West German Ostpolitik and the German Question

Abstract

The specific problems of West German Ostpolitik during the Cold War and the period of detente have acquired new interest under the current conditions of radical systemic change. The various options pursued by the Federal Republic and their development provide criteria for an evaluation of the future course of the united Germany's foreign policy. The article starts with laying out the basic conditions of the FRG's Ostpolitik and their inherent contradictions: revisionism versus reconciliation, revisionism and the Cold War, the moral problems of the status quo. It then discusses four major variants: (1) military revisionism, which was never seriously considered; voluntary constraints form an important contrast to the foreign policy planning of the Weimar Republic; (2) revisionism from strength, the major strategy of the conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s; (3) revisionism based on calculated weakness, the strategy followed by the SPD opposition; (4) the redefinition of the national question in the 1970s which prepared the ground for a new consensus in the 1980s about West integration and detente with the East. The development of West German Ostpolitik is characterized by the renunciation of force, the differentiation of revisionist aspirations, and the shift from classical power politics (policy of strength) to a policy of compromise and understanding. Thus the foundations for a new tradition of democratic foreign policy have been laid which the united Germany can build upon.