The first is going to cease playing any important role within 10-20 years, as a generation of European politicians come of age for whom Russia as an imperial power in Europe is not living memory. The second will disappear by the end of the present depression - either because we will have new leaders who do not share the present ones' hatred of European civilisation, or because the present leaders will have succeeded in reducing Europe to failed states.

This leaves only support for European colonial ventures. But these are of declining value, and the US does not possess the power to halt that decline, let alone sufficient incentive to.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

Any sort of war that would advance the power of de Gaulle if the opportunity or threat arose.

You seem to be echoing Roosevelt's (ill-informed thanks to Admiral Leahy) belief that de Gaulle was a dangerous autocrat who would become a dictator.

De Gaulle resigned as president of the interim government in January 1946 and did not return to power until 1958, so there was no question of him pursuing self-aggrandizement through warfare. The record, in any case, shows that he was not a gung-ho warmaker. He quashed the wish of part of the Résistance, as soon as France was freed, to cross the Pyrenees to unseat Franco. And one of his first tasks after becoming president of the Fifth Republic in 1959 was to put an end to the Algerian War.

American "overlording" with regard to France during WWII and its immediate aftermath was based on a profound misunderstanding of both Pétain and the Vichy government, and of de Gaulle. The US backed Vichy, maintaining a full embassy until spring 1942 and a delegation thereafter until the autumn of that year. In 1943, the US attempted to foil de Gaulle by backing Vichy-compromised military figures like Admiral Darlan and General Giraud. In 1944, the US had plans to administer France as a protectorate once freed of German occupation. De Gaulle, the Free French and the Résistance, acclaimed by the French people, made sure that France would regain full independence. This may explain a certain amount of American animus concerning de Gaulle.

A bone of contention with Germany in the immediate postwar years concerned the support of France (not just de Gaulle but the governments following him) for the French occupation of the Saar and the internationalisation of the Rühr. But American "overlording" with regard to this followed identical lines under the Morgenthau Plan, that aimed at humiliating Germany in a manner as dangerous, in terms of creating future war risks, as the Treaty of Versailles. It wasn't until 1948 that the Marshall Plan provided an entirely different impetus, providing the conditions for resolution and cooperation. US policy then favoured moves towards union, but the proto-economic government proposed, the OEEC (later OECD) failed to convince (the Europeans did after all have many people with their own aims in the matter), and the 6-country EEC was the result.

It's certainly the case that the division of Europe into Soviet and US-influenced halves explains the strength of the West European movement towards union, but US "overlording" was far from being consistent or even intelligent a good deal of the time. The notion that it was the only thing that prevented countries exhausted by the cataclysm from re-igniting their quarrels, ignoring the determination of many Europeans never to see such horrors again, seems to me wide of the mark.

Without the US overlording things, European nations would have rearmed and quickly gone back to their old balance of power game that they had been playing for at least a thousand years.

Arguing that a normal state of affairs exists is imho a pretty weak argument. Sweden and Denmark was from the formations of the states until 200 years ago at war pretty much all the time. The last 100 years a Swedish-Danish war has been very unlikely. I would argue that the reasons for that is on one hand the rise of Prussia-Germany and Russia and on the other the change in identity that nationalism brought on. No occupation needed.

In a similar way, if WWII had ended with a dominant US inheriting the colonial empires and a dominant Russia inheriting the anti-colonial movements then the European states might have avoided wars with each other in order to preserve the little power they had. But all really depends on the specifics.

santiago:

The central feature of European history of the last 60 years is that it has been occupied by hundreds of thousands of foreign troops in either US or Russian uniforms.  To ignore that fact and make believe that such a traumatic development has had no material impact on European political and economic history seems pretty ridiculous.

But from that it does not follow that it would have been wars otherwise.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

It makes a lot more sense to listing to a meaningless harangue from an Iranian, or Cuban, or Venezuelan, or Libyan leader than to have to go to war against them.  Talking is just better than shooting most of the time as a basic imperial policy.  The institutions don't have to accomplish anything other than to prevent nations to trying to shoot at the US, so anything else they might also achieve, or not, are gravy.

Such a string of decisions exists for the European powers. But there is a change of management upcoming in Europe, because the current management has made denial of easily observed reality a major plank of its political program. And the new management may or may not continue to view a special Atlantic relationship as being in Europe's best interest.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.