Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community

What accounts for the construction of the supra-national European Community in a region long marked by, as Winston Churchill once observed, "ancient nationalistic feuds" ? According to Rosato (political science, U. of Notre Dame), the European Community is primarily the result of an attempt by the major western European states, in particular France and Germany, to balance against the Soviet Union and against one another. In short, the overwhelming power of the Soviet Union convinced the western Europeans of the need to establish a centrally governed coalition and, meanwhile, French and German fears and suspicions of each other provided incentives for sharing the distribution of power through integration processes. He supports this argument by focusing on the establishment in the 1950s of the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community, and the European Defense Community, explaining both integration and resistance to integration as products of balance of power thinking. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)