United States of Europe

Note: This article was originally written in 2018 and was published in "Utraque Unum," Georgetown University's only undergraduate research journal of the humanities

 

« La Communauté du Charbon et de l’Acier…son ultime objet est de contribuer essentiellement à la création des Etats-Unis d’Europe »[1] 

            Charlemagne is praised as Pater Europae for uniting Gallia and Germania in the 9^th century. Pope Leo III bestowed upon him the title Imperator Romanorum for constructing, through brutal conquest, a new Rome. More than a millennium later, Jean Monnet is praised as le père de l’Europe for uniting France and Germany. Yet Charles de Gaulle famously derided him as “l’homme des Américains”[2] for constructing, through negotiations and treaties, what appeared to be a new America. Today, the blue and gold flag of the European Union flies over much of the continent – from Lisbon to Helsinki, from Athens to Amsterdam.

            Jean Monnet was the most influential figure in the creation of a united Europe. His personal experience of both World Wars and his exposure to the immense strength of the United States deeply impressed him. It was clear to Monnet that America represented progress, modernity, and the future: Europe’s internal divisions were no longer sustainable in a bipolar world. In conceiving a United States of Europe, Monnet envisioned a strong and equal partner of the United States. In order to recover prestige, influence, and power on the world stage, the former grandes puissances of Europe needed to become like America. For Monnet, the economic and political restructuring of Europe in the image of America was a means to a higher end. Europe was not to adopt the American way of life and erase national differences; rather, Europe needed to reassert its autonomy in the face of American and Soviet hegemony. 

            Monnet was first exposed to America as a young man in the first decade of the 20^th century. A weak student, Monnet decided to travel at age sixteen, first to London and later to North America.[3] In this Mundus Novus “où tout semble possible et où les frontières sociales paraissent moins infranchissables qu’en Europe,” Monnet experienced culture shock.[4] He was refreshed by a greater sense of equality in America, where social class was less significant and less rigid than it was in hierarchical European societies. Furthermore, the people were different – they possessed a largeness of purpose, a great sense of challenge, an entrepreneurial and practical spirit, and a belief in equality through common hardship.[5] Monnet admired these qualities and remarked, “In this new world always on the move, I learned to get rid of the old atavistic suspicions which are so much a pointless worry and a waste of time.”[6]

This last remark begs the question: how much was Monnet as an individual Americanized? Such an inquiry can only be subjective, but some observations may be of interest. Following the Great War, Monnet used English as the primary language of his work. He even corresponded with some French colleagues, notably René Pleven, in English and spoke English with his family.[7] A State Department official and friend of Monnet, Henry Owen, stated that Monnet’s “optimism, his dedication to action, were in a way more American than European.”[8] Richard Mayne, a British advisor to Jean Monnet, observed that “in American company, Monnet changed character, laughing more, being more one of the boys.”[9] The French diplomat and politician Maurice Couve de Murville, who knew Monnet well, said of him, « Il était un vrai Français du terroir, de son pays de Cognac ; en même temps il était américain, alors qu’il n’avait rien d’américain dans son comportement. »[10] Monnet himself commented that he was partly American in his outlook, work habits, and pragmatism.[11]

Can one conclude that Jean Monnet was American in his character? Perhaps. But such a conclusion risks a departure from the empirical for the speculative. Optimism and pragmatism, for instance, are not inherently American; moreover, quantifying one’s optimism or pragmatism is impossible. One’s political perspective may also color one’s opinion as to whether Monnet’s character was American: Gaullists, for instance, may call him American because they were anti-American. Americans who disliked Monnet’s politics would be more prone to say that he was not American. US ambassador Murphy, for example, noted that Monnet “is definitely out to gain every advantage for the French he possibly can.”[12] Thus, although speculation over the degree to which Monnet had an Americanized personality is certainly interesting, a critical analysis of the American influence on Monnet’s actions and motivations is more revealing.

The First World War ruptured Monnet’s life and brought him into politics. He witnessed chaos and disorder – the French and the British, despite fighting as allies, were hardly coordinating their war efforts. Monnet claimed « il me semblait qu’il y avait en fait deux entités séparées bien que les objectifs aient été les mêmes. Cela me paraissait absurde. »[13] Evidently he believed that there would be greater efficiency if France and Britain worked in unison. Fortunately, Monnet succeeded in meeting with René Viviani, the president of the Council, to explain his ideas as a result of a personal connection between the president and a friend.[14] He encouraged the united organization of production, buying, and maritime transports between France and the UK; specifically, he asked the British to set up joint purchase commissions in order to avoid the bidding up of prices for Scandinavian and American steel, oil, and coal. His request was successful and Monnet secured 100 million francs from the Hudson Bay Company for this initiative.[15] The success of his project made it clear to Monnet that separate countries needed to work cooperatively for a common good. 

In 1919, Monnet became the secretary general of the League of Nations. In 1923, he left his post in Genève disenchanted; each member state, in true Machiavellian Realpolitik fashion, only looked out for its own interests.[16] In 1926 Jean Monnet became vice president of a US investment firm, Blair and Co.[17] He moved to the US and realized that the era of interbank cooperation had arrived: he was the intermediary between the Bank of France and the US,[18] and he helped stabilize the Polish złoty and the Romanian leu.[19] In 1929 two events profoundly marked Monnet’s life: he had a coup de foudre and married the Italian Sylvia Giannini, and the Stock Market crash ruined his finances.[20] Over the next decade, Monnet came to appreciate Roosevelt’s state programs to fight unemployment.[21]

As the dark clouds of revanchism clustered over Hitler’s Reich, Monnet lobbied on behalf of the French government. La Troisième République was gravely unprepared for German Blitzkrieg; Monnet wrote in his Memoirs, “The French Air Minister asked his Chief of Staff if the Air Force could defend France; ‘Feebly’ was his reply. He added that all that could be done was to build more aircraft, since there was a shortage of hangars and pilots. I could not help being struck by the contrast between this state of mind and that of America’s leaders. With them, the word ‘feebly’ was taboo.”[22] The gulf between the French and American psychological state was enormous: the French were fatalistic, pessimistic, not too far from the Nietzschean letzte Mensch; the Americans were industrious, ambitious, and optimistic.

Monnet knew that when war once again erupted on the European continent, America’s immense productive capacity and financial means would be vital for victory. A true éminence grise, Monnet possessed disproportional influence over key figures in the Roosevelt administration. In 1938, he convinced Morgenthau, the treasury secretary, to use private French investments available in the US – which encompassed around $500 million – to place orders for 555 combat planes and trainers in 1939 and another 1000 in 1940 for the French air force.[23] When Panzers and the Luftwaffe poured across the Ardennes, the French forces were overwhelmed. Monnet – fearing the same coordination problems he witnessed during the Great War – argued for a union of the British and French governments: « pour toute la conduite de la guerre, les deux gouvernements fusionnent et constituent un seul cabinet, avec la réunion des deux Parlements. »[24] Although the proposal never came into fruition, it demonstrates Monnet’s loyalty to the idea of inter-European cooperation. By 1943 it was clear that the tide of war had turned and an Allied victory was inevitable.

            At the war’s end, much of Europe lay in Schutt und Asche. The two superpowers – the US and the USSR eclipsed France, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain. American asymmetrical power and influence in Western Europe meant the Americanization of that region. In this context, Jean Monnet succeeded in transforming the European landscape. He wrote in his memoirs that after the war, “Our countries have become too small for the present-day world, for the scale of modern technology and of America and Russia today, or China and India tomorrow.”[25] Europeans had to acknowledge the necessity of new institutions which would serve to overcome nationalist ressentiments in favor of rapprochement. Europe’s bloody descent into war made it clear to Monnet that something needed to change – Europe would learn from its past and unite in a sort of Hegelian Aufhebung process.

Faced with decadence or modernity, Monnet prescribed the bitter pill of an Americanization of Europe’s political system. A strong believer in institutional inertia, Monnet envisaged a federated Europe modeled after the United States.[26] He greatly admired the American political model, which enshrined liberty, equality, and democracy: Europe needed to emulate this structure.[27] Monnet explained his vision to William Tomlinson, the American treasury representative in Paris, “When the thirteen States of your continent were forming the United States of America, they needed friends to help them overcome the immense difficulties they faced. To succeed in what we have undertaken, we too need friends.”[28] Evidently, the great American experiment was a historical model for what Monnet imagined for the future of Europe: what the thirteen colonies had done, Europe was to do. According to George Ball, an American diplomat who collaborated with Monnet over the Marshall plan, Monnet envisioned a Europe “endowed with efficient institutions resembling even very remotely, the United States constitution.”[29]

A united European government, however, was always an arrière pensée; the most important step towards a United States of Europe was economic integration. France – and Europe as a whole – needed to modernize. To Monnet, the United States’ economy was the ultimate model of economic progress: as previously mentioned, he was enthralled by America’s productive capacity and America’s robust response to the Great Depression.

Having returned to France, Monnet was instrumental to the future of the French economy. His ‘Monnet plan’ was an ambitious economic initiative which gave priority to six basic sectors: coal, electricity, steel, transport, cement, and farm machinery.[30] Monnet diagnosed the problem of the backwardness of the French economy as primarily psychological, noting the problem “was undoubtedly the lack of enterprise, which had led to a serious neglect of productive investment and modernization.”[31] Indeed, he believed it was less important for the French farmer to have a new tractor than to think differently about output.[32] One way of changing the French mindset was to mimic the informal contact of American and British business culture: he insisted, for instance, on having a dining room in the planning offices.[33] With the aid of American economists Stacy May and Robert Nathan,[34] Monnet emphasized productivity, profitability, competitiveness, and labor mobility.[35]           

Monnet’s plan for post-war French agriculture reveals the influence of the American economic model on his thinking. Working with Libert Bou, an agronomist, Monnet promoted mechanization, agricultural expansion, fewer farmers, and larger farms.[36] Bou claimed that « Jean Monnet voulait que je me rende compte aux USA de ce qui avait été fait. » Monnet clearly wanted Bou to copy America, and purportedly claimed « Le Tennessee c’était l’Auvergne. »[37] What works in America will work in Europe.

 In 1945, Monnet convinced Jean Fourastié to become an economic advisor on the Commissariat général du Plan. Fourastié, who coined the term les Trentes Glorieuses, was advised to go to America to learn about productivity. He wrote « au cours de ma tournée en Amérique, je m’étais de plus en plus convaincu que les problèmes de productivité étaient des questions majeures commandant l’avenir. Jean Monnet lui-même en était très conscient. »[38] Clearly Monnet believed that the Americans were so far advanced because they were so productive. The French had much to learn from them, and Monnet had « l’idée de montrer aux Français comment les Américains travaillaient. »[39] To modernize, the French needed to work like the Americans.

Monnet’s chef d’œuvre, however, was the European Coal and Steel Community. Believing that the small European states could not compete when isolated in a chaotic Hobbesian atmosphere, Jean Monnet advocated tirelessly for a supranational body to regulate European coal and steel output under a central authority. Monnet asserted « Seule la création d’une entité européenne large, fusionnant les productions, les marchés permettra de donner un essor nouveau à ces pays qui, autrement, ne peuvent pas sortir de leur traditionalisme…s’ils ne se transforment pas constamment, ils ne feront pas face au progrès [des] USA, »[40] The Schuman plan, named after the French foreign minister Robert Schuman, was announced on May 9^th, 1950.[41] The plan was the first step towards a united Europe, and passed in the French Assembly with 377 to 233 votes, and in the German Bundestag with 232 to 143 votes; it came into being August 10^th, 1952.[42] According to Monnet, « Le charbon et l’acier ont été choisis à cet effet parce qu’ils constituent à nos yeux les éléments de base de l’économie moderne. »[43]

Evidently Monnet sought to Americanize the European economy and political system – but why? Did he want to uproot European cultures and replace it with American culture? Did he believe that Americanization was an end in itself; that Europe should be a sort of vassal of the United States? Was not the surrender of French sovereignty to a supranational institution a lèse majesté? Charles de Gaulle, who believed that the fundamental reality of international politics is the nation-state, epitomized French nationalism and sought French leadership in Europe.[44] He supported Monnet’s plan to revitalize the French economy, but fervently denounced the Schuman plan.[45] For de Gaulle, the world was a zero-sum game: he would never accept heteronomy. He passionately decried the Pleven Plan, which Monnet supported, deriding the idea of a European Defense Community and a common European army as a “stateless melting pot.”[46] To de Gaulle, Monnet did not want a strong France, but a second America.

      Jean Monnet never wished for an Americanization of Europe to mean American domination of the Old Continent. Above all, Monnet wanted the European states to understand the new reality: if Europe did not unite, America would dominate. Monnet’s criticism of de Gaulle clarifies his perspective, « Ce que nous offre le général de Gaulle…n’est pas l’indépendance, c’est la domination économique des USA et la domination politique de l’URSS. »[47] Monnet wanted Europe to once again be a great power, to be equal with the United States. Hence, he asserted “Europe cannot long afford to remain almost exclusively dependent on American credit for her production and American strength for her security, without harmful results both here and in Europe.”[48] An equal partnership between Europe and the US, the “arsenal of democracy”, would be advantageous for all partners, according to Monnet.[49]

Furthermore, Monnet did not want to supplant European culture with American culture. To convince Chancellor Adenauer to agree to the ECSC, Monnet argued unity would mean that Europe could repossess « le rôle dirigeant que, du point de vue intellectuel et du point de vue de la civilisation, elle a eu jadis dans le monde et qu’elle doit de nouveau y avoir. L’Europe bénéficie d’une diversité qui fait sa richesse et qui manque à l’Amérique. Si elle retrouvait sa prospérité, elle influerait, pour cette raison, sur l’évolution de l’Amérique elle-même. »[50] Europe would become prosperous and influential again – Europe’s rich diversity may even influence the United States itself. Éric Roussel asserts that a United States of Europe did not mean uniformity for Monnet; « Raboter les différences, effacer des siècles d’histoire, étendre au monde entier l’american way of life, rien n’est plus éloigné de sa pensée. »[51]

More than anything, Monnet never saw an Americanized Europe as a threat to national differences. He emphasized the common civilization and values of the West. For him, a strong Europe would serve to help America promote democracy, liberty, and equality around the world. Thus, one must not misconstrue Monnet’s intentions when he reflected, “Equality is possible now only because France and Germany together have begun to build a great European entity with the prospect of becoming a sort of second America.”[52] Monnet did not want to recreate America in Europe; rather, he sought to use Americanization as a means to give Europe a voice again. He never feared that national cultures were threatened by a supranational entity; he considered such anxieties immaterial, writing that “While fifty-five countries were meeting in Lomé or Brussels to seek their common interests, our diplomats were holding pointless debates about a ‘European identity’. Paradoxically it already existed in the eyes of observers overseas.”[53]

One can fault Monnet for disregarding such qualms. Prime Minister Michel Debré accused Monnet of wanting « la fin de l’Histoire. »[54] Such a criticism is largely accurate: Monnet repeated constantly that Europe does not have a choice but to unite.[55] He failed to sufficiently appreciate the attachment to traditional cultures, and succumbed to a Fukuyama-esque historical fatalism. His response to British reluctance to join the European Community reveals this, “Great Britain had no choice, now, except solitary decline or integration into a larger grouping. To tell the truth, that had been obvious for twenty-five years; but it takes a good quarter-century to efface the illusions that dead realities leave in the minds of nations and of men.”[56] Individuals require more than just democracy and economic prosperity. Everyone possesses a cultural attitude and sense of place which must be addressed and supported.

Jean Monnet remains the single most influential figure in the establishment of European unity. Monnet was deeply impressed by America’s wealth, power, industry, and cultural outlook; according to many of those who knew him, he had adopted somewhat of an American attitude towards life. An advocate of coordination and cooperation through both World Wars and afterwards, Monnet grew to believe that Europe had to reform in the style of America. Progress and modernization implied an imitation of the American economy and a political federation of European states based on the model of the United States. Yet Americanization for Monnet never implied the importation of American culture at the expense of European culture. He argued Europe could only escape American and Soviet cultural and political domination by uniting. Once that happened – and he believed it necessarily would happen – Europe would regain influence over world affairs and once again contribute to the progress of Western civilization.  Unfortunately, Monnet failed to adequately respond to fears over the dissolution of European culture and to the popular attachment to national sovereignty. Internal divisions and a crisis of leadership broke up the Carolingian Empire in the late 9^th century; will the same be true of the European Union?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Hackett, Clifford P. Monnet and the Americans: the Father of a United Europe and his U.S. Supporters. Washington, D.C.: Jean Monnet Council, 1995. Print.

Kuisel, Richard F. “The Monnet Plan.” Capitalism and State in modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: University Press, 1981. 219-247. Print.

Monnet, Jean. « Des institutions communes. » Europe donner corps à une idée. Bruxelles: Office des Publications de l'Union Européenne, 2009. 264-265. Print.

Monnet, Jean, Roy Jenkins, and Richard Mayne. Memoirs. London: Collins, 1978. Print.

Roussel, Éric. Jean Monnet: 1888-1979. Paris: Fayard, 2010. Print.

Wells, Sherrill Brown. Jean Monnet: Unconventional Statesman. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2011. Print.