ORIGINS

FiDiPro (Finland Distinguished Professor) (www.fidipro.fi) is a funding program launched by the Academy of Finland to promote high-level academic research. By allocating funds to distinguished professors and their host institutions in Finland, the scope of the program is to raise the standard of scientific excellence by establishing long-term international collaboration among outstanding researchers in Finland and around the world.

Owing to the initiative of Academy Professor Marjatta Hietala (Professor of History, University of Tampere), the Department of History of the University of Tampere successfully participated in the first round of applications, receiving funds from the Academy for a long-term and ambitious 5-year project.

Professor Jussi Hanhimaki (Professor of International History and Politics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) was nominated Finland Distinguished Professor and was called upon to elaborate and direct the project entitled "Conflict and Community: Transatlantic Relations in the 'Long' Twentieth Century."

Professors Hietala and Hanhimäki, with the external consultation and support of Professor Tarja Väyrynen (Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of Tampere) and Docent Sari Autio-Sarasmo (Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki) started their work in early 2007.

The research team currently consists of FiDiPro Jussi Hanhimäki, Dr. Benedikt Schoenborn, Dr. Katalin Miklóssy, M.A. Pia Koivunen. Former members of the research team were Dr. Barbara Zanchetta, M.A. Iina Kohonen, M.A. Riikka Nisonen, M.A. Mikko Hyvärinen.

Background
Research Questions
Research base and international network

"We are all Americans" (Nous sommes tous americains) famously headlined Le Monde three days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. At the dawn of the 21st century an attack against America was - even by this traditionally anti-American French newspaper - considered an attack against common values held dear by all who live by western standards of democracy. As other exclamations of western unity, including the invocation of NATO's article five - for the first and so far the last time - followed, the transatlantic relationship appeared at the brink of a new era of close cooperation.

Of course, it was not to be. While the transatlantic community stood united behind the subsequent overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, tensions over America's march towards a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq soon emerged. By the spring of 2003, the once united front had split as a 'coalition of the willing' (headed by the United States and Great Britain) launched the invasion (or what they preferred to call 'liberation') of Iraq over the objections of France, Germany and several other key members of the transatlantic community. Other transatlantic differences - cultural, social, economic - were intensely debated. "Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus," one polemical account famously declared. As the conflict in Iraq continues, the transatlantic relationship remains turbulent, albeit experiencing some improvement in contrast to the rhetoric-laden and tension-ridden period of 2002-2003.

The above well-known snapshot of the development of transatlantic relations over the past five years illustrates the central question this project will address. Simply put, this project will explore the constant fluctuation between cooperation and conflict that characterized the transatlantic relationship for decades before Al-Qaeda operatives flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. In essence, it will ask: which has been the more 'normal' (or commonplace) state of transatlantic relations, tension or unity?

While focusing more heavily on the last six decades, the project will explore this question within the context of what is defined here as the 'long' twentieth century: the period starting with the 1898 Spanish-American War that highlighted the questions of empire and democracy enlargement as key issues within the transatlantic relationship, and the aftermath of 9-11 that, once again, brought fore the many political, cultural, social, and economic questions that have both divided and united the transatlantic community.

Although the project covers a wide span of time - from the late nineteenth century to the present - most of the research and output will relate to the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras. The choice of such a time period allows for the broadest possible reflection on the general research question. Only by studying the long-term development of the transatlantic relationship can we ultimately judge whether the tensions or conflict are exceptional or ordinary. By the same token, it is only by addressing this issue that one can contemplate the future direction of the relationship. In short, the broad time period that extends to the present allows the historian to produce policy relevant research and engage more actively with policy makers, scholars from other disciplines, and the general public.

Within the above temporal context the research focuses on several key questions and themes as schematically grouped below:

1. Security: Cold War to War on Terror

The American role in Europe during the second half of the twentieth century seems, in security terms, to have experienced a virtually linear course. Since the end of World War II, Americans retained a strong presence as the dominant member of NATO. Former enemies, such as Germany, became close allies, while even countries that often criticized the United States made no serious attempt to break completely with Washington. Even France's dramatic exit from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966 did not amount to a "withdrawal." Nor has this pattern of security cooperation changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. NATO expansion has, in fact, extended US influence while the American role in the conflicts following the breakup of former Yugoslavia, for example, illustrates the relative incapacity of Europeans when faced with the need to take decisive military action.

What explains this development? What lies behind the growing and continuing European dependency - in security policy - on the United States? What have been the political consequences of this European dependency? Is it likely to continue to the foreseeable future or - given recent disagreements and the lack of a unified external threat - will an independent European Common Foreign and Security Policy eventually emerge? Moreover, what is one to make of the persistence of neutrality and non-alignment in Europe (Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland remain outside of NATO)? These are some of the key questions that will be addressed in this part of the project.

2. Economics: Integration and Competition

By almost any measure the story of European integration remains a remarkable success. During the Cold War it transformed one half of the continent that had, in the first half of the twentieth century, been marred by constant strife and violent national ambitions, into a community of nations that had effectively managed to eradicate war as a means to political ends. Moreover, as events in the 1990s and the early 21st century have shown, European integration - even with nagging doubts about the direction of the European Union - was to prosper even further after the collapse of the Cold War order in Europe.

From the perspective of transatlantic relations, however, European integration has been a complicated phenomenon. Early American support - traceable at least as far back as the Marshall Plan - became increasingly ambivalent as European economic recovery and growth translated into the relative decline of the U.S. dominance in transatlantic economic relations.

Today, almost six decades since the launching of the Marshall Plan, Americans tend to consider the EU, as Rondal Asmus puts it, "as an institution hostile to American interests and one that Washington should keep at arm's length rather than embrace and support." In the meantime, many Europeans tend to view the EU as a necessary counterbalance to American (or Anglo-American) dominance. In recent years, as the disillusionment with the Iraq war has increased, the necessity of such 'counterbalancing' has gained more support among academics on both sides of the Atlantic.

What lay behind the US support for European integration in the aftermath of World War II? When did this support begin to turn towards ambivalence or outright hostility? How have American and European views differed regarding the process of integration; especially over the nature ('deeper' or 'wider') of that integration? How were transatlantic relations influenced by the several enlargements (starting in 1973) of 'Europe' as well as such important milestones as the adoption of the EURO?

Closely linked to questions of security - especially during the Cold War - the role of European integration in the development of transatlantic relations is a crucial aspect of this study.

3. Transatlantic Community and the Wider World: Imperial Dilemmas

The discussions over Iraq are but the latest in a string of debates between the United States and its allies across the Atlantic over events outside the actual geopolitical space of the transatlantic community. From the very start, Americans distinguished between European colonialism and their own 'imperialism' by maintaining that the United States was, in fact, engaged in a 'democracy enlargement' exercise. This explanation has ever since accompanied American military engagements and occupations, be it in the Caribbean region before World War II, in Vietnam during the Cold War, or in Iraq today.

This part of the research project will, therefore, focus on the interplay between developments in the wider world and the development of transatlantic relations. The questions that will be addressed include: was the United States policy towards the decolonization of Europe's empires in the aftermath of World II consistent with its anti-colonial principles or with its national security (or was there, in fact, a conflict between the two)? Where there serious differences in American and European policies towards the so-called third world? Why did the Europeans refuse to support the U.S. war effort in Vietnam and numerous other cases of American military engagement (in the Middle East in particular)? Is it accurate to characterize the United States as a promoter of globalization and the EU as an inward-looking champion of regionalism? If so, how serious is this gap and how is it likely to affect the future external policies of America and Europe, as well as their mutual relationships? In turn, how will this affect the role of various global institutions, more significantly the United Nations system and the World Trade Organization?

4. Culture 'Wars': Americanization-Globalization and Its Discontents

The Americanization of Europe and/or European resistance to it has been a persistent theme in American studies, cultural history, and cold war scholarship. Since the 1990s, it has become fashionable to talk about the globalization - rather than Americanization - of culture. Whatever name one chooses to employ, it is fairly clear that in the realm of popular culture in particular there exists not only a transatlantic space but, increasingly, a global space that is dominated by a certain 'sameness' which, in turn, is heavily influenced by cultural products - movies, music, clothes, etc. - of mainly American origin (although some of these are being increasingly produced outside the United States). Thus, when European nations (France foremost among them) erect laws to protect their national customs and lifestyles against the influence of globalization, they are still guarding primarily against Americanization with a different name. In short, the same rationale that led the French National Assembly to undertake a serious effort to ban Coca-Cola in the early 1950s can still be observed in legislative efforts both at the national and EU level.

Particularly during the Cold War the open societies of Western Europe experienced several movements critical of the pervasive 'coca-colonization' of ancient European cultures. In Eastern Europe, though, American culture was mainly an underground (protest) phenomenon; listening to rock music or wearing blue jeans were, in a sense, a form of protest against communist rule in Eastern Europe whereas in Western Europe young people could at the same time protest against the Vietnam War and listen to American music, wear jeans, etc. (that is, act like many of their American counterparts). After the Cold War the appeal of American culture - perhaps like in Western Europe in the decade after 1945 - remains strong in Eastern Europe ('New Europe') whereas in Western Europe it seems either so commonplace as to demand little reaction, or so 'vulgar' as to merit condemnation.

In short, this part of the research will focus on such questions as: how did Western and Eastern Europeans view and react to the 'onslaught' of American culture after 1945? What were the major regional (and national) differences? How did the end of the Cold War affect such views?

Considering the broad time period and the questions it poses, this project is clearly a work of synthesis rather than a detailed study of a narrowly defined research issue/problem. It therefore forms an ideal base for intensive research at all levels, with the active engagement of professors, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students.

The scope is to initiate a tradition of transatlantic studies, which will create an internationally acknowledged research base in the field and permanently widen the understanding of transatlantic relations and of foreign relations in general. Apart from working on their individual research and producing high-level scientific publications, the researchers involved in the project will serve as specialists in the field and take responsibility for the training of young researchers in the future.

Another equally important goal of this project is to capitalize upon the expertise and international contacts of Professor Hanhimaki and of the other members of the project in order to build a cooperative network of highly recognized institutions dedicated to the study and research of transatlantic relations, the Cold War and other related aspects. Integral part of this cooperation is the organization of international conferences, seminars and workshops, together with exchanges at all levels, involving students, researchers and professors.

Formally linked to the project are the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland); the Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of Tampere (Finland); the Cold War Studies Centre, London School of Economics (United Kingdom); the Machiavelli Center for Cold War Studies, University of Florence (Italy); the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich (Switzerland); the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva (Switzerland). Informal links exist with the Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington D.C.); the North American Studies program, University of Helsinki (Finland); the Department of Political History, University of Helsinki (Finland); the Department of Political History, University of Urbino (Italy). Further contacts are being established with a number of institutions in the U.S.A., Russia, Finland and other European countries.