The most influential post-war figure
James ‘Nourishing Obscurity’ Higham asks:
“Which individual has had the most influence on humanity worldwide since WW2, such that if they had not been around, human history would have had a significantly different outcome”
I don’t really subscribe to the ‘great man’ theory of history, but I think someone who doesn’t have enough prominence and who most people in the UK, where I live, haven’t heard of would be Paul-Henri Spaak.
Spaak was chair of the first session of the UN General Assembly and the second Secretary-General of NATO after Lord Ismay. He was also the first president of the Council of Europe and was for a year president of the European Coal & Steel Community; he led the Belgian delegation at the Messina conference that led to the ECSC. It is perhaps fair to say that whoever occupied those positions at those times would have been someone of stature; however, his pioneering of what became known as the Spaak method of diplomacy and his remarkable frankness – in a session of the UN GA, he silenced the Soviets with the line ‘Messieurs, nous ons peur de vous’ (Sirs, we fear you). He also helped end France’s empty chair policy that led to the reintegration of France into the European project.
Along with Robert Schumann and Konrad Adenauer, Spaak was one of the three people who drove the development of post-war Europe and was father not just to the form but to the very existence of the EEC, now the EU.
The results of Spaak’s efforts were binding the USA into NATO, ensuring that France remained an active participant and helping in the recreation of Western Europe after the Second World War. The impacts of that are wide-reaching: the expansion of the EU, the growth of liberal interventionism, EU comitology, NATO’s capacity, the Common Market and the Euro and so on and so forth.
xD.
May 19th, 2008 at 12:40 am
More than interesting, Dave. So he was a key driving force behind the EU threat of the moment and the Council of Europe policy driving? Have to read up more about him.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Yes, he was. The EU is now seen as something that isn’t going to go away, but in the early fifties things looked very different. Destroyed by the war and between the USA and USSR, the nation states of Europe were under threat and their survival was by no means guaranteed. Spaak was influential in saving them by getting them to work together for common goals even when the short-term result was bad for that country.