Western Europeans and Others: The Making of Europe at the United Nations

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of the so-called Western European and Others Group as well as that of the caucus of European Communities at the General Assembly of the United Nations based on a study of documents from Nordic foreign ministries in the period 1945 to 1975. It shows that the global entanglement of Western Europe both stimulated and inhibited the development of closer subcontinental collaboration during the Cold War, and it demonstrates that a European core was necessary for facilitating common political action. The hesitant and reactive evolution of Western European collaboration at the United Nations, the arbitrariness of its geographical scope, and the alienation of its members provide a key to understanding European identity in the second half of the twentieth century.