How to Use American Hegemony
For most of the Cold War, American leaders used our hegemony with remarkable
effectiveness. The Marshall Plan is merely one of many examples. Stabilizing Northeast
Asia during and after the Korean War is another.
Less well remembered is bringing West Germany into NATO against strong
French resistance. Once the Soviet Union made unambiguous its intent not to support
restoration of a united Germany, the United States began pushing for the reconstruction
of Germany and a Western security system. France, having engaged Britain in the
Dunkirk Treaty (a bilateral hedge against Germany), resisted multilateral arrangements.
British initiatives, however, eventually helped Washington to create the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization against French preferences for a network of bilateral treaties.
By letting these initiatives come from European states themselves, Washington
positioned itself to guide the process benignly toward a large multilateral solution. By
contrast, had the United States taken the initiative unilaterally, its efforts would have left
Washington at odds with most Western European states and probably killed any serious
chance of forming NATO before the Korean War. Only when the Korean War broke out
did the United States take the near-term Soviet military threat seriously and begin to
advance the idea of German rearmament. When France used the concept of the European
Defense Community (EDC) to block German rearmament, Washington sought to use the
EDC to justify German sovereignty. For two years, Washington danced around French
blocking tactics, and while Paris refused to dissolve its own army into the European
Defense Community, by 1955 it finally accepted Germany’s sovereignty and its
membership in NATO. Had the United States insisted on that outcome in 1952 or 1953, it
might well have destroyed the Atlantic alliance.
This pattern of letting our allies take the initiative, nudging, encouraging, not
demanding, often adjusting to European concerns, and getting help from some countries
in convincing those that resist, produced constructive outcomes. For example, the
doctrine of “forward defense” for NATO in 1967–68, the third attempt at an agreed
overall NATO defense plan (MC 14/3), was achieved in precisely this way, with a
European-led study (the Harmel Report) advancing a compromise. We saw this pattern
again, both in the decision to deploy intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe during
the Carter administration, and in successfully deploying them against much Sovietbacked
and inspired European public opposition during the Reagan administration.
Yet, none of these examples can rival what American leaders accomplished
through the reunification of Germany in 1990. This was the largest strategic realignment