Chapter 49 The grand idea of ​​an Anglo-American alliance against Europe

The growing cooperation between the West Germany under Adenauer and France under Charles de Gaulle indicated the growing independence of Europe. In early 1962, policy factions influential in the John F. Kennedy administration in Washington articulated how to deal with this situation.This group of policy advisers included the ever-very influential John McCloy (he was the High Commissioner to Germany in the Truman Administration from 1949 to 1952), White House National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Assistant Secretary of State George Power and Robert Bowie of the CIA.They developed a detailed counterattack plan (known as the "Atlantic Grand Idea") to prevent France and Germany from establishing a strong and independent Europe.

On the surface, the United States expressed passionate and rhetorical support for Jean Monnet's vision of a unified Europe, but in essence, Washington's policy was to hope that the new common market would be open to the United States and firmly controlled by the United States and Britain. NATO military alliance.Washington's plan also calls for the UK's agreement to become a member of the six-nation common market.For this proposal, de Gaulle had every reason to firmly refuse. Following negotiations with Britain prior to the de Gaulle-Adenauer meeting in January 1963, the United States made every effort to oppose it.The Kennedy administration's State Department made no secret of their extreme displeasure with the Franco-German agreement.The US embassy in Bonn was instructed to exert maximum pressure on some members of Adenauer's Christian Democrats and Eric Mundy's Liberal Democrats, as well as the Social Democrats' opposition.Two days before the West German Bundestag formally considered the Franco-German agreement for the first time, on April 24, 1963, de Gaulle's staunch opponent Ludwig Erhard was elected as Adenauer's successor, He frankly admitted that he was an Atlanticist in favor of Britain's entry into the common market.The most important task in Adenauer's life was to ratify the Franco-German agreement, but at the last moment it was destroyed by the Anglo-American interest groups.

Since then, although the Franco-German agreement has been ratified, it is only a dead letter.Prime Minister Erhard's government has had few achievements due to partisan divisions. In July 1964, when a reporter asked de Gaulle how the Franco-German agreement was progressing, he painted a bleak picture of Franco-German relations.When talking about his own relationship with Adenauer's successor, de Gaulle said bitterly, "You cannot say that Germany and France have not agreed on a joint policy; So far Bonn is not convinced that this policy should be European and independent." By this time, the powerful think tanks of London and Washington had managed to defuse the threat posed by a powerful bloc pro-Continental policy different from the Anglo-American Atlantic conception.The weakest link in the European political chain - "occupied" Germany after the war, lost its chain at a critical moment.As before 1914, Britain's nineteenth-century "balance of power" policy towards the European continent was once again maintained.However, the re-establishment of the British "balance of power" policy this time was achieved through the intervention of the US State Department.Now is the time for Britain and the United States to deal directly with de Gaulle.But it turned out not to be an easy task.