Abstract
The American dimension to European integration has stirred up great debate, conventionally crystallized in the ‘traditionalist/revisionist' dichotomy. A central concern in any study of the origins of European integration consists in determining how far the development of intense patterns of cooperative management and integration was dependent upon the provision of security and hegemonic political and economic leadership by the United States within the Cold War ‘western order', rather than on the efforts of European leaders themselves or the dynamics of intra-European politics.
