The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 138

ourselves the license to do as we please.” 78 On his return to Washington, Truman asked Con-
gress to act quickly to approve the charter. “I am anxious to bring home to you that the world
is one. . . . It is a responsibility that this great republic ought to lead the way in—to carry out
those ideas of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt,” 79 he declared.
The charter was ratified. But rather than launching a new era of great-power concert, the
U.N. system of collective security gave way to alternative thinking. By 1946, some offi-
cials in the State Department began urging a policy that encouraged European unity, building
Europe into a third force alongside the United States and Soviet Union. The idea was to foster
a multipolar postwar system in which Europe would be a relatively independent and unified
geopolitical power center, with Germany integrated within it. George Kennan and the State
Department's policy planning staff articulated this view. “It should be the cardinal point of
our policy,” Kennan argued in October 1947, “to see to it that other elements of independent
power are developed on the Eurasian land mass as rapidly as possible in order to take off our
shoulders some of the burden of 'bi-polarity.'” 80 The initial reason for urging European unity
was less about countering Soviet power than about establishing a stable framework for the
revival of Europe. This was the theme of Kennan's memorandum to Acheson in the weeks
before the Marshall Plan address. The emphasis of American policy should be “directed not
to combatting communism as such, but to the restoration of the economic health and vigor
of European society.” 81 It was with this objective in mind that Kennan and the policy plan-
ning staff urged that Marshall Plan aid be given to the European countries together so as to
encourage them, as Kennan argued, to “think like Europeans, and not like nationalists, in this
approach to the economic problems of the continent.” 82
The other argument for encouraging a unified Europe was that it was the only way to rein-
tegrate Germany. Kennan was the foremost advocate of tying Germany to Western Europe.
“In the long run there can be only three possibilities for the future of western and central
Europe. One is German domination. Another is Russian domination. The third is a federated
Europe, into which the parts of Germany are absorbed but in which the influence of the other
countries is sufficient to hold Germany in her place. If there is no real European federation
and if Germany is restored as a strong and independent country, we must expect another at-
tempt at German domination.” 83 The following year, Kennan argued that “we see no answer
to German problem within sovereign national framework. Continuation of historical process
within this framework will almost inevitably lead to repetition of post-Versailles sequence
of developments. . . . Only answer is some form of European union which would give young
Germans wider horizon.” 84 The same thinking was evinced by the American high commis-
sioner for Germany, John McCloy, who argued in 1950 that a “united Europe” would be an
“imaginative and creative policy” that would “link Western Germany more firmly into the
West and make the Germans believe their destiny lies this way.” 85 If Germany was to be