American Blueprints for a new Atlantic and European Order. The American foreign policy elite and the contested compatibility of Atlantic and European integration, 1939-1963

Abstract

In an attempt to solve the economic, social and political problems that haunted the world in the 1930s and prevent the recurrence of another devastating world war, many public intellectuals, politicians and foreign policy experts in the United States developed ideas for a new world order. In this dissertation two closely related, yet at times opposed strands of mid-twentieth-century American internationalist thought are studied: the idea of an Atlantic Union and a United States of Europe. Due to heightened Cold War fears, which increased American doubts about whether the process of European integration would be sufficient to halt the progress of Communism, the idea of an Atlantic Union became a much debated alternative to European integration. By not only providing an intellectual history of these American blueprints, but by also including previously understudied private actors and movements, most importantly the American Committee on United Europe and the Atlantic Union Committee, this dissertation provides new insights into the views of the American policy elite on the intricate balance between Atlantic and European integration.