Abstract
Abstract This chapter focuses on the unique role of the West German state in international politics and its close relations with both the US and its Western European partners. The US pursued two crucially important objectives regarding the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) during the Cold War era. First, the US pursued the FRG’s firm and irreversible integration with the Western world, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Second, and perhaps most significantly, West Germany was at the centre and the main reason for the US-inspired European integration process. Both US policy goals overlapped, however, and complemented each other. By the mid-1950s the former objective—the Bonn Republic’s integration with the West—was essentially completed, though quite unwarranted concern about its continued viability arose in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of West Germany’s Ostpolitik. The second objective, the European integration and unity process, remained a work in progress throughout the Cold War years and indeed well beyond, until the present day. Initially, it was driven by the US, in cooperation with France and West Germany, before a decisive turning point occurred in the early to mid-1970s, when Washington largely cooled towards the European unity process. From the mid-1970s Washington lost almost all interest in helping and supporting the Europeans to create a united Western Europe.
Published Version
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