Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War, by Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (eds.)

 

10. Realism and Reconciliation: France, Germany, and the European Union

Michael Loriaux

The governments of Western Europe have engaged in the most ambitious experiment in progressive international political reform in history. That experiment would seem to fly in the face of realist theory, which invites us to conceptualize nation-states as self-interested actors pursuing self-help policies within an anarchical system, in which politics is conditioned by the competition for power. But many facets of the history of European integration do in fact conform to realist expectations. Before World War II, international politics in Western Europe was power politics. The disruptive effects of power competition were contained only by hegemonic intervention by the United States. Today, some cooperative ventures, particularly in monetary relations, are conditioned by European efforts to cushion their economies against the destabilizing effects of U.S. self-help policies designed to alter the terms of the postwar hegemonic arrangement.

But there remains an aspect of European integration that realism cannot explain: the robustness of Franco-German reconciliation and cooperation in promoting integration following reunification. According to realist theory, we should expect Germany to act more hegemonically in Europe. We would expect France and Great Britain to balance German power. But Germany resists the hegemonic temptation, France’s relationship with Germany remains close, and France’s relationship with Great Britain remains more distant. But there is a way to reconceptualize realism so that it does allow for this peculiarity, which I discuss in the conclusion.

I have adopted a different method of inquiry from that of most of the other chapters. Trained as a historian, I tend to resist the idea that history can be treated as a warehouse of data with which to test social science theories. The textual evidence underdetermines theoretical statements, particularly in modern times, for which the sheer volume of documentation is overwhelming. Moreover, historical texts are prone to divergent interpretations. The historian makes sense of the mass of evidence by weaving narratives around it, the narrative being a more supple and adaptable mental construct than nomological theory. But narratives, even though they adhere more closely to the evidence, are nevertheless subject to the same objections as nomological explanations: they are also underdetermined by the evidence, and the evidence is still susceptible to a variety of interpretations. Modern historians have become more aware of this fact, and as a result have become more willing to recognize that narratives, which provide guidance through the bewildering maze of historical evidence, appeal more or less intentionally to some normative or ideological principle or preference for guidance. History, in this conceptualization, becomes a site of debate among scholars of different normative sensibilities. That debate is refereed—but not always decided—by the archives. ₁

My approach to the theme of this book is informed by this observation. I seek to assess the extent to which realism, conceived as a normative sensibility, warranted (at least hypothetically) by some more or less rational understanding of how “the world works,” can credibly guide the historiography of the European Union. Or, turning the proposition around, I seek to assess the extent to which the history of the European Union can serve as a warrant for being a realist.

 

U.S. Hegemony and the Origins of the European Union

Realism helps us understand European integration because it informs two concepts, hegemony and what I call “geopolitical internationalism,” that illuminate many aspects of European and U.S.-European relations.

Power competition in Western Europe traditionally centered on control of the Rhineland, the industrial core of continental Western Europe since the end of the nineteenth century. The Rhine itself is one of the principal inland waterways of the world, linking Rotterdam, the world’s busiest seaport, with the industrial hinterland of the Ruhr, the upper Rhine, the Main, the Saar, and the Neckar. Continental Europe’s industrial heartland reaches out from Rotterdam and Antwerp to southern England, the oil fields of the North Sea, and the rest of the world. In the south, through deeply cut Alpine passes, the Rhineland economy tugs at Milan, Turin, Genoa, and Italy’s industrialized north. At the Rhineland’s hub, Western Europe’s coal and steel core extends from Lorraine to the Ruhr. The steel industry has declined, but the industrial supremacy of the Rhineland has not. From Basel to Rotterdam, from Lille to Frankfurt and Stuttgart, the geographical basin of the Rhine remains the industrial, commercial, and financial heart of the Western European economy today.

Geopolitically, the Rhineland, whose economic preeminence was already visible in late Antiquity, was among the last regions of Western Europe to be integrated into the emerging nation-state system. The Treaty of Vienna (1818) was the principal instrument of that integration. It consolidated France’s claim to Lorraine and Alsace, recognized England as the guarantor of the sovereignty and integrity of the Netherlands and Belgium (following independence) as buffer states, and installed Prussia on the banks of the middle Rhine. But the Vienna settlement antedated the industrial era and the rise of the Rhineland as an industrial powerhouse. Prussia developed the Rhineland’s economic potential and aggressively harnessed the region’s industries to its military machine. By the end of the nineteenth century the German Reich, unified under Prussian leadership, was the premier industrial power of Europe.

The defeat of Germany in 1919 and again in 1945 created the opportunity to renegotiate the partition of the Rhineland. The dominance of Rhenish industry was such that all great powers of the West had a stake in the settlement. The French had wanted to keep the Rhineland away from the Prussians, the British then wanted to keep it away from the French, and now the Americans wanted to keep it away from the Russians. This competition for control of the Rhineland generated a discernible parallelism in the diplomatic histories of the two postwar periods. The first phase of those histories was dominated by French efforts to detach the Rhineland from Germany and make it a sovereign state, subject to French influence. British and American resistance caused that plan to collapse. Subsequently, the French adopted a strategy that one might call “geopolitical cartelism.” They sought to create, in collaboration with the Germans and without the Americans, some more or less exclusivist and mercantilist arrangement with Germany such that their claims on the industrial wealth of the Rhineland would be given some satisfaction, and German sovereignty over the Ruhr constrained. Those efforts were little more than embryonic in 1923. Representatives of the French steel industry met with their German counterparts, with the authorization of the French Foreign Ministry, to explore solutions to the reparations problem that might prove beneficial to both parties. They agreed on a plan that involved the transfer of a number of mines to French ownership, a long-term contract guaranteeing the delivery of German coke to French mills, and a second long-term contract whereby German mills would agree to buy a part of the semi-finished goods produced by French industry. English and American opposition put an end to these efforts.

But after World War II, the United States supported French efforts to enter into this kind of mercantilistic relationship with Germany. The United States wanted to reunify the three western zones of occupied Germany to implement its strategy of containment of the Soviet Union. The French resisted. Neither concessions nor Marshall aid swayed them. No compromise was in sight as late as March 1949 when European foreign ministers prepared to meet in Washington to lay the groundwork for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In this context, Secretary of State Dean Acheson appealed to French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman: “I believe that our policy in Germany, and the development of a German Government which can take its place in Western Europe, depends on the assumption by your country of leadership in Europe on these problems.” ₂

The French seized that offer, and achieved what has since been recognized as the single most decisive step in the creation of the European Union. They proposed the establishment of a European Coal and Steel Community that placed the entire French and German outputs of coal and steel under a single European High Authority, and created a common, cartelized market for coal and steel products. The French accepted West German reunification in exchange for secure access to the resources of the Ruhr, multilateral control over the allocation of the industrial wealth of Europe’s steel-producing core, and secure European markets for French steel-producing firms. The success of the Monnet Plan of Economic Reconstruction and Modernization was predicated on this diplomatic success.

In the beginning, European integration was hegemonically mediated. Working under hegemonic constraint-cum-sponsorship, France pursued its strategy of geopolitical cartelism in a way that is perfectly compatible with realist expectations. Germany responded by deploying a more inclusive policy of “geopolitical internationalism,” which is no less compatible with realist expectations. The Germans showed generally strong support for multilateralism, but only because those arrangements provided the most expeditious way to regain equality of status with the victorious powers and curry Western support for territorial reunification. France, however, continued to work to institutionalize its cartel relationship with Germany and to construct a viable European rival to the Atlantic alliance, because this was the most expeditious way to maximize control over the way Germany used its resources. In pursuit of that strategy, de Gaulle, who returned to power in 1958, gave strong support to West German claims on East Germany, and, in the first years of his presidency, adopted a decidedly anti-Soviet foreign policy. De Gaulle and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the Franco-German Treaty of Reconciliation in January 1963, just as de Gaulle vetoed Great Britain’s entry into the Common Market and rejected American proposals to participate in the Multilateral Nuclear Force. But de Gaulle’s ambitions collapsed at the point of success. The German Bundestag refused to abandon the strategy of geopolitical internationalism in favor of this cartel relationship with France. It voted unanimously to append a preamble to the treaty that emphasized the importance of “entente between the free peoples—with a particularly close cooperation between Europe and the United States,” and added a pointed reference to Great Britain’s exclusion from the Common Market. ₃ Adenauer retired soon thereafter and the government of Germany passed to the more liberal and pro-American Ludwig Erhard.

France’s strategy of geopolitical cartelism ultimately failed. France reacted to this failure by adopting a unilateralist, even exploitative orientation in foreign policy. Through brinkmanship in the Common Market, de Gaulle forced passage of the Common Agricultural Policy (which essentially required Germany to subsidize French agriculture), and the formal recognition of the “unit-veto” in Common Market affairs. During this same period, France withdrew its forces from the integrated NATO command structure and adopted a more sympathetic policy toward the Soviet Union.

 

Diplomatic Failure and French Internationalism

After having failed to draw Germany into a tightly construed cartel relationship, French policy eventually turned decisively cooperative and more inclusively internationalist, both in the 1920s and the 1970s. In both cases, the turnabout in policy had the same cause: diplomatic failure compounded by financial weakness. In 1923, the occupation of the Ruhr by the French provoked British and American opposition. The House of Morgan and the governor of the Bank of England made it clear to the French that they “could not advance sizable loans to Germany [needed for reparations payments] unless unilateral sanctions were banned.” ₄ The French, financially strapped and in the grip of currency crisis, began to withdraw from the Ruhr in 1925. In the interwar period, as in the post-World War II period, U.S. involvement in European politics generated new international institutions. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), established as executor of the Young Plan in 1929, is the dean of contemporary international organizations, and is set symbolically in Basel on the banks of the Rhine, where it materializes the link between the competition for control of the Rhineland and the development of institutions of economic cooperation in Europe.

The French welcomed involvement by American financiers, given the free fall of the franc on currency markets and the budget deficits that the occupation of the Ruhr had spawned. The Germans, meanwhile, persisted in their strategy of geopolitical internationalism. They had been seeking to enlist American involvement since 1921. In 1924, the Auswärtiges Amt expressed the hope that “the United States could somehow be persuaded to invest large sums of idle and unproductive money in German industry. Not only would Germany’s capitalistic system benefit, but its economic recovery and the revision of the Versailles treaty would almost certainly be accelerated.” ₅

Having relinquished all unilateral or cartelistic claims on the Rhineland, the French now invested in efforts to internationalize it, that is, to contribute to the success of multilateral agreements and institutions that placed constraints on Germany’s sovereign power to exploit the wealth of the Ruhr. In other words, the French themselves embraced geopolitical internationalism. But whereas the Germans adopted geopolitical internationalism in order to gain equality of status with the other great powers, the French adopted it in order to institutionalize and confirm international constraints on German sovereignty. The French now looked to the League of Nations and the United States to secure respect of those articles of the Treaty of Versailles that regulated German activity in military matters, and secured the partial transfer of German wealth to the allies through reparations. In 1925, France agreed to admit Germany to the League; in 1927, France and the United States acted together to win adherents to the Kellogg-Briand pact, one of the foremost expressions of the liberal reformism of the period, and when Germany and Austria entered into a trade alliance, the French suggested that the plan be extended to all European countries. ₆

In similar fashion, French diplomacy turned more aggressively supportive of integrationist institutions after 1969. Pompidou, who succeeded de Gaulle as president of France, could not sustain the unilateralist thrust of Gaullist policy. Hostility toward Germany left France isolated in Europe. The French responded, as in 1924, by embracing and even championing the cause of internationalism. Pompidou approved Great Britain’s entry into the Common Market. He supported the project for Economic and Monetary Union as a means to back France out of the diplomatic cul-de-sac in which de Gaulle had left it.

It is true that the monetary crisis of 1969–1973 delayed implementation of the plan as a bitter feud erupted between France and Germany regarding Europe’s response to the pending breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. But the French altered the general orientation of their monetary policy in 1974 under the leadership of the new president, Valéry Giscard-d’Estaing, and adopted a strong franc policy (for reasons analyzed in greater detail below). France and Germany resolved their monetary differences, solidified their relationship, and assumed joint leadership within the European Community. France and Germany led the campaign to create the European Monetary System in 1978, to admit Greece to the European Union in 1981 and Spain and Portugal in 1986, to abolish custom controls at the frontier (the Schengen agreements of 1985 signed with Benelux and Spain), to revise the Treaty of Rome and promulgate the Single European Act in 1986, to establish a plan for Economic and Monetary Union in 1989, to endorse the principle of political union in 1990, to create the Eurocorps in 1991, to reform the Common Agricultural Policy in 1992, and to admit Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Norway in 1994. ₇

 

Change in the Hegemonic Order and European Economic Cooperation

France and Germany adopted strategies of geopolitical internationalism in response to pressures and incentives created by American actions. But, as the preceding litany of achievements makes plain, French and German internationalism endures, even though the hegemonic order that spawned it is being gradually dismantled. Enduring Franco-German internationalism and leadership in Europe now constitute, at least in part, a response to American efforts to “alter the terms” of its hegemonic relationship with its allies, efforts informed by American perceptions of decline relative to the rising economies of Europe and especially East Asia.

Monetary integration provides an illustration. The post-World War II hegemonic order was composed of institutions and arrangements that gave states the means to manage and direct capital in a way that preserved political stability within the framework of an open international economic order and export-led growth. ₈ States were empowered to direct capital to accomplish political tasks: neutralize political opposition through subsidies and clientelism, nurture the development of an indigenous industrial and financial elite, and develop a strong industrial base that facilitated participation in an open trade order and contributed to the military strength of the alliance.

France and Germany took advantage of these hegemonic arrangements in different ways. France entered into a thirty-year partnership with inflation. Although inflation did not always manifest itself in consumer price increases, money supply growth was always rapid, even in times of apparent price stability, as, for example, during the post-Korean War recession. Price inflation at other times was held in check by administrative controls. Despite periods of price stability, rapid growth in the monetary base, due to credit expansion, generated endemic inflationary pressures in France that dominated economic policymaking for much of the post-World War II period. To contain and channel those pressures to productive use, successive governments patched together a complex system linking banks to public finance agencies to semi-public lenders to post office checking accounts, all attached to and directed by the Treasury, “the sanctuary inside the temple of the Ministry of Finance, the economic apex.” ₉ Through this system, the French irrigated the economy with inflationary money in a more or less controlled fashion. Elsewhere, I describe the development of an “overdraft economy” in which economic activity, rather than being regulated and directed by market forces, was driven by the growing dependence of industry on credit accounts managed by lending institutions under direct or indirect state control. The state was typically reluctant to impose rigorous standards, fearing the economic and political repercussions of doing so. The overdraft economy thus became a source of “soft constraints,” as described by Janos Kornai in his study of the former socialist regimes of Eastern Europe. ₁₀

The institutional constraints of the overdraft economy generally succeeded in containing inflationary pressures. But the dikes gave way on more than one occasion. When the French overdraft economy spun out of control, as it did in 1948, 1954, 1957, 1969, 1975, and 1981, the only tool the French could wield effectively was that of external adjustment—devaluation of the franc (or, as in 1954, manipulation of trade restrictions in a way that mimicked the effect of a devaluation). In other words, France’s overdraft economy was viable because the international monetary order, structured by a hegemonic United States, made it possible for France to achieve adjustment with the help of (and at the expense of) the international community.

Germany responded differently to the opportunities created by the hegemonic order in international monetary relations. In Germany, economic growth was accorded the highest priority as the means to solve a number of difficult political issues. ₁₁ But Germany’s international situation all but ruled out French-style interventionism, while institutional decentralization under the federal constitution—itself the legacy of occupation—complicated state intervention even in the form of Keynesian demand management. ₁₂ The government therefore spurred growth by promoting exports, and promoted exports by pegging the Deutschmark to an external parity that was undervalued relative to the dollar. ₁₃ The strategy would never have worked had not Bretton Woods conferred on central banks a monopoly on operations on the currency market. Absent that monopoly, the Deutschmark would have been bid up by traders long before 1971. ₁₄

But in the mid-1960s, the United States began to neglect and finally abandon its hegemonic commitments in monetary relations. It started to indulge in inflationary policy itself under the dual pressure of war in Vietnam and domestic social unrest. American policy aggravated inflationary pressures and monetary instability world-wide. American policy had begun to turn predatory. ₁₅ The United States could indulge in inflation, yet ignore the potential trade and monetary effects of inflation, at least for a time, because the American currency was the principal medium of international trade. Germany reacted to imported inflationary pressures by imposing a rigorous stabilization plan in 1966. As the international monetary system grew more unstable, America’s allies called for the devaluation of the dollar. Unwilling to revalue the Soviet Union’s gold stock by devaluing the dollar, and increasingly intolerant of the asymmetric trade and monetary arrangements that characterized the hegemonic order, the United States refused to devalue and insisted that other countries revalue. As the crisis worsened, Germany suspended the mark’s fixed parity in May 1971, letting it float upwards as the market dictated. But the French refused that course. They were vehemently critical of American policy. Having devalued in August 1969, they naturally rejected revaluation in 1971. They tried to forge a common European front against American demands that currencies be revised upward, but met with opposition from the Germans, who had coopted floating rates into their war on inflation. ₁₆

The final collapse of the fixed rate system in 1973, however, altered French monetary interests, and initiated a complete turnabout in policy. Floating rates gave rise to the threat of destabilizing spirals of inflation and currency depreciation, notably in the trade-dependent economies of Western Europe. ₁₇ Floating rates, despite the predictions of economic theory, made the defense of the currency more necessary than before. France opted for a hard currency in 1974, but the overdraft economy’s soft constraints on firms rendered ineffective the anti-inflationary policy needed to support a strong currency. Toothless when implemented with sensitivity to the fragile financial position of French firms, it was devastating when given more bite. Without hegemonic validation, the French overdraft economy was not viable. Persistant currency weakness ended in the near-collapse of the French overdraft economy in the early 1980s. The government, under Socialist direction, effected a dramatic policy U-turn and implemented a series of deep liberalizing reforms designed to give the French economy the means to deploy a strong currency policy.

Monetary cooperation with Germany became essential both to France’s efforts to stabilize the franc and to reform the structures of its political economy. Those efforts help explain France’s current interest in the single currency. Although a system of fixed exchange rates among European currencies would go far toward addressing the problems that floating rates create for open economies, the system would still leave France paying a “risk premium” levied on domestic interest rates for past sins. The single currency would equalize interest rates across member countries (though not across all individual borrowers) and render national economies invulnerable against speculative movements into the mark (which would cease to exist). ₁₈ Inversely, countries that are not in the midst of reforming the structures and mores of their political economy—notably Great Britain—tend not to share France’s concerns, and thus attach importance to the defense of monetary sovereignty.

German interest in monetary integration fluctuates. The French approached the Germans as early as 1974 with a plan to reform the European currency float in a way that facilitated participation by weak-currency countries. The Germans rebuffed the French proposal, complaining that it asked them in effect to absorb French inflation. That complaint has informed Germany’s attitude toward monetary integration on many occasions. Their attitude alters, however, when a drop in the dollar sends speculative money into the mark, bidding it up to values that threaten export markets. At such times, Germany shows greater interest in European monetary integration. It is in such circumstances that Germany agreed with France in 1978 to create the European Monetary System (which bore a close resemblance to the French plan of 1974). But at the time of this writing, the dollar is high, and the Germans are displaying muted approval of the single currency.

Turning from monetary integration to commercial and financial deregulation, we find in other cooperative actions similar efforts to shelter national economies against the stress generated by the dismantling of the hegemonic order. Following the New Economic Policy (NEP) of Richard Nixon and the attendant scuttling of Bretton Woods, the second major shock that the United States unleashed on the world economy was “Reaganomics.” Like the NEP, Reaganomics was a reaction to the perception that America was declining as a hegemonic power. It was designed to reanimate the American economy through supply side economics and fiscal stimulus, while generating the funds needed to upgrade the U.S. military, particularly the navy, by stimulating economic growth. But because taxes were cut at a time when the Federal Reserve Board was clamping down on inflation, Reaganomics created a sizable budget deficit that “the Fed” refused to monetize. International capital was siphoned into American Treasury bills by high interest rates. Investors bid the dollar up to record levels as they exchanged foreign currencies to buy U.S. bonds. Europeans responded by deregulating their capital markets in order to compete more effectively for capital’s favors. The London Stock Exchange submitted to the “Big Bang” of liberalizing reform, while France, under a Socialist government, introduced the last word in capitalism: a financial futures market on the Chicago model. ₁₉

Deregulation, which occurred on a global scale, endowed capital with a measure of “structural power” that it had lacked during the half century that it was constrained by the rules of the hegemonic order. In this new financial environment, Europeans had to devise ways to make European firms more competitive. Because of financial globalization, a firm’s survival depends more and more on the size of its capital base and its ability to realize economies of scale and invest in research and development. Larger firms require larger markets, and the path to larger markets in Europe passes through EU trade liberalization and deregulation. ₂₀ The single European act, along with other measures, launched the Europeans on the Herculean task of revising and harmonizing their national regulatory codes regarding production and trade.

 

Change in the Hegemonic Order and European Military Cooperation

Geopolitical internationalism and the gradual dismantling of the post-World War II hegemonic order also help explain European security initiatives. In the early 1960s, French geopolitical cartelism informed efforts to improve France’s security relationship with Germany, just as it informed France’s interest in building the Common Market. That effort culminated in the Franco-German pledge to develop a “common conception” of defense, inscribed in the Treaty of 1963. But the Bundestag’s adjunction of the pro-Anglo-Saxon preamble led to a period of French unilateralism in security affairs, as in economic affairs, that lasted from about 1965 to about 1975. During that period, France withdrew from NATO’s integrated command structure and organized its national defense around its nuclear force de frappe, one element of which was the deployment of tactical missiles whose range, at 80 miles, presupposed the existence of targets in Germany. De Gaulle also worked to position France as a mediator between East and West, and thus provide Germany with a supplementary demonstration of just how indispensable France was to the achievement of German security interests.

But American and German rapprochement with East bloc countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s caused that strategy to collapse. The French had alienated their allies, but now lost, too, the hope of being the principal mediator between East and West. France faced possible isolation. In security as in economic relations, France abandoned unilateralism and embraced the strategy of geopolitical internationalism.

The missile crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s and suspicions of German “Finlandization” reinforced French fears of isolation by raising the specter of German unilateralism. The Pax Americana had been predicated on German diplomatic and military semi-sovereignty, which the Germans accepted in return for America’s and NATO’s commitment to their security and eventual reunification. The bargain had flaws, since NATO’s policy of graduated response, designed to make nuclear deterrence credible, seemed to designate the German homeland as the future battleground in a nuclear war between the super-powers. The installation of new weapons technologies in the late 1970s and early 1980s revived fears and dissatisfaction with the terms of that bargain. Official reluctance and popular opposition to the new weapons raised fears in France that Germany might denounce the bargain and reclaim full diplomatic and military sovereignty. France responded by showing solicitude for Germany’s security concerns, moving toward a more forward defense posture that included Germany in its defense perimeter, and deemphasizing deterrence. Fear of German unilateralism prompted Mitterrand to speak in defense of the installation of Pershing missiles before the German Bundestag in 1982. French efforts were rewarded by an agreement to regularize meetings between the French and German ministries of defense. In 1987, Germany proposed the formation of a mixed Franco-German military brigade. In the beginning, the brigade only symbolized Franco-German cooperation, but by 1992, under the impetus of Franco-German efforts to forge political union, it turned into a division of 35,000 troops, in which other EU countries were invited to participate. ₂₁

The collapse of the Cold War’s bipolar international structure forced the wholesale reexamination of the national defense requirements and regional security arrangements that constituted the hegemonic order in security affairs. The disintegration of the Soviet Union rendered all but useless the mass conscript armies and armaments that were designed to resist a large scale Warsaw Pact invasion. Both France and Germany substantially cut military expenditures and decreased the size of their militaries. France, at this writing, has embarked on a radical reconfiguration of its military forces and the defense industries that support them. President Jacques Chirac argued that France should have the capacity to mobilize and rapidly project abroad a force of about 50,000–60,000 troops. He complained that France could now project a force of only about 10,000 troops effectively, far fewer than Great Britain. In both the Gulf War and Yugoslavia, the French found it difficult to maneuver effectively and independently. The British, who moved to a professional army many years ago, were much better able to acquit themselves of the tasks required in these two operations. Chirac has advocated reforms that will reduce the size of the armed forces from 500,000 to 350,000 by 2002. ₂₂ He has scuttled mass conscription altogether, and experts in his entourage claim that the long-term goal is an army of 130,000 troops. Similarly, the French have begun to restructure their arms industry. The powerful military aviation firm Dassault has been forced to merge with Aérospatiale. Other restructurings are being examined in order to preserve France’s once flourishing arms industry, which has suffered from its inability to adapt quickly to the lessons of the Gulf War. ₂₃

The German Bundestag has also been debating the future of its conscript army. Germany committed 4.9 percent of gross domestic product to defense in 1963. That figure remained near 4 percent throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but has now sunk to 2 percent. The size of the German army has fallen precipitously from 500,000 at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall to 340,000 at this writing, which is 30,000 fewer than the number allowed by the “2 + 4” agreements on reunification. Following the move to a professional army in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Benelux countries in the 1970s, Germany debated a similar move. But Germany’s front-line position in the Cold War argued against such a move. Today, the advocates of an all-volunteer army foresee a force of 250,000 or even as few as 200,000 troops. Critics of the idea maintain that Germany’s key geopolitical position between the “stable” democracies of Western Europe and the “unstable” democracies of Eastern Europe still requires a mass “republican” military based on conscription. ₂₄ But German youths themselves are unsympathetic to conscription—fully one-third of German conscripts declare themselves conscientious objectors and opt for civilian service. ₂₅

The Soviet collapse has also forced Germany and its allies to reexamine the issue of multilateral security arrangements. Germany’s support for internationalist institutions in the past was motivated in no small part by the desire to win international support for territorial reunification and readmission to the community of great powers. But Germany remains internationalist, even though it has achieved the goals that internationalism was designed to achieve. Its enduring internationalism derives in part from its continued dependence on the United States, the principal military power of the Atlantic Alliance, for the resolution of new challenges arising from the collapse of the Soviet empire. But it is not certain that military dependence will continue to breed an attitude of diplomatic deference. Because geography exposes Germany to the repercussions of political instability in Eastern Europe, Germany has supported Eastern European demands to join NATO (and the EU). Inversely, and for the same reason, Germany is more sensitive than the United States to the risk of alienating Russia. U.S.-Russian discord, fomented by a measure of American arrogance, conflictual interests in the exploitation of energy resources in the former Soviet republics, and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism along Russia’s southern flank, has tempted Germany to assume greater independence in foreign policy. ₂₆

Feeding that temptation is the fact that, whatever Germany’s degree of dependence on America’s security umbrella, the Cold War security “bargain” with NATO is no longer meaningful in the post-Cold War world. During the Cold War, Germany was not invited to engage in interventions “out of area,” that is, beyond the frontiers of the defensive NATO alliance. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO itself has begun to operate “out of area,” thus forcing the Germans to reconceptualize their obligations. The UN-sponsored intervention in Somalia, given its humanitarian nature, had already disoriented those who, on the anti-militarist left, opposed enlarging Germany’s military role. Germany provided noncombatant troops to the mission in Somalia, but only after acrimonious debate. The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was even more difficult for the Germans because they bore some responsibility for the crisis. It took a decision by the German Federal Constitutional Court in July 1994 to determine that the deployment of German troops “out of area” in conjuction with a collective security organization did not violate the federal constitution. ₂₇ Germany sent 14 Tornado jets to support the rapid reaction force of British, French, and Dutch troops in Bosnia, and on September 1, 1995, German warplanes engaged in their first combat mission since World War II. But it is of at least symbolic importance that they did not fire a shot on that mission. In application of the Dayton accords 4,000 German troops joined the 10,000 French troops, 13,000 British troops, and 20,000 American troops in policing the Bosnian peace. Growing responsibilities in international security affairs have begun to translate into greater diplomatic activity and independence.

As Germany has been wrestling with the diplomatic and military ramifications of reunification and the end of the Cold War, France has been trying to tie Germany down institutionally to Europe, even at the expense of its own independence. The Bosnian debacle illustrates this orientation. Germany, for a host of reasons, showed great sympathy with demands for Slovenian and Croatian independence. The French and the Americans were less sympathetic, fearing the destabilizing effects of Yugoslavia’s disintegration. The French in particular feared that the multiplication of what Mitterrand referred to as the “tribes” of Eastern Europe would tempt or perhaps even compel Germany to increase its diplomatic and military role in the region, leading to the reconstitution of a “Mitteleuropa” that would reinforce Germany’s hegemonic weight in Europe and turn its priorities eastward. ₂₈

Franco-German differences over Yugoslavia became acrimonious during the summer of 1991. But in the end, Germany, as a matter of principle, placed European solidarity ahead of its desire to recognize Slovenian and Croatian independence, while the French conceded to the negotiated dismantlement of the Yugoslav federation under European Union auspices. The European-sponsored negotiations, presided over by Britain’s Lord Carrington, took place as Bosnian Serbs pressed their territorial claims by arms. But the German government, goaded by outrage in German public opinion, showered strong criticism on the Carrington negotiations. When European foreign ministers met to discuss the Maastricht treaty on December 16, 1991, the German delegation compelled the European Union to recognize the two breakaway republics, threatening unilateral recognition if Europe did not act in concert. Although Germany succeeded in forcing through a botched and vague “conditional recognition” of independence by the Europeans, its strongarm tactics made a bad impression and prevented the Europeans from making greater progress on the issue of political union. Germany found itself isolated in Europe as a result of its first autonomous act of diplomacy since World War II. Its isolation was compounded by persistent complaints of German monetary hegemony, provoked by the Bundesbank’s refusal to ease upward pressure on interest rates in the wake of reunification.

The Bosnian crisis ended in fiasco. But the fiasco had the effect of strengthening rather than weakening European unity. The embarrassment caused by European disunity in the crisis, and French and European nervousness before the prospect of German unilateralism, rekindled European efforts to strengthen the Union. That integrationist reflex was reinforced by U.S. arrogance. As the German Defense Minister Volker Rühe observed, the French decision in May 1995 to send Rapid Intervention forces to Bosnia to support troops operating under UN command, along with NATO air strikes and the successful Croatian military operation, played an important role in bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table. ₂₉ But the Europeans were practically excluded from the Dayton negotiations. European members of the Contact Group had to remonstrate before being allowed to see and approve documents that were being submitted to the negotiating parties. Their ire was such that they walked out of the press conference that followed the conclusion of the accords. ₃₀ The crisis and the humiliation prompted the creation of a study group to find ways to improve the capacity of the European Union to define and defend a common foreign policy, perhaps by creating a post of “EU Foreign Minister” to coordinate a common security and foreign policy. ₃₁

But the specter of German unilateralism and hegemony in Europe stirred the French to tighten their relationship with NATO as well. It is no coincidence that three weeks following Germany’s first combat mission in Bosnia, NATO aircraft stationed in Germany joined French air units in the first NATO exercise to be staged in France since Paris withdrew from the integrated military command in 1966. France joined action to symbol by declaring in February 1996, that it intended to collaborate more actively with NATO’s integrated command structure. In a sparsely attended address to the joint houses of the U.S. Congress, Chirac maintained that the United States’ military presence was still essential to the security of Europe. But he called for a reform of NATO that would “enable the European allies to assume fully their responsibilities, with the support of NATO facilities, wherever the United States does not wish to engage its ground forces.” ₃₂ Dissensions between France and the United States regarding the devolution of responsibilities, however, has prevented France, as of this writing, from rejoining the integrated command structure.

 

The Limits of Realism: The Special Franco-German Relationship

Because it informs the concepts of hegemony and Franco-German geopolitical internationalism, realism helps make sense of the history of European integration. It explains the origins of European integration, and it sheds light on initiatives in economics and security that Europeans have deployed in response to the gradual unraveling of the hegemonic order. But realism fails to clarify a key aspect of that history: the enduring strength of the Franco-German relationship. Post-reunification Germany, the most populous country in Europe after Russia (80 million inhabitants to France’s 55 million), produces 35 percent of the gross domestic product of the European Union, and is the premier exporting economy in the world, ahead of the United States and Japan (France is fourth). Germany is potentially hegemonic within the European Union. Moreover, it has gained all that it sought to gain from its strategy of geopolitical internationalism. But Germany has so far shown no interest in assuming the mantle of regional hegemon. It continues to value close cooperation with France, even at the expense of what many perceive to be its national interests. For its part, France has never succumbed to the temptation to balance German power in Europe by allying itself more closely with, say, Great Britain.

This does not mean that the French are unconcerned by the prospect of German hegemony in Europe. Such fears were very apparent in the months preceding German reunification. Moreover, the Bundesbank’s unwillingness to take the interests of Germany’s neighbors into account as German interest rates climbed in response to budget deficits spawned by reunification contributed significantly to opposition to the Maastricht agreements in France. Pierre Chevènement, a leftist critic of Maastricht, complained that Europe had become a “financial Holy Roman Empire.” Germany “with its demographic, industrial, and financial power, ‘geocentric’ within the continent and primary beneficiary of the enlargement of the European Community,” was falling prey to the temptation to use European integration to “extend itself” through the creation of “a second mark,” the imposition of free trade, and through the creation of dependent relations with Eastern Europe. ₃₃ But French diplomacy in the 1980s and early 1990s continued to show a distinct preference for good relations with Germany before any other country, including Great Britain. Indeed, Great Britain was the odd-man-out in the European Union. When political and monetary union met with strong opposition from Britain’s Conservative government, France worked closely with Germany to isolate Britain in Europe.

It is true that, at times, the French seemed poised to shift their attention to Britain, particularly during the period of reunification, during the Bosnian conflict, and during the international flap over French nuclear testing. In the first case, the collapse of the Soviet empire and the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 inaugurated a period of diplomatic forcing by a Germany that was intent on seizing the opportunity to win recognition of its territorial claims and its equality of status within the community of great powers. Germany abandoned the more cautious internationalism of the previous decade and, while generally not acting without consulting its allies, nevertheless took actions that placed those allies before a fait accompli. On November 28, Kohl proposed his ten-point plan for reunification without giving the French advanced notification. ₃₄ The principle of reunification was contested by no one, and was approved by the European Council on December 9. But the timetable was judged precipitous, particularly by France and Great Britain. ₃₅ Both France and Great Britain wanted to submit the issue of reunification to the attention of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

During the months following the collapse of the Wall, French policy was marked by verbal support for German reunification. That support was qualified only by insistence on the principle of respect for existing frontiers, particularly the Oder-Neisse. But France also indulged in realpolitik maneuvering to slow reunification and gain some control over it. ₃₆ As early as November 10, Mitterrand announced his intention to visit East Germany and other Eastern European countries, adding that “reunification was not the only future modality of relations between the German states, between the German entities that represent the German people.” When Germany acted without consultation to extend the benefits of the Schengen agreements (on free passage of goods and peoples among France, Germany, and Benelux) to East Germans, France withdrew from the arrangement temporarily to signify its opposition to the presumption that treaties with West Germany somehow applied automatically to East Germany. ₃₇

The British reaction to the prospect of German reunification was, if anything, more skeptical and hesitant than the French one. Mitterrand and Thatcher met on several occasions in the months following the collapse of the Wall. At the European Council summit of December 8 and 9, 1989, Mitterrand and Thatcher held private conversations, during which, according to Thatcher, Mitterrand observed that “at moments of great danger in the past France had always established special relations with Britain and he felt that such a time had come again.” Thatcher concurred: “If there was any hope now of stopping or slowing down reunification it would only come from an Anglo-French initiative.” ₃₈ Despite their shared misgivings regarding German unification, and despite their shared desire to involve the CSCE, Mitterrand and Thatcher were unable to agree on a common policy. The stumbling block was the European Union, toward which Mitterrand was already looking to blunt the impact of German reunification on the balance of power and influence in Europe. He proposed that the EU proceed with the implementation of the Single European Act, agree on economic and monetary union, and draw up a European social charter.

When Mitterrand and Thatcher met again in January, the French were still complaining bitterly of being consulted by the Germans only after the fact. But Mitterrand again refused the idea of closer cooperation with Thatcher to delay reunification. Thatcher writes: “Essentially, he had a choice between moving ahead faster towards a federal Europe in order to tie down the German giant or to [defend] French sovereignty and the striking up of alliances to secure French interests.” In Thatcher’s mind, “he made the wrong decision.” ₃₉ But Mitterrand was equally critical of Thatcher, who, he believed, was unrealistic in her opposition to German reunification. “Only the full participation of Germany in this [European] construction makes it possible to look with serenity on the inevitable reunification of the two Germanies.” ₄₀ Mitterrand’s sentiments were shared unambiguously—for reasons we will explore below—by Helmut Kohl: “Germany’s house—our common house—can only be constructed under a European roof. This must be the objective of our policy.” ₄₁

Kohl’s aggressive stance on German reunification gave his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) victory in the East German elections of March 18, 1990. On the 18th of May, the two CDU governments of West and East Germany signed a treaty of economic, monetary, and social union, a prelude to rapid and complete reunification. On July 16, the United States and the Soviet Union announced their agreement on the modalities of reunification. Mikhail Gorbachev acquiesced in the reunified Germany’s membership in NATO in exchange for limits on the size of its army (370,000 troops), its renunciation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and the payment by Germany of a substantial indemnity. By that time, France and Germany had already settled their differences and turned their energies to the further development of the EU. They had issued a joint communiqué on March 13 stating their intention to work together toward European political union, and confirmed the “fundamental role of the Franco-German relationship in the context of the current evolution in Europe” and the need to intensify contacts at all levels. Franco-German initiatives were again setting the agenda at European Council meetings. On April 18, a joint letter by Mitterrand and Kohl placed the discussion of German reunification, political union, and monetary union by 1993 on the agenda of the Council meeting of April 28. The French also informed the United States of their strong desire that the American military presence in Europe be maintained, and began reexamining their relationship with NATO. The Franco-German summit that preceded that meeting marked the renewal of close bilateral relations, and in May, the French took an unusually active role in the effort to redefine the future role of NATO. The temptation to play the “English card” was a dim memory.

On April 19, 1990, Mitterrand and Kohl called for an intergovernmental conference on political union to examine the adoption of qualified majority rule in ministerial councils and the definition of a common European foreign and security policy. The European Council, composed of EC heads of state, debated the joint proposal ten days later and again in June, and agreed to convene a conference to draw up a plan for political union by the end of 1992. To give impetus to the negotiations, Kohl and Mitterrand penned a joint letter to the European heads of state on December 6, 1990, which laid out in greater detail their common conception of political union. In this letter, they again called for, among other things, the adoption of qualified majority rule in community affairs, and “a veritable common security policy that would lead in the future to a common defense policy.” ₄₂ In February 1991, France and Germany proposed again that the Europeans commit themselves to the development of a common defense, and that, in the interim, the Western European Union be considered the military arm of the European Community. ₄₃ Kohl and Mitterrand addressed their colleagues on the topic of common defense again in October, and announced the enlargment of the joint Franco-German military units, which would become the kernel of a future European military corps.

Franco-British relations warmed again in 1995 following the election of the less determinedly Europeanist Jacques Chirac to the French presidency. Relations between the two governments had already been strengthened by close military cooperation in Bosnia, and shared exasperation with German diplomacy in that unstable region. Great Britain’s tacit approval of French nuclear tests in the Pacific (despite a general outcry in the Commonwealth countries), combined with Germany’s muted disapproval and the European Commission’s rather clumsy efforts to exercise its oversight prerogatives (in application of the Euratom Treaty of 1957), was another sign of possible realignment within the EU power structure. ₄₄

But nothing came of it. At the Franco-German summit of December 7, 1995, Kohl and Chirac reaffirmed their commitment to Maastricht and European Union and, in a pointed reference to Britain, warned that they would not tolerate unilateral vetoes of further integration efforts. At the same summit, they reaffirmed their commitment to qualified majority voting, anathema to de Gaulle, but not to the Gaullist Chirac; they proposed to study voting weighted according to population; and they announced the joint development of a new reconnaissance satellite, to the chagrin of the United States which had been seeking to enter into partnership with Germany in this endeavor. ₄₅ Pierre Séguin, like Chirac, dropped his opposition to Maastricht and called upon like-minded critics to drop their short-sighted opposition to monetary union and to engage in a constructive examination of the ways in which the European Union could formulate a response to the challenge of economic globalization. ₄₆

Just as France has not sought to balance German power by moving closer to Britain, France has not displayed any particular concern over Germany’s rapidly expanding economic power and political and cultural influence in Eastern Europe. In contrast to the interwar period, when French geopolitical internationalism was complemented by the active construction of countervailing military alliances with the countries of Eastern Europe, as well as by efforts to forge such alliances with Great Britain and Fascist Italy, French diplomacy in recent years has shown little interest in this endeavor. ₄₇

 

Realism, Skepticism, and the Need for Norms of Prudent Conduct

We asked at the outset if realism could inform a narrative reconstruction of postwar European integration. We saw that it succeeds quite well, to the extent that it informs the two conceptual vehicles that help structure that narrative, European geopolitical internationalism and American hegemony. Realism fails, however, when we try to make sense of the survival and reinforcement of Franco-German mutual preference as the U.S. hegemonic order comes undone, particularly since the end of the Cold War. Realism would lead us to expect greater German self-sufficiency, and greater French energy in developing countervailing alliances. Geopolitical internationalism fails in both cases. Germany no longer has any use for that strategy, and France has shown little if any interest in closer countervailing alliances with Great Britain and other countries, even within the framework of existing international institutions.

The notion of “structural liberalism,” developed here by Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry, might provide an attractive alternative explanation. Although Europeans would bristle at the idea that American hegemony is a “penetrated hegemony,” as Deudney and Ikenberry maintain, we nonetheless have no difficulty recognizing “security binding” in the European alliance, the enduring and self-imposed semi-sovereign status of the region’s most potentially powerful state, and structural openness. Nor is it inexact to speak of a common civic identity, though that identity is currently contested by an appreciable groundswell of nationalist populism.

But there is no need to abandon realism, since there is a way to amend realism so that it becomes more relevant to an understanding of France’s and Germany’s enduring special relationship and joint leadership of the European Union. ₄₈ It involves going back to the classical sources of realist thought, beyond even the reconstruction provided here by Randall Schweller, to the recovery of one of the central themes of the classical realist tradition: its skepticism. R. B. J. Walker disputes the claim that there is such a thing as a “realist tradition,” calling it a “hyperelastic label” that self-styled realists have applied to a hodgepodge of great thinkers in order to fabricate a tradition that in fact does not exist. Yet in spite of his best efforts to deny the existence of a realist tradition, Walker, in a superb exploration of the philosophical foundations of contemporary international relations thought, appends one and the same epithet—skeptical—to every great thinker that realists include in their tradition. Thus Walker writes of a “Rousseauean skepticism,” a Machiavellian challenge to “universalist pretensions,” a Weberian acquiescence “in a complex and widespread skepticism about modernity that characterised much socio-political theory and philosophy at the turn of the century.” In a more general characterization of realism, Walker writes: “Whether in terms of the Nietzschean challenge to prevailing theories of progress, or of the barbarities of a war to end all wars, the seminal sources of realism in international political theory were acutely aware that the clash between philosophies of history grounded in Enlightenment optimism and their radical rejection constituted the starting point for almost any serious discussion of politics.” ₄₉

What, then, is this skeptical component of realist thought? Realism, Robert Gilpin writes, is basically an attitude of “pessimism regarding moral progress and human possibilities.” ₅₀ But that attitude can be justified in a variety of ways. For the structuralist, anarchy impedes moral progress. For the classical realist, the “will to power” makes moral progress unattainable. For Gilpin himself, uneven growth in the international political economy and the subsequent rise to power of revisionist states perpetually sows the seeds of hegemonic war. But of all possible justifications of realist pessimism, perhaps the most unproblematic, though least well understood, is simple doubt or skepticism regarding either the will of humankind to live according to the dictates of reason or, more radically, regarding the capacity of reason itself to identify a “best way” to live or to organize society. One finds skepticism regarding the human will in Augustine, Rousseau, and Reinhold Niebuhr. ₅₁ One finds the more radical skepticism regarding the capacity of reason itself to identify a path toward the good in Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and E. H. Carr. ₅₂ This latter expression of skepticism is particularly apposite in these “late modern” times when the ideologies of both Marxism and liberalism have been so forcibly contested.

Realism, however, is not coterminous with skepticism. Realism represents a “conservative reaction” to skepticism, a desire to act to create or impose some sort of political order in defiance of skepticism. It is this conservative reaction to fundamental doubt regarding the human will or reason that produces realism’s core features: its statism and its concern with power and the distribution of power. The state provides the arena in which order is imposed, and power is the means with which we impose and defend it.

But that same reaction can produce other conclusions. Hume, not only a skeptic, but one of the early apologists of balance of power politics, claimed that philosophy’s incapacity to discover the path to moral perfection forces us to acknowledge the usefulness of the norms and maxims of the “common life.” ₅₃ Though our skepticism inclines us to look on such norms and maxims critically, these same norms and maxims contribute effectively to the acquittal of the ordinary tasks of human survival. Inversely, the rejection of those norms on the basis of some religious, philosophical, or ideological “enthusiasm” is frequently a source of disorder and violence. We should use our skepticism to combat such “enthusiasms” and nourish respect for the norms of the common life in order to preserve peace and order. One encounters a similar though philosophically less developed sentiment in Hedley Bull’s effort to marry realist prudence with respect for international law. ₅₄

By exploring the skepticism that lurks at the core of realist thought we gain additional purchase on the phenomenon of Franco-German reconciliation. Why, we asked, do France and Germany remain so committed to their peculiar relationship? It is because the principle of Franco-German reconciliation and mutual preference, the byproduct of the hegemonically brokered multilateral settlement of the long contest for the Rhineland, has in time congealed to become a norm of the “common life,” a norm of prudent policy, a demarcation criterion that discriminates between the “normal” and the “abnormal” in foreign policy. It has become a customary commitment that stands between German policy and the ideological enthusiasms that once endowed it with recklessness, that is, the “imperialist” enthusiasm that challenged British supremacy on the seas before World War I and the “nationalist” enthusiasm that engendered such a cavalier attitude toward international law and norms in the 1930s. Simultaneously, that commitment stands between France and the realpolitiker instinct to develop balancing alliances to contain reunified Germany’s power. ₅₅

This appeal to the understanding that France and Germany are bound by a special relationship, and the treatment of that understanding as a norm of prudent policy, explains aspects of French and German policy that have eluded our efforts so far. We noted, for example, some ambivalence in German attitudes toward the single currency. How can ambivalence sustain such a radical and ambitious policy goal? Helmut Schmidt, in response to the project’s German critics, claimed that “progress toward European integration is not an affair of German idealism, but corresponds to Germany’s vital, long-term, strategic interest in peace—if it were to be rejected, then we would face a third anti-German coalition. Compared with this goal of vital importance, technical fault-finding with the currency union and self-righteous criticism of the bureaucracy in Brussels are at best a secondary concern.” ₅₆

As we read this passage, we ask what might cause Schmidt to fear that rejection of monetary union would produce an “anti-German coalition?” He cites no mechanism, and no mechanism that might produce that effect is immediately apparent. In justification of his fears, we find nothing more than the suspicion that any departure from the ideal of European integration will threaten the norm of Franco-German reconciliation and mutual preference, and the conviction that that norm has helped French and German statesmen conduct themselves prudently so as to preserve and consolidate the long peace. Elsewhere Schmidt admonishes his Social Democratic colleagues, as they wrestle with the temptation to capitalize on opposition to the single currency: “look after our friendship with France; it is the most precious good that has come to us in the twentieth century.” ₅₇

The commitment to European Union is an affair of realist prudence born of skepticism. It is an affair of “high politics” that has engaged statesmen in a fuite en avant or “forward retreat” into the albeit imperfectly conceptualized path of political and economic integration. Integration is embraced not because it is valued per se. It is true that integration promotes some common interests in the realms of money, trade, and security. But integration European-style, as opposed to NAFTA-style, is valued primarily because it provides the vehicle for preserving norms that have proven themselves to be effective touchstones of prudent politics. The Europeans—above all the French and the Germans—embrace integration because they fear that the prudential norms they have developed in the postwar period will become inoperative if the pan-European ideal loses strength.

French and German diplomacy is replete with appeals to the ideals of European unification that contain nothing more substantive than the reaffirmation of this shared attachment to the norm of reconciliation. Germany, following its heavy-handed advocacy of Slovenian and Croatian independence, turned immediately to the task of mending its relations with France by promoting more energetically the idea of political and monetary union, even though political debate in Germany manifested considerable doubt about the benefits of either. France, following its decision to resume nuclear testing, turned immediately to Germany to lay to rest any suspicion that the new French government was revising policy toward Germany or the European Union, even though political debate in France bore the imprint of fears of German hegemony in Europe. The motivation in each case was not merely the fear of isolation. Germany’s sympathies with the breakaway republics were widely shared. France’s nuclear arrogance was not widely admired, but it was secretly applauded by the British government and tacitly approved by other nuclear powers. As mentioned above, observers predicted a new Franco-British alliance in Europe, and were subsequently surprised when Chirac reaffirmed France’s attachment to its special relationship with Germany. The prudent reflex, embodied in the norm of Franco-German preference, prevailed.

Attention to the skepticism inherent in realism leads us to voice doubts—realist doubts—regarding the theory of structural liberalism, which, we conceded above, has prima facie explanatory power. My claim that mutual Franco-German preference is valued as a norm of prudent policy raises a central question: do liberal institutions suffice to constrain behavior, or is it not indeed restrained behavior, guided by deference to shared norms of prudential conduct, that assures the durability of the institutions? ₅₈ The realist is the first to remind us how often institutions (and even power structures) have crumbled before the onslaughts of revolutionary or revisionist enthusiasms. The realist as skeptic counsels us to resist those enthusiasms and admonishes the statesman to respect, for reasons of prudence, existing norms and the institutions they legitimate if only because they define what the international community understands to be normal conduct. This kind of prudent adherence to norms of reconciliation and cooperation, and the desire to strengthen those norms through institutional and legal development, informs France’s and Germany’s ambitious integrationist enterprise today.

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Endnotes

Note 1: An example is the debate between Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981–1990) 2 vols., and John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1972). If I indulge in this methodological parenthesis, it is because the field of political science is currently undergoing one of its recurrent “totalizing crises,” spawned by the conviction that there is a “best way” to study politics. That conviction is set forth most forcefully in Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). But the argument is constructed on philosophical sand. It assumes that nature is of “one kind,” accessible to one method of inquiry. See John Dupré, “Metaphysical Disorder and Scientific Disunity,” in Peter Galison and David J. Stump, eds., The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). It also eschews the problem of reference—see, for example, Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)—that has so exercised philosophers of science since the publication of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970) 2nd ed. The problem of reference can be credibly dealt with by adopting an instrumental criterion of truth—see Richard Rorty, “Is Natural Science a Natural Kind” in Ernan McMullin, ed., Construction and Constraint (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) and Arthur Fine, “Science Made Up,” in Galison and Stump, eds., The Disunity of Science—but nomological political science does not fare particularly well when measured by this criterion. See Charles Taylor, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man” in Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). However, the application of instrumentalism to any method of social science may be problematic, given normative disagreement over the goals being pursued. See Mary Hesse, “Theory and Value in the Social Sciences,” in Christopher Hookway and Philip Pettit, eds., Action and Interpretation: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). In this view, all social science—not just history—becomes a site of moral debate. Back.

Note 2: Alan Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 392. Back.

Note 3: Alfred Grosser, Affaires extérieures: la politique de la France, 1944–1989 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), 185. Back.

Note 4: Henry Blumenthal, Illusion and Reality in Franco-American Diplomacy, 1914–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 135. Back.

Note 5: Blumenthal, Illusion and Reality, 130–131. See also p. 119. Back.

Note 6: Blumenthal, Illusion and Reality, 140. Blumenthal argues that the French sought to halt and diminish Anglo-Saxon penetration in Europe. But such fears are meaningful only in the context of French fears of growing German power, which, from the French perspective, the Anglo-Saxon powers tolerated and abetted. Compare with French attitude toward Zollverein in the nineteenth century: see Raymond Poidevin and Jacques Bariéty, Les Relations Franco-allemandes, 1815–1975 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1977), 38–43. Back.

Note 7: The chronicle of European integration can be found in Pierre Gerbet, La Construction de l’Europe (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1994). Norway did not ratify the treaty. Back.

Note 8: Michael Loriaux, “Capital, the State, and Uneven Growth in the International Political Economy,” in Michael Loriaux, Meredith Woo-Cumings, Kent Calder, Sylvia Maxfield, and Sofia Perez, Capital Ungoverned: Liberalizing Finance in Interventionist States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996). Back.

Note 9: John Zysman, Governments, Markets, and Growth: Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 114. Back.

Note 10: In the terms of my analysis, the overdraft economy generated “moral hazard” in the French political economy. Loriaux, France after Hegemony: International Change and Financial Reform (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) pp. 90–95, 284–88. Back.

Note 11: Klaus H. Hennings, “West Germany,” in Andrea Boltho, ed., The European Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) p. 479. Back.

Note 12: Such intervention was difficult despite the relatively large size of the public sector. See Sima Liberman, The Growth of European Mixed Economies: 1945–1970 (New York: Wiley, 1977), ch. 2. Back.

Note 13: Note that the government, not the Bundesbank, was accorded the responsibility for determining the exchange rate of the D-mark under fixed rates. The Bundesbank was empowered to defend that rate. Hennings, “West Germany,” p. 475. Back.

Note 14: Speculators under Bretton Woods technically bought foreign currencies from the central bank, thus challenging the central bank to satisfy demand for foreign currencies at prices that were fixed by international agreement. Back.

Note 15: See Eric Helleiner, The Reemergence of Global Finance: States and the Globalization of Financial Markets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 13. Back.

Note 16: See Gerbet, La construction de l’ Europe, 299–308, 342–50. Back.

Note 17: Loriaux, France after Hegemony, 24–31. Currency depreciation (like devaluation) raised the price of imported goods. If the demand for those goods was inelastic, currency depreciation could result in a vicious circle whereby depreciation and inflation fed off each other. Inversely, attacking inflation could cause the currency to appreciate again, negating whatever commercial benefits were being sought in the first place. Overshooting of equilibrium currency values by an inherently nervous currency market ruled out “finessing” this dilemma through “fine tuning.” Back.

Note 18: This observation applies as well to other traditionally weak currency countries of the “Club Med,” who experience the same need as France to implement a strong currency policy to fight vicious circles of inflation and depreciation. Antonio Guterres, leader of Portugal’s opposition Socialist Party, writes: “Interest rates are the fundamental reason why I am a defender of the single currency. This will be the only way to make sure that we stop paying a risk premium, and to have interest rates equal to other countries, like Germany,” Diario Economico, August 24, 1995. Capital flight into the single European currency would create pressures to lower interest rates, whereas currently capital flight into the mark creates pressures to raise interest rates in economies that seek to defend a D-mark parity. Back.

Note 19: See Philip G. Cerny, “From Dirigisme to Deregulation? The Case of Financial Markets” (Paper presented at the International Conference on Thirty years of the French Republic, Paris, June 1988). See also Loriaux, “Capital, the State, and Uneven Growth,” in Loriaux et al., Capital Ungoverned. Back.

Note 20: See Jack Hayward, ed., Industrial Enterprise and European Integration: From National to International Champions in Western Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Back.

Note 21: Françoise Manfrass-Sirjacques, “La coopération militaire depuis 1963,” in Henri Ménudier, ed., Le Couple Franco-Allemand en Europe (Asnières: Publications de l’ Institut d’ Allemand d’ Asnières, 1993). Back.

Note 22: Reuters, February 22, 1996. See also Josette Alia, “Chirac et les soldats de l’an 2000,” Le Nouvel Observateur, Feb. 22–28, 1996. Back.

Note 23: Airy Routier, “Les dessous d’ une opération commando,” Le Nouvel Observateur, Feb. 29–March 6, 1996. Back.

Note 24: See Theo Sommer, “Wehrpflicht oder Berufsheer: Fünf Argumente gegen eine Armee aus lauter Freiwilligen. Die Zeit, March 8, 1996. Back.

Note 25: See Werner A. Perger, “Grosser Schritt: Pazifisten, Militärs, und der Minister,” in Die Zeit, Dec. 22, 1995. Back.

Note 26: See Christian Schmidt-Häuer, “Der Kalte Krieg is noch lange nicht vorbei,” Die Zeit, March 8, 1996. Back.

Note 27: See Christoph Bertram, “Präzedenzfall?” in Die Zeit, December 22, 1995. Back.

Note 28: Hans Stark “La Yougoslavie et les dissonances franco-allemandes,” in Henri Ménudier, Le Couple franco-allemand en Europe pp. 225–36. See also the provocative essay of James Kurth, “Mitteleuropa and East Asia: The Return of History and the Redefinition of Security,” in Meredith Woo-Cumings and Michael Loriaux, Past as Prelude: History in the Making of a New World Order (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993). Back.

Note 29: Interview in Die Zeit, December 8, 1995. Back.

Note 30: Henri Guirchoun, “Dayton: Les coulisses de la ‘pax americana,’ ” Le Nouvel Observateur, Nov. 30–Dec. 6, 1995. Back.

Note 31: Reuters, Sept. 22, 1995. That idea was not retained at the European summit of 1996. Back.

Note 32: Reuters, February 1, 1996. Back.

Note 33: Pierre Chevènement, “Lettre à un ami allemand, Le Nouvel Observateur, May 19–25, 1994. Back.

Note 34: Indeed, it is uncertain how much advance notice Kohl even gave his own foreign minister, Dietrich Genscher. Back.

Note 35: See the commentary on the 1996 conversation between George Bush, François Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Margaret Thatcher, in Die Zeit, March 15, 1996. Back.

Note 36: See Kristin Stehouwer, “France and German Unification: The Transition to a New Europe,” Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, July, 1997, from which much of the material in these several paragraphs is taken. Back.

Note 37: The legal foundations of Mitterrand’s position may have been contestable, since economic exchanges between the two Germanies were already treated as “inter-German” trade by EU law, and thus not subjected to EU tariffs. Back.

Note 38: Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 796. Back.

Note 39: Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 798. Back.

Note 40: Passages quoted are taken from an interview of François Mitterrand by Jean Daniel, published in Le Nouvel Observateur, Jan 18–24 1996. Back.

Note 41: In Gerbet, La Construction de l’ Europe, 450. Back.

Note 42: Quoted in Gerbet, La Construction de l’ Europe, 453. Back.

Note 43: Following the collapse of the European Defense Community project in 1954, Great Britain proposed that Germany and Italy be admitted to the 1948 Brussels Treaty, a mutual security treaty among France, Great Britain, and the Benelux countries. The enlarged security pact was named the Western European Union. This arrangement reaffirmed Great Britain’s commitment to France’s security, provided a common framework within which Germany was permitted to rearm, and paved the way for Germany’s admission to NATO. The coordination of defense strategy, however, was left entirely to NATO, and the WEO evolved into a rump institution, though a useful one to the extent that it became the vehicle through which Great Britain was associated with the Common Market countries prior to its admission in 1972. See Gerbet, La Construction de l’ Europe, 154–55, 453–61, 498–501, et passim. Back.

Note 44: See Jürgen Krönig, “Die ‘French Connection,’ ” in Die Zeit, Sept. 22, 1995. See ibid. Klaus Peter Schmid, “Mehr Bomben, Weniger Europa,” and Theo Sommer, “Chiracs Muster ohne Wert.” Back.

Note 45: Peter Norman and David Budhan, “Franco-German Summit Warning on EU Reform,” Financial Times, December 8, 1995. Back.

Note 46: Reuters, February 15, 1996. Back.

Note 47: See K. S. Karol, “Europe de l’Est: la vague allemande,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 25–31, 1996 Back.

Note 48: Realists whom I know are content with the orthodox definition. For this reason, I prefer to designate the perspective I develop here simply as “prudential skepticism.” But I would argue that prudential skepticism is a central component of the realist tradition. Back.

Note 49: R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). The term “hyperelastic” is found on p. 17. The passages cited are found on pp. 4, 47, 56, 110. Back.

Note 50: Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 304. Back.

Note 51: On Augustine, see Michael Loriaux, “The Realists and Saint Augustine: Skepticism, Psychology and Moral Action in International Relations Thought,” International Studies Quarterly 36 (1992). On Rousseau, see Stanley Hoffmann and D. Fidler, eds. Rousseau on International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), introduction. See also Reinhold Niebuhr, Human Nature and Destiny (New York: Scribner, 1942). Back.

Note 52: On Machiavelli, see Walker, Inside/Outside, chap. 2. On Hobbes, see Cornelia Navari, “Hobbes and the Hobbesian Tradition in International Thought,” Millennium, 11 (1982), and Donald W. Hanson, “Hobbes and the Highway to Peace,” International Organization 38 (1984). On Thucydides, see J. Peter Euben, The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 6, and Sara Monoson and Michael Loriaux, “The Illusion of Power and the Disruption of Moral Norms: Thucydides’ Critique of Periclean Policy,” American Political Science Review 92 (1998). See also E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year’s Crisis, 1919–1939 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964). Back.

Note 53: David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975). See Donald W. Livingston, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) 3rd ed., 28–31. Back.

Note 54: See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). Back.

Note 55: In this construction, realism is not incompatible with constructivism. Back.

Note 56: Helmut Schmidt, “Deutsches Störfeuer gegen Europa,” Die Zeit, Oct. 6, 1995. Back.

Note 57: Helmut Schmidt, in a speech prepared for but not delivered at the Mannheim Congress of the Social Democratic Party. Published in Die Zeit, Dec. 1, 1995. Back.

Note 58: This question applies as well to Peter Katzenstein’s analysis, “Taming of Power: German Unification, 1989–1990,” in Woo-Cumings and Loriaux, eds., Past as Prelude. Back.

Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War