POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990

Summary

Translated by Richard Sharp

GLOBAL DÉTENTE AND GERMAN OSTPOLITIK

The period covered here began with the postwar era's first major turning point, symbolized by the year 1968. On the surface, this new era was ushered in by changes in leadership: In Washington the administration of Richard Nixon replaced that of Lyndon Johnson, while in Bonn the “Grand Coalition” of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats gave way to a new alliance between the Social Democrats and Liberals. The overshadowing development, however, was the crisis of U.S. policy in Vietnam along with the nuclear stalemate between the superpowers. To ease that stalemate, the United States had to reorient its foreign policy in Europe fundamentally toward the goal of a comprehensive easing of East-West tensions. This new orientation achieved its first critical success with the treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons ratified by the United Nations on July 7, 1968.

The Vietnam War and its repercussions also had an indirect effect on the Federal Republic's foreign policy position by mobilizing a “New Left” that adopted the American protest against the war as its own cause. The influence of this new, in extreme cases fanatically anti-American “movement” extended into the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD), the party that took over the chancellorship in late October1969. American efforts to achieve détente posed a more direct challenge to West Germany’s previous foreign policy principles. Because the Federal Republic insisted that progress toward détente must depend on progress toward German reunification, it was in danger of becoming isolated from its main ally, for the Americans attached higher priority to détente in Europe than to the German question.