5 - The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe

Summary

The period 1968-90 began with several political and military events that were significant for the balance of forces in Central Europe and for American-German relations. In November 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States. Under his administration, American policy returned to a more European focus. The following year in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Social Democrats began a thirteen-year tenure. Most important, the entire nuclear strategic environment changed when the Soviet Union attained nuclear parity with the United States somewhere between 1968 and the early 1970s. From this time on the touchstone of the American-German security relationship was the vitality of the U.S. security guarantee to Germany's defense, including the seamless connection of the U.S. strategic nuclear force to the other forces defending Germany - something for which the Germans wanted continuous reassurance. For the better part of the next two decades, Central Europe witnessed increased nuclear and conventional militarization on both sides of the inter-German border. The lines previously drawn between “strategic” and “theater” forces grew increasingly blurred, complicating any assessment of the balance of forces.

The relations between the United States and Germany had two distinct phases in this period that were separated by the arrival of conservative governments in both countries in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, and in Germany Helmut Kohl assumed the chancellorship in October 1982. Whereas the former period was characterized by America’s entanglement in Vietnam at the expense of Europe, a drift by the United States away from a Eurocentric strategic focus, and often chilly relations between the two countries, the latter period generally saw more compatible visions and more coordinated policy.