As a young political science professor at Yale. Calleo spent a year in Paris researching and writing this assessment of Europe’s “grand alternatives” – the conflicting visions, with their accompanying ideals, motives, and programs that appeared to be competing in the 1960s to shape postwar Europe. The study was based both on wide reading in federalist and Gaullist literature and an extensive series of interviews among government officials, political leaders, and intellectuals – in Brussels, London, and Paris. The topic allowed Calleo to draw on his academic training as a specialist in international relations with his intensive study of modern European history and political theory.
This study opens with a comparison of the ideals of nationalism and federalism and their relation to conflicting models for European integration. After a review of contrasting federalist theories, there follows an analysis of the European Economic Community’s claim to be Europe’s nascent federal government, with a sympathetic but critical examination of the ideals and perspectives that were animating the Eurocrats of Brussels. There follows a comprehensive survey of the philosophical roots of General de Gaulle’s politics – his vision of France and of Europe’s evolution in relation to Russia and America. Calleo then examines the philosophical roots of Atlanticism and the role of the United States in the drive to create a united Europe and a new global system. He concludes by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each of these competing visions for Europe’s future. The analysis has stood up well for over our decades. It provides the starting point for the author’s Rethinking Europe’s Future, first published in 2001.
‘Europe’s Future: The Grand Alternatives is a brilliant and incisive analysis of American misconceptions about postwar Europe. Penetrating the miasma of official propaganda and unofficial daydreaming, Calleo describes the “grand alternatives” open to Europe with objectivity, scholarship, grace, and wit, and has written what is perhaps the best single account of America’s role in the drama of European unification.’
– Ronald Steel, The New York Review of Books, July 28, 1966
‘Professor David P. Calleo of Yale University has written an excellent, thoroughly researched book presenting us with the major problems of Europe today and the alternatives open to us. He has written in a style that is fresh and exciting, eliminating much of the history of Europe that contributes little to the present situation.’
– James M. Gavin, Harper’s Magazine, April 1966