The European Union: Swords to Ploughshares

Charles W. King

Today the European Union has been buffeted by crisis after crisis; Sovereign debt, refugees, Brexit, illiberal democracy in Eastern Europe. The recent election in France averted a possible complete collapse of the European project. It is worth noting in this time of crisis for Europe that the European Union has been an unqualified success at its original purpose; preventing war in continental Europe.

The history of Europe is one of conflicts, dating all the way back to the Roman Empire. During that history many attempts have been made to establish structures that would prevent future conflict. The Holy Roman Empire, The Peace of Westphalia, Napoleon's Empire, the Congress of Vienna, and Bismarck's Alliance system, and the League of Nations all failed to prevent the nations of Europe from descending to violence again. Compared to the span of European history the twentieth century was both brutal (as measured by the casualties of the World Wars) and tranquil (as measured by the number of conflicts). It is true that to an extent there now exists a cultural disdain for the Clausewitzian use of 'war as politics by other means' but that was also true to an extent between World War One and World War Two. The establishment of NATO was a significant factor in the prevention of another European conflict, as was the looming threat of the Soviet Red Army in Eastern Europe. External threats and the continued occupation of West Germany are not enough to explain how the Europe of 1946 became the Europe of today.

Established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community is another in the plethora of post-World War Two international institutions designed to prevent future conflicts. The United Nations' purpose was to prevent another World War, and NATO possessed a dual purpose containing both Germany and the Soviet Union. Proposed by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman in 1950 the purpose of the common market was to, "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible." The ECSC attempted to achieve this through a surprisingly limited means; it created a common market for two strategic commodities, coal and steel, between its six member states, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. With these two essential war-making materials flowing unrestricted across borders nations would no longer have reason to fight over valuable borderlands like Alsace-Lorraine and the Ruhr, and it would be difficult to hoard steel or coal for military build up.

Then something surprising happened; the economies members of the European Coal and Steel Community began to flourish. They were some of the most ruined countries in Europe, devastated by two World Wars and the Great Depression, and yet they began to rebuild faster and stronger than those outside the common market. They quickly decided to expand their common market to more than two commodities, signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to establish the European Economic Community, based on the ECSC. The European Coal and Steel Community is the template upon which all of the subsequent supranational institutions of Europe have been based, from the European Atomic Energy Agency to the European Parliament. It facilitated recovery of Western Europe after World War Two, and its continued growth in the decades since. In those decades the original purpose of the European Coal and Steel Community has been forgotten. As Europeans struggle with economic disparity, refugees, and diplomatic deficits they should rejoice in the fact that they have transformed an institution designed to prevent war to an engine of growth. The European Union has turned swords to ploughshares on an epic scale.