Book Review

Comparative/World

Harold Macmillan's application to join the European Economic Community (EEC), announced in the House of Commons in July 1961, and Charles de Gaulle's veto of that application, announced at his celebrated press conference of January 14, 1963, frame a crucial episode in postwar European history. The British bid marked a sea change from Commonwealth to continent, and although that shift has endured, the failure of the initial negotiations shapes British policy to this day. Had de Gaulle failed to block Britain, it is likely that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would never have been created, transatlantic commercial tensions would have been reduced, French prominence in world affairs would have waned even more quickly, the Franco-German relationship would have had far less resonance, the domestic British view of Europe would have been far more positive, and the European Union (EU) would today be a less fully developed international institution. No surprise, therefore, that the episode has spawned lively historical debate in recent years.	1
This book by Oliver Bange contributes important new empirical insights concerning the rhetorical tactics of various governments during the British accession negotiations. Bange makes two broad interpretive points. First, the British bid for membership did not fail, as many argue, due to tactical errors on the part of the British government, but because of fundamental interstate conflicts of interest. Second—his "main thesis"—the underlying national interests engaged in this crisis did not involve "insoluble economic or organizational problems" but the "irreconcilability of the goals behind 'Grand Designs'" elaborated by Konrad Adenauer, de Gaulle, Macmillan and John F. Kennedy, (pp. 7–8). Bange stresses in particular the Anglo-American Nassau agreement of December 1962 as precipitating de Gaulle's veto.	2
These claims are hardly new. Most analysts emphasize both British errors and the geopolitical roots of Gaullist opposition. Bange simply sides with one part of the conventional wisdom against the other. Yet he does break some new documentary ground. His major contribution is to detail how the governments of West Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and France manipulated public information and impressions, an aspect of this historical episode hardly touched upon by other scholars. Every government sought to spin the issues for domestic and foreign consumption, and Bange offers a gripping account of the resulting cynical "blame-shifting" in the endgame of the negotiations. The British cooperated with the Kennedy administration to pin the blame on de Gaulle. British officials leaked false (exaggerated, if not wholly fabricated) intelligence suggesting that de Gaulle's aim was a genuinely independent Europe that would reach a separate accommodation with the Soviet Union. Moving to the continent, Bange shows that de Gaulle schemed throughout the episode to appear more conciliatory than he actually was.	3
Bange is one of the few, for example, to give "la note Peyrefitte" of August 1960—the strategy document penned by de Gaulle's later press secretary, Alain Peyrefitte—its full due. He presents convincing rhetorical evidence that de Gaulle read and implemented its cynical plan for appearing to negotiate in the EEC as a "good European" (albeit one with a certain idea of Europe) in order to secure substantive benefits while obstructing the construction of supranational institutions and British membership. Adenauer, too, dissembled. The old Rhinelander cultivated public ambiguity, thereby seeking to satisfy the demands of both "Atlanticists" and "Gaullists" within his governing coalition.	. . .