A State of Peace in Europe: West Germany and the CSCE, 1966-1975

by Petri Hakkarainen

Overview

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s West German foreign policy underwent substantial transformations: from bilateral to multilateral, from reactive to proactive. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was an ideal setting for this evolution, enabling the Federal Republic to take the lead early on in Western preparations for the conference and to play a decisive role in the actual East–West negotiations leading to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Based on extensive original research of recently released documents, spanning more than fifteen archives in eight countries, this study is a substantial contribution to scholarly discussions on the history of détente, the CSCE and West German foreign policy. The author stresses the importance of looking beyond the bipolarity of the Cold War decades and emphasizes the interconnectedness of European integration and European détente. He highlights the need to place the genesis of the CSCE conference in its historical context rather than looking at it through the prism of the events of 1989, and shows that the bilateral and multilateral elements (Ostpolitik and the CSCE) were parallel rather than successive phenomena, parts of the same complex process and in constant interaction with each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857452948
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/01/2011
Series:	Studies in Contemporary European History , #10
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	866 KB

About the Author

Petri Hakkarainen is the Director of Foreign and Security Policy at the Office of the President of Finland, a position he has held since 2018. Prior to that, he worked for the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs since 2006 with stations in Washington, Berlin and Helsinki, as well as at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. He received his doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford in 2008. In 2009 his dissertation was awarded the Willy Brandt Prize for the 'advancement of outstanding young scholars' by the Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction: Era of Negotiations

• European Détente
• The CSCE
• German Foreign Policy
• On Structure and Sources

Chapter 2. 1966-69: Incubation of Strategies

• The Early Years and the Eastern ‘Propaganda Circus’
• The Budapest Appeal: ‘We Could Have Drafted it Ourselves’
• Consultations Abroad, Electioneering at Home
• Nobody Expects the Finnish Initiative
• Promises of East-West Cooperation or an Instrument of Deutschlandpolitik?
• Chancellery versus Auswärtiges Amt
• Emphasis on Linkage: Bahr’s Foreign Policy Plans on the Eve of the Election
• Bonn and the Security Conference during the Interregnum
• Conclusion

Chapter 3. 1969-70: Bilateral Leverages and European Security

• Western Support for the Linkage with Deutschlandpolitik
• Horse-Trading in Moscow
• Rethinking the Linkage Strategy
• Berlin Surpasses Other Preconditions
• Discovering the Potential of the CSCE
• Conference on Security or Conference on Cooperation?
• Conclusion

Chapter 4. 1970-71: Transition to Western Multilateralism

• Following the French Lead on Berlin Linkage
• Defending the Berlin Precondition in Lisbon
• Divergent Interpretations of the ‘Successful Conclusion’
• Nothing Quiet on the Western Front
• Broadening the German Horizon in the NATO Framework
• From America’s Advocate to the Main Proponent of EPC
• Conclusion

Chapter 5. 1971-72: Towards a European Peace Order?

• The Decline of the Linkage between the CSCE and Deutschlandpolitik
• Hesitating on the Berlin Precondition
• Blackmailing the Finns?
• An Inner-German Shotgun Wedding
• Europeanisation of Ostpolitik
• In Defence of the Eastern Treaties and Bonn’s Sovereignty
• A New Flow of German Activity
• Peaceful Change, Self-Determination of Peoples and Military Security
• Freer Movement: Change through Rapprochement?
• Berlin as a CSCE Location?
• Avoiding Bilateralism
• Conclusion

Chapter 6. 1972-75: Deutschlandpolitik at the Conference

• Alphabet Diplomacy in Dipoli
• Peaceful Change, Act 1: Defending the Moscow Treaty
• Peaceful Change, Act 2: Enter Genscher
• Peaceful Change, Act 3: Commas for the National Interest
• Basket III: Human Contacts
• Follow-up and Berlin
• Conclusion

Chapter 7. Conclusion: Evolution instead of Revolution

Sources and Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Hakkarainen’s monograph derives from a prize-winning dissertation, and the accolades are well deserved. The research base is admirably wide-ranging…[This is] an excellent study that constitutes essential reading for historians of détente in Europe…One can only hope that other researchers will write as fluidly and skillfully about those conferences—or about that other grindingly slow multilateral framework of the 1970s and 1980s: the talks on MBFR (Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions). Hakkarainen’s book provides a worthy model.” • German Studies Review

“Petri Hakkarainen deserves commendation for his thorough and well-researched account of West German government strategies and actions with regard to the CSCE between 1966 and 1975. This is true in particular for his refusal to write deterministic history from hindsight...This book is a very solid, reliable, and convincing piece of history on policy deliberations and diplomatic negotiations conducted by the West German government.” • American Historical Review

“Hakkarainen’s study makes an important historiographical contribution alongside its empirical one. The author admonishes his readers: the CSCE together with the new Ostpolitik, which in his account are intimately linked, would indeed prove instrumental in ending the Cold War and bringing about German reunification, but this does not at all justify reading history backwards from the watershed years of 1989–91…For Hakkarainen, the infiltration of triumphalist narratives into histories of the CSCE, as well as of détente more broadly, must therefore be resolutely opposed and the history of the Cold War ought to be written ‘without prejudices based in the events of 1989–90.” • German History

“West-Germany and the CSCE, 1966–1975is concisely written and develops our understanding of the pre-history of the CSCE, the FRG’s role vis-à-vis its Western allies and the complex linkages between its Ostpolitik and its interests in the CSCE.” • Journal of Contemporary History

“In a balanced way the author blends German views with those from Britain, France, and the United States, using these countries’ official documents as well. His book represents a very serious piece of scholarship and is interesting to read. It excels with a novel hypothesis, a very careful use of varied archival sources, and an ability not to lose his argument in the wealth of material.” • Helga Haftendorn, Free University, Berlin

“I don't know of any other book that deals so thoroughly with German CSCE policy in the years described here…The author has done a vast amount of research, using documents from different archives and different countries…While he is of course not the first scholar to write about the origins of the CSCE, the author does contribute new elements and interpretations to the topic.” • Benedikt Schönborn, University of Tampere, Centre for Advanced Study

From the Publisher