In Beyond Wars and Cartels: Competition Law and the Reconstruction of Europe, Thomas F. Remington offers a new explanation for Western Europe’s transformation from recurring conflict to durable peace after the Second World War. Rather than treating European integration primarily as a diplomatic or ideological achievement, Remington places economic organization—especially control of coal, steel, and industrial cartels—at the center of the story.

For nearly a century, France and Germany faced a persistent security dilemma. Germany possessed the Ruhr’s enormous coal reserves, while French industry depended on reliable access to that coal and combined it with iron ore from Lorraine. This economic interdependence created opportunities for mutual prosperity but also profound insecurity. France repeatedly feared that German control of heavy industry would translate into military power, while Germany resisted French attempts to restrict or occupy the Ruhr. According to Remington, warfare and cartelization became alternative ways of managing the same underlying problem: who would control essential resources, on what terms, and with what safeguards?

The decisive institutional innovation was the European Coal and Steel Community, established by the 1951 Treaty of Paris. Emerging from a political bargain among France, West Germany, and the United States, the Community placed coal and steel production under shared supranational rules. Crucially, these rules prohibited cartels, discriminatory practices, and excessive concentrations of economic power. Competition law therefore served a purpose much larger than promoting efficient markets. It prevented dominant industrial groups or national governments from monopolizing strategic resources, protected the gains from cross-border trade, and made renewed military rivalry materially and politically more difficult.

Remington also connects this settlement to the reconstruction of West Germany. The postwar restoration of German industrial capacity was essential to European recovery, yet it could not simply recreate the concentrated economic structures associated with German militarism. The new competition regime offered a compromise: Germany could regain prosperity and economic sovereignty, while France received institutional guarantees of access and security. Binding both countries to common rules replaced coercive control with regulated cooperation.

The book’s central insight is that the foundations of European peace were partly legal and economic. Stable peace required more than reconciliation among political leaders; it depended on institutions capable of restraining private economic power, assuring equitable access to indispensable resources, and giving states confidence that cooperation would not leave them vulnerable. Remington acknowledges the limits of competition law, but argues that it played an indispensable—and often underestimated—role in ending Europe’s destructive cycle of wars, occupations, and cartels. The European project thus began not only as an ideal of political unity, but as a practical reconstruction of the rules governing power and markets. (Routledge)