"Unfriendly, even dangerous"? Margaret Thatcher and German Unification (original) (raw)
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Theory as Thought: Britain and German Unification
Security Studies, 2014
Inspired by Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein’s call for analytic eclecticism and making use of newly available, previously classified archival documents, we distill the essential logics of realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism and examine their role in shaping the debates amongst British policymakers in the context of German unification in 1989–90. We find that, although all the theoretical logics help shape the policymaking surrounding unification, none stands alone as a basis for understanding social reality. Indeed, all functioned together as British policymakers thought in terms of theory to make sense of German unification. The logic of realism clearly played an important role in shaping the perceptions of top British leadership, particularly Margaret Thatcher, of German unification as a problem. But realism did not determine the solution to the “problem.” Instead, British policymakers drew on the logic embedded in neoliberal institutionalism, turning to institutions to manage the unification process. The reason for this can be found in the role of constructivist logics—particularly identity and rhetorical entrapment—that constrained British policymakers to cooperative policy options. By taking this approach, this article makes several important contributions. First, it sheds light on British policy during a critical historical moment. Second, it significantly improves understanding regarding Germany’s his- torical and current place in Europe. Third, it ties major theoretical traditions together through a foreign policy analytical approach, and in the process suggests that many of the theoretical boundaries separating scholars are overdrawn. Finally, the article pushes inter- national relations scholars to keep in mind the complex relationship between reality and theory. In the final analysis, bringing to bear these three perspectives highlights the complexity of the processes that produced British policy—and by extension those that shaped German unification—as well as the importance of breaking free of the strictures of the ideas versus materiality debate.
RETHINKING THATCHER AND EUROPE
RETHINKING THATCHER AND EUROPE, 2023
The relationship between the UK and the EU has always been depicted as a difficult one; and the master of British Euroscepticism, the key ingredient in UK's often fraught relationship with the European partners, has always been indicated in Margaret Thatcher. In fact, she has often been accused of a sudden U-turn in her attitude towards the European issue, in particular after 1988, and from an aloof but vigorous participation to a severe opposition. This paper tries to sustain Thatcher was never too incoherent in her attitude towards European integration; indeed, her combative posture was her distinctive character through her whole career, and her oppositive outlook was the consequence of a set of elements, the key reason being her performance as the premier of the United Kingdom and the leader of the Conservative Party. Thatcher was not Eurosceptical in a strict ideological sense, and she never really changed her attitude towards the integration process. Until 1990, she was able to compromise with her European partners. But she always had reservations towards the transformation of the Community in a supranational entity with particular characteristics as those of what would be the Union.
German Unification in the Works of British and American Researchers in 1945–1949 Pro et Contra
History and Politics, 2020
In the paper, the main approaches of British and American researchers to the analysis of German unification prospects in 1945–1949 are stated. The key arguments of supporters and opponents of the united Germany are determined, chronological periods of each approach’s prevalence on the pages of foreign publications established, and the key historical events that determined the final predominance of the supporters of the Germany’s partition identified. Finally, two main trends within the framework of this approach are stated, and the essential characteristics of them defined.
American Political Science Review, 2002
German unification presents conceptual puzzles of which comparativists dream. Has this monumental change, which boils down to full German sovereignty, growth of German power, and the emergence of new domestic political interests, altered Germany's relationship to Europe? Is Germany withdrawing from or dominating European institutions? Does the new Germany still tread its well-worn postwar path of the model “European”? The questions are important for our understanding of the sources of policy change and continuity as well as the process of regional integration in general and the course of European integration in particular. In which issue areas has Germany's postunification policy broken with the past? Is the break caused by changes in domestic politics or the increase in the power of a unified and fully sovereign Germany? Have policy changes impeded or enhanced the speed and character of European unification? Are important continuities evident? If both policy continuity and ...
The End of the Cold War and German Unification: Reactions from Washington, Paris, and London
This paper presents the case of German unification at the end of the Cold War through a multidisciplinary approach. Many historians focus analyses on the two rival superpowers in the context of the Cold War. However, Germany’s pivotal role in the ‘tug of war’ between West and East is sometimes overlooked. The first part reviews the United States’ reaction in the speedy and unexpected process of German unification from 1989-1991. The second part focuses on French reactions; and finally, the third part sees Britain’s perspective. The paper concludes by depicting Germany as theatre, not only of a glorious domestic unification, but also as the pillar of what would later become the European Union in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty.
German Unification - A Clash of Two Cultures?
The Woodstock Road Editorial (WRE), 1993
Op Ed for the Oxford University student and fellow journal The Woodstock Road Editorial (WRE) looking at how east and west Germans have dealt with the consequences of reunification written in the course of a visiting fellowship at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, under the Area Studies Programme of the Volkswagen Foundation for scholars from the former East Germany.
Towards a New Germany?-Problems of Unification
Government and Opposition, 1990
IT HAS NOW BECOME COMMON FOR OBSERVERS TO NOTE that German reunification, an unthinkable prospect only a year ago, will be realised before anyone, either the East and West Germans themselves or any of their neighbours and allies, is fully prepared for this eventuality. As the conservative Alliance for Germany's stunning successes in the GDR's first free Volkskammer (parliamentary) elections on 18 March demonstrated, a near majority of the country's population was eager to cast its vote for those forces which promised to facilitate East Germany's absorption into the FRG on the fastest possible terms. By the same token, the vote was also a victory of sorts for all of the West German parties who rushed to lend material and financial aid to their GDR counterparts, for their involvement in the East German election campaigns clearly helped to accelerate the momentum behind national reunification.
History of European Ideas, 1994
The attainment of the idealised form of political organisation in the twentieth century, the nation-state, has seldom been a completely smooth process. Nation-builders employ a wide range of strategies aimed at fostering national integration and a common feeling of national identity upon what may be originally an extremely heterogeneous population. Nation-builders seek to establish a common set of orientations, values and cultural mores among a given set of people, within the framework of a single (national) government possessed of its own territory, i.e. a state. The process of nation-building involves the subordination of dialect, territorial particularisms, competing nationalisms, religious minorities and political dissidents to an idealised vision of the national community.' No two nation-building strategies are completely identical. On the other hand, certain patterns may be discernible. In Northern and Western Europe the modern nation-state appeared via a largely stable evolutionary process, only on occasions punctured in the nineteenth century by internecine strife. Elsewhere in Europe the situation is by no means as clear-cut. The evolution of the modern nation-state has often been a painful and violent experience. It has included anticolonial struggles, e.g. Poland, and the persistence of civil division and authoritarian dogmas, e.g. Spain. Germany presents us with a particularly resonant example. In part its traditions are rooted firmly within occidental culture. However, throughout its history the Germanic world has been riven by a complex of cultural and religious cleavages far deeper than exist within any other comparable population group.2 That part of the German-speaking world which eventually emerged as the motor of national unification, Prussia, although in some ways influenced by the Enlightenment, carried with it a tradition of military and organisational prowess. Such traditions were very different from those extant in the southern and western German states which were to be included within the Prussian dominated Reich which emerged in 1871.3 Although Prussia, through a combination of force and fortitude had achieved a formal unification in 187 1, this act of state in no way signified the resolution of the issue of national integration. In fact, it could be argued that Prussian policies,
United and Divided : Germany since 1990 . An Introduction
2015
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) existed as a separate state between 17 October 1949 and 3 October 1990 when it opted to join the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and subscribe to its constitutional order, the Basic Law. The formal act of unification put an end to a postwar history of political division that commenced in 1945 with the occupation of Germany by the victorious Allies after the Second World War. Since then, the Cold War and its competition for political control and military dominance between East and West, placed Germany at the hub of these rivalries, not as a major actor but as a testing ground and showcase. The creation of the two German states in 1949-the FRG in May, the GDR five months later-was closely linked to the policy aims of the rival blocs and their determination to document their strength inside Germany. The West German and the East German states, therefore, became outposts for conflicting systems, each of them aiming at reinventing its part of Germany in its own way. Although Cold War rivalries had largely subsided at the time of German unification, the political, economic and social divides between the two Germanies were slower to fade, or refused to do so altogether. In reinventing their part of occupied Germany, each of the Western Allies initially sought to recast the political order in their respective zone of influence in accordance with the democratic processes and institutions of their own country. As zones were merged from 1947 onwards, national differences were superseded by a concept of democracy which owed more to the Weimar Republic and the experiences gained there by the German political leaders of the first hour than to American, British or French assumptions as to how democracy should operate. As the Basic Law took shape, it defined the Federal Republic of Germany as a democratic polity and society, stipulating institutional parameters that proved, over time, successful in facilitating the emergence of a stable parliamentary government and a democratic political culture (Almond and Verba, 1963; Smith, 1986). In the mid-1950s, this remade Germany 'rejoined the powers' as a sovereign state and established itself as a leading political force at a European and international level (Conradt, 1980; Edinger, 1986). Inside Western Germany, the spectre of a National Socialist revival disappeared in the wake of rapid economic reconstruction, unprecedented growth rates and an increase in living standards across all social strata (Dahrendorf, 1965). Initially, Germany's new democracy may have been a fair-weather product based on economic performance and policy output rather than a liking for party pluralism, parliamentary decision-making and other hallmarks of democracy. In time, however, material output ceased to be a precondition for democratic orientations as Germans stopped asking whether they needed more than one political party, took party pluralism for granted and began to ask more searchingly about how each party served the citizens and their personal interests (Röhrig, 1983; Kolinsky, 1991). West Germany's affluent society offered multiple opportunities of education, training, advancement and social mobility that exceeded those enjoyed by previous generations. While this remade society entailed risks, such as unemployment, income poverty or experiences of social exclusion, it also held the promise, and even the chance, of realising personal life goals and reaping the rewards for individual efforts and achievements (Hradil, 1993; Beck, 1986). In the Soviet zone, recasting occupied Germany took a different turn. While the Soviet Union was interested in extending its sphere of influence by adding a buffer state modelled on its own political and economic order, it was concerned, above all, to recoup some of the losses incurred during the Second World War by extracting reparations from the German territory under its control and by securing long-term trading advantages (Naimark, 1995). On the one hand, the Soviet Union directed German Communists, who had fled there from Nazi Germany and had been groomed as a future elite, to implement a socialist order and a centrally planned economic system in Eastern Germany, on the other hand it syphoned resources from the country and impeded postwar recovery. The project of reinventing Eastern Germany was, in any case, much more ambitious than that in the West, and involved the abolition of private enterprises, the collectivisation of agriculture, the creation from scratch of steel production in the region, and the mining and exploitation of lignite on a massive scale to meet energy needs. A system of state control and central planning was to determine all aspects of economic and social life (Schröder 1998). In the 1950s, state policy was aimed at excluding the former middle classes from leading positions and at giving an advantage to the working class in education, employment and political or economic leadership. Ten years on, the new elite contrived to retain their positions and secure similar privileges for their descendants (Dennis, 2000a). Increasingly, conformity with state ideology mattered in gaining access to education, advancement and social status (Geissler, 1996). Despite its self-proclaimed status as a Workers' and Peasants'