France, Germany and the origins of European detente

While the United States grappled with the implications of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the prospects of nuclear parity with the Soviet Union, its dominant position in the West was challenged from a number of directions.

At the general level, the growing American involvement in the Vietnam War, particularly after the Johnson administration dispatched ground troops to South Vietnam, came under increasing scrutiny and criticism from America's allies. None of the NATO allies, for example, agreed to support the American war effort despite repeated pleas. Many were concerned, in fact, that the American obsession with Vietnam would seriously undermine the American commitment to maintain its ground troops in Western Europe and thus weaken NATO's collective defence capability.

This seemed a particularly pertinent concern at a time of shifting defence doctrines: whereas NATO had relied heavily on the policy of massive retaliation in the 1950s, the Kennedy administration shifted towards ‘flexible response'. In practice, this meant that rather than threatening the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact with nuclear strikes should they launch military action against any part of NATO territory, the Western Alliance - prompted in part by the emergence of MAD — would now respond to such attacks ‘in kind'. In other words, if the Warsaw Pact took action against Berlin or launched an invasion with ground troops against West Germany, the United States would not respond with nuclear weapons. Rather, the result would be conventional warfare. To continental Europeans such scenarios were, understandably, less than reassuring.

While the Vietnam War and changing American defence doctrines undermined some of the transatlantic trust built in the years after the Second World War, the unity of the West was further complicated by the relative decline of US economic dominance.

In 1945 the United States had produced roughly 50 per cent of the world's manufactured goods; by I960 its share had declined to roughly one-third of global output. The main gains in this period had been made by Western Europe and, increasingly in the 1960s, by Japan. Both had been net beneficiaries of American post-war economic policies: the Americans had, after all, directly encouraged European integration and promoted Japanese recovery. Moreover, both Western Europe and Japan had benefited from the boom generated by the establishment of the Bretton Woods system, which was in turn underpinned by the strength of the American dollar. However, while this ability to generate prosperity was the cause of some satisfaction, particularly as it supplied useful propaganda for the battle of ideas with the Soviet Union, it did mean that, for the first time since 1945, the United States faced serious economic competition. Indeed, by 1971 the weight of propping up the Bretton Woods system while simultaneously fighting in Vietnam led President Nixon to end the dollar's convertibility into gold. It was within this context of emerging nuclear parity between the United States and the Soviet Union, the growing American involvement in Vietnam, the heightened European concerns about the American determination to defend Western Europe and the relative decline of

see Chapter 12

massive retaliation

A strategy of military counterattack prevalent in the United States during the Eisenhower administration, whereby the United States threatened to react to any type of military offensive by the Soviets or the Chinese with the use of nuclear weapons. The strategy began to lose its credibility as the Soviets developed a substantial nuclear capability in the late 1950s.

see Chapters 9 and 14

Bretton Woods

The site of an inter-Allied conference held in 1944 to discuss the post-war international economic order. The conference led to the establishment of the IMF and the World Bank. In the post-war era the links between these two institutions, the establishment of GATT and the convertibility of the dollar into gold were known as the Bretton Woods system.

After the dollar’s devaluation in 1971 the world moved to a system of floating exchange rates.

European Economic Community (EEC) Established by the Treaty of Rome 1957, the EEC became effective on 1 January 1958.

Its initial members were Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany (now Germany); it was known informally as the Common Market. The EEC's aim was the eventual economic union of its member nations, ultimately leading to political union. It changed its name to the European Union in 1992.

Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)

The German state created in 1949 out of the former American, British and French occupation zones. Also known as West Germany. In 1990 the GDR merged into the FDR, thus ending the post-war partition of Germany.

German Democratic Republic (GDR)

The German state created in 1949 out of the former Soviet occupation zone. Also known as East Germany. The GDR more or less collapsed in 1989—90 and was merged into the FRG in 1990, thus ending the post-war partition of Germany.

American economic power that the French president, Charles de Gaulle, launched his bid for West European leadership.

In power since 1958, de Gaulle's independent initiatives in the 1960s grew in large part from his desire to enhance France's position in the international arena. This, he maintained, would be possible only if France adopted a leadership role in the building of a new, more independent, Europe. This, in turn, required, as far as de Gaulle was concerned, the reduction of American influence on European diplomacy and, as he made clear with his determined opposition to its entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), no participation by Washington's ‘Trojan horse' — Britain. Instead, he saw the partnership between France and Germany as the linchpin in realizing a new Europe, ultimately stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. Some of the key decisions in this quest included de Gaulle's two vetoes of British membership of the EEC (1963 and 1967), the Franco- German Treaty of 1963, the development of an independent French nuclear force (the force de frappe), France's withdrawal from NATO's unified military structure in 1966 and de Gaulle's independent diplomacy towards the Soviet Union.

Despite de Gaulle's hectic diplomacy and grandiose rhetoric, he did not destroy the NATO alliance. Indeed, his stubborn rejection of British membership was not popular with other EEC members, his vision of a Franco-German ‘axis' failed to materialize (in part because of this) and his independent diplomacy with the Soviet Union did not result in any major initiatives. What his independent initiatives managed to provoke, however, was a reassessment of Western Cold War policies in the form of the NATO Council's Harmel Report. Approved by the NATO Council in December 1967, the Harmel Report (named after the Belgian prime minister, Pierre Harmel) introduced a double-track policy for the members of the Western Alliance. On the one hand, the NATO countries agreed that the original military purpose of the pact remained valid and that they should vigilantly pursue further improvements in their collective defence capabilities. On the other hand, the Harmel Report stated, ‘The second purpose of the Allies is to develop plans and methods for eliminating the present unnatural barriers between Eastern and Western Europe (which are not of our choosing) including the division of Germany.' Fostering an atmosphere of detente, either through collective or individual policies, was thus approved as a formal goal of NATO.

In the short term, the country that practised the spirit of the Harmel Report most actively was West Germany. As the Harmel Report had indicated, the reunification of Germany was an alliance goal that could be brought closer only within an atmosphere of detente. In the German context, however, this translated into a dramatic transformation of the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), which was made possible in part by the departure of Konrad Adenauer. As the first chancellor of West Germany and leader of the governing Christian Democrats, Adenauer had refused to entertain any contacts with the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Instead he had adopted the uncompromising policy of the Hallstein Doctrine, which effectively meant that the FRG would not have diplomatic relations with any country that recognized East Germany, save the USSR.

Germany was one nation and one state; East Germany would eventually collapse as a result of its own internal shortcomings and join the FRG. In the meantime, Adenauer anchored the FRG firmly within the EEC and NATO.

The erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, however, raised increasing doubts about the Hallstein Doctrine and its ability to bring the reunification of Germany, the ultimate goal of Adenauer’s policies, any closer. Spearheaded by the Social Democratic Party’s leader Willy Brandt, the idea of Ostpolitik now began to gain ground among the West German electorate. Essentially, Ostpolitik was built on the argument that German reunification would be possible only once neighbouring states, the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia, were satisfied that their security would not be in jeopardy if East and West Germany were joined. Moreover, the success of Ostpolitik relied on extensive engagement between the two Germanies (or the ‘two states within one nation’, as Brandt put it). In short, much like the Harmel Report, Brandt’s Ostpolitik called for the development of detente.

Ostpolitik

The West German policy towards the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, which aimed at reducing tensions with the ultimate hope of negotiating the peaceful unification of Germany.

The independent policies of de Gaulle’s France, the adoption of the Harmel Report and the rise of Willy Brandt to power in the late 1960s (he became foreign minister in 1966 and chancellor in October 1969) signalled a growing West European interest in detente. Still, even with France’s exit from NATO, there appeared little danger of serious disintegration within the West. In the early 1970s Brandt’s Ostpolitik, for one, would be co-ordinated with the United States. Moreover, the Johnson administration showed remarkable flexibility in adapting to the European challenge by, for example, endorsing the Harmel Report. Such continued co-operation between the Western democracies presented a remarkable contrast to developments within the Soviet bloc.

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Source: Best Antony. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Routledge,2008. — 638 p.. 2008

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