1. 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