In the previous chapter, we argued that a myth is a process of work on a single narrative core that answers a need for significance. By disentangling some of the myths of Europe, we analyzed the way in which they are conveyed through icons and other symbolic vehicles. In doing so, we focused mainly on the internal dimension of European identity; that is, on “how Europeans perceive themselves as part of a common European project.” Our focus in these last two chapters is on the external dimension of European identity.

This chapter suggests that discussing European identity without reference to symbolic borders and the role of external Others is bound to fail. Many histories of Europe are based on a centric vision of expansion around a European core, and much of political science on Europe concentrates on the institutions of a political Europe, thus overlooking the ideational element of European legitimacy. We argue that the symbolic borders of Europe and the existence of external Others have, at times, been more important than Europe's center or its actual physical borders, especially in the first decades following the foundation of the EC. In the early 1950s, the weak state of European countries torn apart on the battlefields of the Second World War, as well as the swift emergence of the Cold War, left Western Europe unable to chart its own course for the future (Lundestad 2003) and in need of external sponsorship (namely from the United States) to protect itself from the threat of Eastern European communism.