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1461. Co-Sponsored Projects: Germany's Role In Shaping the New Europe: Architect, Model and Bridge

Author:
Daniel N. Nelson, Andrei S. Markovits, Thomas Banchoff, Patricia A. Davis, Christian Deubner, Lily Gardner Feldman, JoEllyn Murillo Fountain, Stefan Immerfall, Michael Kreile, Carl Lankowski, Barbara Lippert, Susanne Peters, Elke Thiel, and Wolfgang Wessels
Publication Date:
04-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain the continuity in German policy in Europe across the 1990 divide. Although the collapse of the Soviet bloc and reunification transformed the context of German foreign policy, its fundamental direction remained unchanged. The new Germany, like the old, made solidarity with the western allies the cornerstone of its policy in Europe. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did address new policy challenges in the East. But he made stronger western institutions, and a deeper European Union in particular, his top priorities. Neorealism and neoliberalism, this paper argues, cannot adequately explain the strong western orientation of the Federal Republic in the early 1990s. The constellation of power and institutions at the international level left German leaders with different ways to combine association with the West and engagement in the East. In order to explain the priority accorded solidarity with the West, it is necessary to bring in the foreign policy priorities espoused by Kohl and the views of history and its lessons that informed them.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

1462. Peace Among States Is Also Peace Among Domestic Interests: Israel's Turn To De-escalation

Author:
Yagil Levy
Publication Date:
06-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Studies of Social Change
Abstract:
Demilitarization and de-escalation of violent conflicts have seemed to prevail during the last decade. The most significant event -- the collapse of the Soviet Union with the end of the Cold War--has stimulated scholars of international relations (IR) to retest the power of major theories to both explain and forecast the shift in the Soviet Union' 5 foreign policy from competition to cooperation with the U.S. (similar to shifts undergone by other states). Scholars generally agree that the economic crisis in the Soviet Union in a world system dominated by the U.S. played a key role in the former superpower's failure to extract the domestic resources needed to maintain its position of rivalry vis-à-vis the U.S., thus propelling it to embark on a new road. Still, scholars have debated with respect to the shift's timing and the origins of the trajectory opted for by the Soviet Union toward cooperation relative to other options, such as further competition as a means of ongoing internal-state extraction and control. This debate also highlights the analytical weaknesses of the realism/neorealism school of thought when taken against the background of the collapse of the bipolar, competitive world system on which this school has staked so much.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, and Ethnic Conflict
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, and Soviet Union