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

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John Gillingham
Department, his deputy in Paris since 1947, was responsible for liaison with Monnet.
In securing Tomlinson's designation as delegate in Luxembourg to the Schuman
Plan in the face of intense Atlanticist opposition, Bruce not only pulled off
something of a coup but ensured that all reporting from there would be favorable to
Monnet. 21
The changing of the guard in Washington resulted in a new policy-making
atmosphere and the institutionalization of Monnetist power. Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles tolerated only happy-talk about integration. Those weak in the faith
faced enormous pressure, according to Townsend Hoopes, who described Dulles'
first tour of European posts as having been "(...) notable for the sheer intensity of
will-power he applied to the discouraging prospects for the EDC. Gathering all the
mission chiefs or their deputies at a meeting in the embassy in Paris, and after rather
curtly paraphrasing his expectation of 'positive loyalty', he stressed the absolute
necessity for full ratification of the [treaty] within six months and ordered those
present (...) not to tolerate any discussion of alternatives within their embassies, nor
to admit in their dealings with European officials and the press that alternatives
even existed". 22 To enforce this policy, Dulles took the unusual step in February
1953 of appointing Bruce Special Representative in Paris.
The odd nomenclature was evidence of lip service to the propriety of American
non-intervention; yet the immediate purpose behind the appointment, as opposed to
the more general one of policy coordination, was to give Bruce the authority to browbeat
the Europeans into ratifying the EDC treaty. This was an exercise in futility.
The EDC was wildly unpopular everywhere except in Germany, where acceptance
was the price that had to be paid for ending the occupation. Not even Dulles'
December 1953 "agonizing reappraisal" threat, by which he meant that the United
States would pull the rug out from under Europe if the EDC failed, defused the
opposition. The French in fact buried the plan at the first opportunity, in August
1954. Only after the Dien Bien Phu defeat and the decision to withdraw from the
US-financed Indochina War was the cabinet in a position to risk an aid cutback. 23
"The rejection of the EDC treaty", Bruce prophesied in his diary "[would be]
the greatest diplomatic triumph ever achieved by the USSR. In Russia, as well as in
the iron curtain countries and amongst the Communist parties of other nations,
including the Soviet-controlled Communist delegation in the French National
Assembly, the cardinal principle of Soviet policy has been, for some years, to prevent
the coming into being of the European Defence Community. The men of the
Kremlin (...) realize that the EDC has become the symbol of unity of the free
world (...)." 24 Dulles went into a still deeper funk: The defeat of plans for the Euro-
21. FRUS, 1952-1954/VI "The Director of the Office of Regional Affairs (Moore) to the Deputy United
States Representative to the European Coal and Steel Community (Tomlinson)", 13 January
1953; Sherrill Brown Wells, "Unofficial Partners: The Cooperation of Treasury's William Tomlinson
and Jean Monnet in Advancing European Integration, 1947-1954" (manuscript), p. 17.
22. T. HOOPES, The Devil and John Foster Dulles, Boston 1973, p 164.
23. J. GILLINGHAM, "David K.E. Bruce," pp. 37-52.
24. Diaries of David K. E. BRUCE, Virginia Historical Society, 27 August 1954.