The Cold War - 2069 Words

My research question is aimed at showing how the cold war led to establishment of supranational institutions and how realism as a level of analysis failed to predict the events that led to the end of the cold war? How the Cold War Led To Supranational Influences From the beginning of the Cold War there have been many tensions between the East and West superpowers. The proposal of the Marshal Plan of June 1947 put the integration of Europe on the map for international relations. The creators of the plan were afraid of the spread of the communist ideology to other outside Europeans outside the communist circle. It is in this way of thinking that the grand Domino Theory was established for the basis for the west to be involved in the†¦show more content†¦(Schwabe, 2001, p. 18) This policy was essentially the containment of communism spreading amongst Europe and the containment of a possible German rearmament in the future as means to appease the European community in America’s commitment to the integration of Europe. In support of this idea the Supranational structures of Europe were not very supportive and too much of the disappointment of the State Department planners in Europe. European cooperation leaned more towards intergo vernmental lines. This and the reluctance of Great Britain created a barrier for the supranationally unified Europe (Schwabe, 2001, p. 27) It is for this reason that under Kenann’s influence Dean Acheson preferred to have France as the leader for European Integration and not Great Britain. The continuing fear of Pro-Soviet West Germany pushed the State Department to vehemently support European integration which would as they thought â€Å"harness† a revived West Germany to the West. This was a well-known argument in the 1960’s in favor of supranational European integration as means to deploy the idea of â€Å"double containment†. (Schwabe, 2001, p. 30) In the west the scrambling for more or less independent nuclear deterrents did not fail to influence the attempts at European integration and thus the European Defense Community (EDC) was seen as the solve all and end all that would guarantee that the idea of double containment of