Germany, America, Europe : forty years of German foreign policy

Since its creation four decades ago, West Germany has grown into an economic giant, a major force in the European state system, and an important element in the balance of power between East and West. In this book, a well-known authority on the Federal Republic of Germany discusses how the country's major foreign policy goals-security, integration with the West, German unity, and political and economic reconstruction-have been shaped by the restrictions and opportunities of the post war state system and the Germans' response to them.

Wolfram F. Hanrieder traces the development of the Fed eral Republic's political economy amid the conflicting demands imposed by global economic interdependence, European regional integration, and Germany's own economic ambitions. He shows why the division of Germany has remained an issue between the two German states, between the Germans and their Euro pean neighbors, and between the two superpowers. Hanrieder considers how the Federal Republic's range of policy alternatives was both limited and advanced by its close alliance with the United States and its security dependence on NATO. And he asserts that the German security partnership with the West has been severely strained by the decline of American hegemony and diplomacy, coupled with the diminished credibility of the American nuclear guarantee to Europe, the political and concep tual disarray of NATO, and the lack of a viable West European security institution.

Hanrieder argues that the United States created Atlantic and West European alliances to contain not only the Soviet Union but also the Federal Republic and that now, when Ameri ca's postwar strategy of double containment has eroded, the United States must supplant it with a diplomacy that treats West Germany as an equal partner, restores complementarity to America's policies toward Germany and the Soviet Union in a setting of détente, and eases the way toward a new European political order.