aid entered the picture. In the not uncharacteristic
case of France it equalled about half of total defense expenditure or about onequarter
of the national budget in the years 1951-1954. He who controlled the aid
tapline, it was obvious, could make or break governments, set the pace of rearmament
– in West Germany, for example – and guide economic development. 16
The so-called Commissariat, inspired by Monnet, was at the very heart of the
EDC proposal. "More than a defense ministry," according to a West German military
historian, "it [resembled] a European government with four ministries, with
the military commissariat being like a ministry of defense." He adds that "the contractually
guaranteed independence of the commissioners from their governments,
14. J. GILLINGHAM, Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe, pp. 266-283.
15. Msrc Trachtenberg, "The Nuclearization of NATO and U.S.-European Relations" in F.H. HELLER
and J. GILLINGHAM (eds.), NATO: The Founding of the Atlantic Alliance and the Integration of
Europe, New York 1992, pp. 413-431.
16. M. M. HARRISON, The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security, Baltimore 1981, p. 33.