Why Cooperate? (1974–1982)

Abstract

This chapter investigates the early years of French, German, and Franco-German second-generation combat helicopter politics. It begins with French and German defense planners' demands for new anti-tank combat helicopters in the first half of the 1970s. It then proceeds to analyze the two main outcomes of these years: France and Germany's initial “coming together” in combat helicopter matters between 1974 and 1979—even though their interests were fundamentally different—and their subsequent inability truly to collaborate in launching the program from 1979 on, faltering with the failed joint helicopter definition phase by 1982. As a case or observation, the first of these outcomes shows how the Franco-German institutionalized relations and the two states' historically rooted domestic constructions of self-understanding and roles in the world additively affected French and German interests and policies. The analysis of the second main outcome of these years shows that in the subsequent Franco-German interaction, diverging French and German interests, informed in important ways by their respective domestic constructions of French and German roles and purposes in the world, led to the stalling of cooperation during the first joint helicopter definition phase at the lower governmental and administrative levels. Both the logic of their institutionalized relations and their respective domestic constructions decisively drove the processes of French and German interest formation and policy formulation processes over the eight years covered in the chapter.