Core and Periphery from Cold War to Monetary Integration

presents history of Western European integration from a dependency perspective. The chapter starts with a short history of how the European core was reconstructed in the framework of the cold war. It argues that World War II was an incident of extreme core-periphery relations, the consequences of which the European aggressor, Germany, never had to fully bear. Instead, the cradle of the European Union gave privileges to Germany in the framework of US cold war interests. Germany could boast to have earned the fruits of a true (ordoliberal) economic policy ever since, while it has not repaid wartime obligations (reparations) to, e.g. Greece. Furthermore, Germany was able to influence the Western European integration rules and standards that were economically liberal from the start. Countries joining the integration model had to accept the liberal rules. When peripheral countries became members, it was an ‘integration of unequal partners’. Economic integration had preceeded via the expansion of core corporations. While EDS authors formulated policies for a ‘true integration’, they feared, however, a neocolonial scenario.