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These ideas were repeatedly articulated over the following decades. During World War II, Walter Lippmann gave voice to this view, that the Atlantic Ocean is not the frontier between Europe and theAmericas. It is the inland sea of a community of nations allied with oneanother by geography, history, and vital necessity.
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Various experiences and interests fed into the Atlantic idea. One wasstrategic and articulated during and after the two world wars. Suspicious ofWoodrowWilson’s League of Nations proposal, French Premier GeorgesClemenceau proposed in 1919 an alliance between France, Britain, and the United States an alliance only among what he called constitutional countries.
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The failure of the League of Nations reaffirmed in the mindsof many Americans and Europeans the virtues of a less universal securitycommunity that encompassed the North Atlantic area. Others focused onthe protection of the shared democratic values that united the Atlanticworld. These ideas were most famously expressed in Clarence Streit’s 1939book, Union Now: The Proposal for Inter-Democracy Federal Union.
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Concernedwith the rise of fascism and militarism and the fragility of theWesterndemocracies in the wake of a failed League of Nations, Streit proposed a federal union of the North Atlantic democracies.
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In the years that followed, a fledgling Atlantic Union movement came to life. An Atlantic Union Committee was organized after the war, and prominent Americans called for the creation of various sorts of Atlantic organizations and structures.