Targeting the Periphery: The Role of Iceland in East German Foreign Policy, 1949-89

Abstract

This article deals with the role of Iceland in East German foreign policy during the Cold War. Because of Iceland's strategic importance, the GDR invested considerable resources in expanding bilateral relations, and in the 1950s became Iceland's fifth largest trading partner. In the 1960s, free market economic reforms in Iceland sharply reduced the barter trade with the GDR and party ideological differences between the SED and the Icelandic Socialist Party emerged which led to a formal break after the suppression of the Prague Spring. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the marginalization of East German influence in Iceland. With the discrediting of the East Bloc, and the failure to abrogate the US-Icelandic defence treaty, there was not much rationale for party ideological cooperation. The lack of increase in trade relations with Iceland following its recognition of the GDR in 1973 only reinforced this sense of political and economic alienation.