The 20th century’s interwar years were studded with pacifist appeals and utopian visions of international unity. President Wilson’s fourteen points and the making of the League of Nations in 1920 (hereinafter LoN) marked the emergence of liberal internationalism as theory of International Relations. His political philosophy featured a strong moral posture that emphasized the importance of democracy and international organizations to establish an enduring peace among once belligerent states, particularly European ones.

Running parallel to Wilson’s initiative in the United States, a few intellectuals, politicians and activists in the Old Continent, whose bodies and minds still suffered the consequences of war, were starting to conceive a different configuration of Europe, one that would put into question the centrality of nation-states and their borders. They were the pioneers of contemporary European regionification (Van Langenhove 2011, 67).

The rise of regionification

Even though heavily influenced by French exceptionalism (Imbert 1989), the writer Jules Romaines imagined common economic institutions in Europe alongside with a European civil society. His ideas were shared by the French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux, who even pushed for a single currency (Pasture 2015, 104). In their book European Federation or League of Nations?, published in 1918, the Italian economist Attilio Cabiati and the entrepreneur Giovanni Agnelli argued in favour of a European federation with legislative, executive and judicial powers (Ibid, 102). Following a similar line, the German pacifist and satirical author Kurt Tucholsky advocated for the United States of Europe (King 2001, 169) and criticized the intergovernmental structure of the LoN, that made the organization weak and ineffective against international crises.

Indeed, within Europeanist circles many voices raised in favour of the League’s reform and more precisely of its decentralization, so that it would shift its focus from the global level to a regional one. We could refer to this approach as “open regionalism”, which considered the LoN complementary to the deepening of regional integration (Richards 2012, 234).

However, demands of European unity did not come solely from pacifists and internationalists, but attracted attention from other areas of the political spectrum as well. Some conservatives and reactionaries made the case for a united Europe out of concern that Europeans and their colonies would lose their privileged centrality on the world stage in favour of the emerging powers such as US, Japan, USSR (Pasture 2015, 106)

These selected examples show that a certain willingness to shape a new regional community was already present in most of Western Europe decades before the first bricks of the European Union were laid. However, these sentiments were met with strong scepticism by policymakers and hardly attracted any support from common citizens.

The liberal internationalist underpinnings were targeted with harsh criticism especially by the classical realist school, which conceived the international system as inherently anarchic and state-dominated;. The absence of a global government with the monopoly of violence, according to them, left the international arena at the mercy of states and their pursuit of self-interest. Liberal internationalism would later be renamed “idealism” by classical realist scholars because of its prescriptive, rather than descriptive nature: internationalists dedicated much time to explain how the world should be, but not much to enucleate the causes of war and power politics (Carr 1939).

Kalergi: being European in the interwar period

It was the undertakings of Count Richard Von Caudenhove-Kalergi that left the mark of pan-Europeanism on the interwar period. Son of an Austro-Hungarian diplomat and a Japanese noble-woman, he grew up in a cosmopolitan environment that would mark his future self. His thought, sincerely pacifist as well as proudly conservative and aristocratic, can be acknowledged as a synthesis of the many integrationist voices raised in that period.

In the book Pan-Europa, published in 1923, he addressed the disunity of Europe in a world by that time grounded on regional blocs. He referred to the Soviet Union and the United States as military and financial dictatorships respectively, to which Europe had to represent an alternative. The third threat was to be found within Europe, and that was the perennial Franco-German rivalry. With a proposal that sounds prophetic today, he suggested to entrust a Pan-European Coal and Steel Community with the management of French and German resources (Prettenthaler-Ziegerhofer 2012, 92). However, Europe’s rationale to create a cohesive bloc was not only determined by external and internal threats; indeed, he conceived arts, science and the common Christian-Hellenic roots as potentially unifying factors (ibid, 97).

While Kalergi’s concept of united Europe was rather similar to those introduced by contemporary intellectuals, his aristocratic origins granted him access to a plethora of high-ranking contacts among European political élites that he employed to gather consensus around the idea. Throughout the interwar years and beyond, he committed with perseverance to the pursuit of peace and convinced notable personalities that the attempt to unite the continent in order to avoid another vicious conflict was worth of consideration.

Following the publication of the book, Kalergi set up the Pan-European Movement with the aim to popularize the program and pressure policymakers; the extent of his influence is represented by the Briand Plan. In 1929, following heavy persuasion from Kalergi, the French President put forward the idea of a “European federation” at the ninth Congress of the LoN after having previously discussed the issue with the German president Gustav Stresemann, who had agreed even though with less enthusiasm.

However, Britain’s opposition and Stresemann’s sudden death delivered a fatal blow to Briand’s plan (Stirk 1996, 37). Later on, Hitler’s rise to power endangered the very existence of the Pan-European movement, which eventually ended up being outlawed by the Nazi regime (ibid, 99). Like some of the personalities previously mentioned, Kalergi was initially hopeful that the LoN would help re-establish international peace, but as events unfolded – the 1936 Italian invasion of Abyssinia, for instance – he became dominated by a sense of frustration and disappointment. Nationalism, indeed, had come to rule once again the European political scene, leaving no space to grand designs of revolutionary stamp.

Pan-Europeanism and regional awareness

The idea of Pan-Europeanism can be analyzed more in dept through the theories of regionalism. Hurrell’s theoretical perspectives, in particular, can help shed light on the reasons that triggered integrationist activism and on the obstacles encountered on its way towards actual regionalization. Two levels of analysis strike as most useful in this context: the systemic and regional.

Systemic level

For what concerns systemic theories, neorealism is of little help in understanding the emergence of early pan-Europeanism but provides a rather satisfactory explanation on why it failed in its endeavour. While Kalergi feared that Europe would find itself unprepared in case of a Soviet invasion, there was no meaningful geopolitical pressure exerted by outside powers that would push European countries together during the interwar years. These, instead, were too busy at keeping Germany at bay, while the US were not considered competitors but generous allies (see the Young plan).

Constructivism stresses the importance of ideas, values and other non-material factors in international relations; Kalergi and other conservative Europeans saw in bolshevism a sword of Damocles hanging over Europe. But as long as Nazi Germany kept threatening its neighbours, only a few were paying attention to the propagation of the communist ideology from the East.

In summary, the fragmentation of Europe was indeed perceived by some as problematic in a global context where the Old Continent was being outpaced by new geopolitical powers – the two dictatorships, in Kalergi’s words – incubating dangerous ideologies. However these feelings were not widespread at all as the German Question monopolized the minds of European policymakers.

Regional level

The regional level of analysis offers more valuable insights on early Pan-Europeanism as it investigates intra-regional dynamics rather than outside-in global pressures (Hurrell 1995, 58), whose extent was at the time limited. A constructivist reading would focus on the role of ideas behind Pan-Europeanism and the mechanism of élite socialization conceived to transform the new imagined community (Anderson 1983) into something concrete.

Pacifists identified the nationalist ideology as a source of major concern for the stability of the continent. Indeed, inter-state hostilities had produced countless deaths in Europe’s battlefields only a few years before the Pan-European Movement was set up. Consequently, many feared that the heavy toll imposed on Germany with the Treaty of Versailles (1919) could revive negative sentiments and drive Europe towards another destructive war.

Kalergi devised a stepped process that would embed European countries into a supranational framework thus preventing them to wage war against each other. First a Pan-European conference and then a series of arbitrary treaties and a customs union (Stirk 1997, 26) would constitute a regional linkage eventually leading nations to mold reciprocal sentiments of solidarity. The cultural premises of such architecture were to be found in the Christian-Hellenic roots that European countries shared and the consequent “cognitive region” (Amitav 2012, 188) that these elements would potentially inspire.

However, national interests and material factors ended up prevailing over the ideational considerations put on the table. Despite attempts to expand the network, the process mainly involved personalities from European epistemic communities – diplomats, bankers, aristocrats, intellectuals; in fact, Kalergi’s Pan-European project suffered from an elitist, top-down and, to some, anti-socialist nature (ibid, 27) that would ultimately prevent it from reaching the masses and popularize its message. Regional awareness only concerned a small percentage of individuals as common citizens and most of government officials remained attached to the state-centric paradigm inaugurated centuries earlier with the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

The failure of the Briand Plan

The conceiving and failure of the Briand Plan can be better explained from a neorealist and regional perspective. It was strictly related to the interplay between France and Germany and, more in general, to the striving of Western countries to arrange a new balance of power in the continent. The plan was welcomed with mixed feelings by German officials. Some mistrusted Briand and saw in its proposal the creation of an anti-American organization that would overlap with the LoN and entrap Germany in a French dominated framework.

Although Briand spoke of a European Federation, he guaranteed that all the members would have retained full sovereignty. This contrasted with the very definition of federalism, which necessarily entails some kind of sovereignty transfer from the state to the federal level of governance. Ultimately, the Briand Plan can be understood as a tool for France to reassert its control over Germany, which it was progressively losing. This would later be testified in the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance (1935).

Britain also eventually opposed the plan, out of concern that it would interfere with the Kingdom’s transatlantic bonds and damage the cohesion of the empire. Moreover, the political nature of the plan deeply concerned both countries, as such leap forward would have threatened their autonomy (ibid, 37).

Conclusion

A similar dynamic would resurface in the post-WWII period, when Schuman presented his plan. France proposed once again a framework that would keep Germany under strict control. However, a definite contextualization could explain why this time the attempt was crowned with success.

First, the Community envisioned by Schuman was a strictly economic one (Schuman 1950). This setting, as neo-functionalists argue, triggered the spillover effects that would have ultimately led, out of necessity rather than out of idealism, to some form of political union (Söderbaum 2008, 480). Second, the US isolationist foreign policy of the interwar period had come to an end. Americans started challenging the USSR through a policy of containment that also involved pressures toward Western European countries to set up a flourishing economic community.

Lastly, with the Soviet geopolitical influence reaching the heart of Europe, the Christian-Democratic party élites at the time governing in most of Western Europe feared that communism would spread in their countries as well and therefore committed themselves to a regional solution.

An earlier version of this article was originally written for the University of Leiden.