The United States - EURATOM agreement of 1958: The Cold War impact

Drawing on declassified sources, this analysis examines how the Cold War influenced United States policy towards the creation of the European Atomic Energy Community [EURATOM]. In the 1950s, “the peaceful atom” became a crucial sector of the Cold War. To maintain American nuclear leadership, the Dwight Eisenhower Administration invited Western Europeans to enter into an active collaboration with the United States on peaceful uses of atomic energy. The United States encouraged the creation of EURATOM by promising that the Community would obtain more assistance in the nuclear field than any individual state. The Soviet launch of Sputnik provided additional impetus to the signing of the United States–EURATOM agreement, having strengthened American interest in a joint programme with EURATOM that would bring together American and Western European scientific and technical resources to counter the Soviet Union. The exegesis contributes to recent studies on the interaction between the Cold War and European integration