Foreign Policy Aims Research Articles

A Strategic Perspective on the Arctic

Strategically, the Arctic enjoys the unique - and also somewhat precarious - position as a 'buffer zone' between the two superpowers; the USA and the USSR. On the out skirts of the Arctic region, the Barents Sea has become, in military-political terms, one of the most important sea areas in the world. A factor of prime significance in this connection has been the growing Soviet emphasis on a forward naval strategy linked with the massive build-up of the Northern Fleet and the Kola base. Against this back drop, the author analyses the strategic importance of the Polar region, and the changes brought about by the discovery of oil, natural gas and minerals in Northern Siberia, Canada and Alaska as well as on the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean. Although the development and transit of these new resources could become a stabilizing factor in the area, there are still unresolved problems as regards division of rights and boundaries. The main strategic importance of the Polar region will still be derived from its location between the two superpowers. The author finds that the situation as it now develops in the Polar region could be exploited to achieve two important aims of Norwegian foreign policy: to strengthen Norway's ties with its Atlantic partners, and to increase the assurance of the Soviet Union. In order to achieve these aims, a common policy should be worked out in cooperation with other NATO members who have interests in the Polar region, i.e. Denmark, Iceland, Canada and the United States.

Prelude to Weltblitzkrieg: Germany's Naval Policy toward the United States of America, 1939-41

will either become a world power or will cease to exist.' This declaration, italicized in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, not idle phraseology. It formed the basis of Germany's foreign policy from 1933 until 1945. The realization of Germany's status as a world power remained for Hitler his life's mission. Nothing better demonstrates this point of view than his Nero order of March 19, 1945, his hastily composed Political Testament on the last day of his life, or those words uttered in the winter of 1941-42: am also cold as ice in this: If the German people are not willing to take an active part in their self-preservation, good: then they shall cease to exist.2 Hitler's final judgment of the German people already contained in these words. Germany had failed to establish its hegemony over continental Europe; it had failed its historic mission to become a truly world power; and therefore it had shown itself unworthy of the even greater tasks set down by the fuhrer. And these had aimed at nothing less than world dominion (Weltherrschaft). This seemingly obvious fact is nowadays all too often obscured, especially in works investigating the origins of the Second World War.3 What follows is an attempt to shed some light both on Hitler's ultimate foreign policy aims and on his responsibility for starting not only what he hoped would be a localized German-Polish war, but also for a world war in 1941. An examination of his attitude toward the United States, as seen through his discussions with German naval leaders,4 helps to :This project supported through the Klaus Epstein Memorial Scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. IHitler, Mein Kampf (Munich, 1933), p. 741. 2Cited in A. Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie: Politik and Kriegfiuhrung 1940-1941 (Frankfurt, 1965). p. 556. 3See esp. A. J. P. Taylor. The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1961); D. L. Hoggan, Der Erzwungene Krieg (Tiubingen. 1961); and F. Ruge. Der Seekrieg 19391945 (Stuttgart, 1956). p. 180, who maintains that a German attack against the United States was never planned and in view of the strength of the American navy also an impossibility. 4The main documents are deposited at the Bundesarchiv-Militairchiv in Freiburg im Breisgau, West Germany: PG 32184 Case GE 239. I SKL. Teil C VIl, Uberlegungen des Chefs der SKL und Niederschriften uber Vortrage und Besprechungen beim Fiihrer, September 1939Dezember 1940 (hereafter PG 32184 Case GE 239. I SKL. Teil C VII); PG 32185 Case GE 240, ibid., Januar 1941-Dezember 1941; and PG 31748 Case GE 277. 1 SKL. Teil Ca, Grundlegende Fragen der Kriegfiihurug, Mai 1939-November 1943 (herafter PG 31748 Case GE 277. I SKL. Teil Ca).

Soviet Alliance Policies in Retrospect

Some of the Fathers of the Soviet State, fifty years ago, obviously thought that they had produced a completely unique and unprecedented type of social organization. The first foreign policy declaration of the new state the Decree on Peace proclaimed loudly the Bolsheviks' intention to be different from other governments in the conduct of external affairs. According to Trotsky, the foreign policy of the Soviet State would be honest, popular, truly democratic; and of all the major governments, Lenin's first Council of People's Commissars came perhaps closest to Woodrow Wilson's ideal of open covenants, openly arrived at. Yet very soon, at Brest-Litovsk, the Soviet Government found out about the realities of power, and both internally and externally the new state had no choice but to behave as other states. Ideology became a very secondary consideration: Soviet foreign policy rightly became obsessed not with world revolution, but with national security. Indeed, it became indistinguishable from that of any other great power, though it was faced with special difficulties of its own. The road from the publication of the secret treaties to the Secret Protocols attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939 was not an easy one. Once the Soviet leaders had accepted the fact that their state would have to exist as one of a community of states, they soon adjusted their policies accordingly. The machinery of their diplomacy was perhaps more complex than that of other states, but the aims of foreign policy quickly became utterly orthodox. If the pursuit of national interest required that alliances be concluded, the Soviet Government was prepared to conclude them with all comers, provided they served the national interest. In the course of the last fifty years, the Soviet Union joined and abandoned alliances for the same reasons as any other state. Hans Morgenthau's definition of the purpose of alliance politics add their own power to that of other nations [or]

The aims of Soviet foreign policy

The aims of Soviet foreign policy

National Socialist Organization and Foreign Policy Aims in 1927

National Socialist Organization and Foreign Policy Aims in 1927

Britain, the Commonwealth, and Western Union

BY temperament British statesmen favour a pragmatic approach to foreign policy without always recognizing how powerfully inclination is reinforced by geography. Yet it is the fact that Britain is at once an island semi-detached from Europe and the heart of an overseas Empire that has fundamentally determined, and still determines, the character of her foreign policy. The coming of the steel-clad battleship, of the dreadnought and the submarine before the First World War; of the bomber and of the atomic bomb since, have modified her strategic position though, with due respect to some recent critics, they have not transformed it fundamentally. In the twentieth century, as in earlier centuries, the twin purposes of Britain's policy remain the safeguarding of her position in Europe by ensuring that neither the Low Countries nor France are controlled by an unfriendly Power; and the safety and well-being of her overseas Empire. In theory, and sometimes in practice, these twin purposes have not always been easy to reconcile, and in the posit-war world, when the United Kingdom's margin in man-power and resources in relation to responsibilities is so tenuous, the task of reconciliation may prove more exacting than at any time in the past. But its successful achievement is the condition of Britain's survival as a Great Power, and that is why the relationship between the Commonwealth and Western Union is of cardinal importance today. The problem, however, though greater in urgency than at any earlier period in our history, is the same in essentials and demands the same pragmatic approach. It is well to remember that even in an atomic age geography allows little scope for originality in foreign policy. In recent times the aims of British foreign policy have been nowhere more cogently stated than in Sir Eyre Crowe's memorandum of January 1906.1 The general character of England's foreign policy is determined by the immutable conditions of her geographical situation on the ocean flank of Europe as an island State with vast overseas colonies and dependencies, whose existence and survival as an independent community are inseparably bound up with the possession of preponderant sea power. The tremendous influence of such preponderance has been described in the classical pages of Captain Mahan. No one now disputes it. Sea power is more potent than land power, because it is as pervading as the element in which it

Aims of Recent Belgian Foreign Policy

Aims of Recent Belgian Foreign Policy