Third Force Ambitions: Claude Cheysson and the Rebranding of Eurafrica into Europe's Grand Design

Abstract

This essay discusses how the European Community used its relations with the Third World to leverage increased power in the Cold War. It argues that resuscitating the interwar concept of Eurafrica to emerge as a credible alternative to Cold War superpowers went hand in hand with the systematic effort to distance themselves from the colonial legacy and the American strategy. It claims that it took a dynamic leader - Claude Cheysson - to make the Common Market a pivotal actor of globalism, with regional partnership and support of the new international economic order, until its transformative potential waned with the neoliberal turn of the 1980s.