A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963.

Kennedy, Sean ; Colwill, Elizabeth

A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963, by Marc Trachtenberg. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1999. xv, 424 pp. $60.00 US.

The division of Germany provided the starkest evidence of the emerging Cold War; it also created a problem which posed a grave threat to world peace. Marc Trachtenberg lends further precision to these observations by stressing that while the Soviet leaders always feared that a resurgent West Germany would challenge the status quo, their concerns were rendered particularly acute in the late 1950s by the possibility of that state acquiring nuclear weapons. The NATO alliance was thus challenged first to build up and then support the Federal Republic in a sufficiently non-provocative fashion. By 1963, he argues, the situation had been largely stabilized, but only at the end of a highly contingent process which involved inter-allied clashes, policy reversals, and the risk of nuclear annihilation.

Though it was necessary to contain German power to prevent the Cold War from going hot, Trachtenberg maintains that the conflict did not begin in Europe. In 1945, he contends, many American policy makers, notably Secretary of State Joseph Byrnes, were willing to settle for a spheres of influence peace. This included Germany -- for Byrnes the West and the Soviets were more likely to co-exist if they simply staked out their respective areas of control: in short, "the best way to get along was to pull apart" (p. 27). It was Soviet behaviour towards Iran and Turkey that led the Americans to change their views and work at strengthening West Germany. As the Berlin Crisis of 1948-49 demonstrated, such an undertaking was extremely risky. The Soviets made their opposition brutally obvious, and were emboldened by their acquisition of the atom bomb. Moreover, while the Korean War provided a powerful impetus for a military buildup, many Europeans, notably the French, wanted guarantees which entailed extensive American commitments but also restrictions on West German

sovereignty.

At first, it seemed that the Paris Accords, a complex set of agreements worked out in 1954, might provide a solution. Under their terms the Western allies had the right to station forces on the Federal Republic's territory and to intervene in its domestic affairs in case of an emergency; furthermore, Bonn was not allowed to negotiate a comprehensive German settlement unilaterally. But the whole system had to be underwritten by a substantial American presence in Europe -- a policy at odds with the priorities of the Eisenhower administration. The second half of the book is devoted to a discussion of how the latter's nuclear strategy, and that of its Democratic successor, led to serious tensions within the NATO alliance. The conflicting views of the various leaders and their advisers are examined in considerable detail, and what Trachtenberg has to say about their aims is illuminating.

Eisenhower, he suggests, preferred a co-operative and hands-off approach to West European defense. Hoping that one day the Europeans would be able to stand on their own, he was willing to see them -- including the West Germans -- have their own nuclear arsenal. He even endorsed a policy of allowing them considerable access to American weapons in practice, if not in theory. But it was a combination of domestic politics and strategic concerns which shaped the December 1960 proposal for a multilateral nuclear force, and America's allies concluded that it entailed too much centralization. The British saw the plan as threatening their special relationship with the U.S.A.; de Gaulle prized national sovereignty as a supreme virtue; and Konrad Adenauer, previously indispensable in ensuring his country's pro-Western orientation, now adopted a more nationalistic posture.

In contrast to its predecessor, the Kennedy administration wanted to expand its conventional forces and opposed any notion of the Federal Republic possessing nuclear weapons. It was largely a desire not to alienate the West Germans by singling them out in comparison to the French and British that led it to demand an enhancement of American control in comparison to that exercised during the Eisenhower years. In response de Gaulle became even more defiant, encouraging Adenauer's intransigence into the bargain. Relations with the Soviets deteriorated ominously, as Nikita Khrushchev tried to intimidate the new president during discussions for a comprehensive agreement on Berlin. Only in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis did a way out emerge. Relations with France remained poor, but as Adenauer's star waned -- in part because of U.S. interventions in West German politics -- Kennedy's position improved and he now tried to be more flexible. The Limited Nuclear Arms Control Agreement of July 1963, though couched in general terms, appeased Soviet fears, and the Federal Republic's nonnuclear status became linked to the preservation of the status quo in West Berlin.

A Constructed Peace is primarily concerned with the dynamics of the Western alliance. While Soviet motivations are discussed, some contentious issues, such as the 1952 proposal concerning a unified but neutral Germany, are dealt with rather summarily. Nor, by his own admission, is the author certain as to why Khrushchev was so intractable in 1961-62, when Kennedy's promise of a non-nuclear Germany was already on offer. More striking, though, are Trachtenberg's efforts to demonstrate the linkages between so many different issues in the early Cold War era, and the fact that he presents an argument about the complexities of nuclear strategy in an admirably clear fashion.

Sean Kennedy

University of New Brunswick