By analyzing public opinion polls, as well as polls of members of the "security elite" and the "general elite," this paper examines the West German perception of the Communist threat, West German attitudes toward deterrence/defense and detente, and the West German view of the Western Alliance. It reviews opinion trends in the 1970s and compares important results with opinions in principal allied countries. Among his conclusions, the author finds that the most critical development in West German opinion is an increasing belief that the Soviet Union is seeking reconciliation with the West and a decreasing belief that the United States is acting more responsibly than the Soviet Union.
This book provides a systematic approach which explores the domestic, regional, and systemic factors shaping Germany's role in NATO. Initially intended as stock taking of West Germany's interest and role in NATO over a forty-year period, this book has been transformed by events into a retrospective of what NATO has meant for West Germany and its partners between 1949 and 1989, and what NATO may mean in the future for a unified Germany, for a Europe spanning the Atlantic to the Urals, and for the USA.
New conventional wisdom posits that the public in democracies is inattentive but not really ignorant nor easily swayed, and indeed quite consistent and thoughtful when it comes to national security and foreign policy issues.This volume builds on such a claim to study the attributes and impacts of public opinion on foreign and national security policy in six democracies: Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Ukraine, Finland and West Germany. These countries face acute and sustained national security challenges posed by stronger authoritarian regimes close by, namely China, North Korea, the Arab nations, Russia and the Soviet Union. Given potential existential threats to their democracies, the public is typically tuned in, and in sorting out their policy stands, is mindful that the fundamental values of identity, sovereignty and prosperity may be jeopardized. Public opinion can indeed constrain statecraft here in these democracies ensnared in asymmetric dyads.Many have studied public opinion and national security in democracies, but few have studied national security strategy of weak powers confronting great powers. This volume is the first attempt to examine this topic. The approach here is a comparative rather than country-specific study combining qualitative and quantitative research methods to enrich our understanding of the complexity and intrigues of the interplay between public opinion and national security under the condition of regime asymmetry. The wealth of data and careful examination of various issues from different theoretical approaches makes this volume an essential guide for courses and research in comparative foreign policy, international relations and democratic processes.
In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, formally divided since 1949,the United States prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical under-standing of the American-German relationship. Largely left out of the grand narrative of U.S.–German relations were most East Germans who found themselves caught under Soviet and then communist control by the post-1945 geo-political fallout of the war that Nazi Germany had launched. They were the ones who most dearly paid the price for the country's division. This book writes the East Germans—both leadership and general populace—back into that history as objects of American policy and as historical agents in their own right Based on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives, this book demonstrates that U.S. efforts from 1945 to 1953 went beyond building a prosperous democracy in western Germany and "containing" Soviet-Communist power to the east. Under the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, American policy also included efforts to undermine and "roll back" Soviet and German communist control in the eastern part of the country. This story sheds light on a dark-er side to the American Cold War in Germany: propaganda, covert operations, economic pressure, and psychological warfare. Christian F. Ostermann takes an international history approach, capturing Soviet and East German responses and actions, and drawing a rich and complex picture of the early East–West confrontation in the heart of Europe.
The American institute for contemporary German studies, which sponsors research and discussion on German politics, foreign policy and history since 1945, has compiled this book on the German army and its involvement with NATO, German politics and future strategic alternatives.
This survey of European public opinion on national security issues interprets numerous public opinion polls retrieved from government ministries, commercial agencies and educational institutions. It is a comparative and historical survey of the security challenges faced by Western governments.
This comprehensive, in-depth assessment of the German foreign policy record under the Red-Green government of Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer from 1998 to 2005, produced by a team of German and international experts, explores the idea of continuity and the sources, depths and directions of German foreign policy.
The nature of security in the contemporary world is changing rapidly. Superpower detente, the progress and further prospects of arms control, the collapse of East European communist regimes, and German unification, to name but the most spectacular features, present unprecedented challenges not only for political decision-makers, but also for the mass publics in democratic societies. What are the trends of public opinion on these issues and how do they reflect these changes? By what factors are pertinent public attitudes shaped and what structures do emerge? How can they be reliably assessed and meaningfully analyzed? Which demands flow from the dynamics of public opinion that have to be taken into account in security policy making? These are the key questions addressed by the twelve contributions to this volume. Combining longitudinal and comparative approaches they cover the public dimension of the national security debate in seven Western nations: Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Experts from academia, governments, think tanks, NGOs, trade unions, and business investigate whether the public should play a greater role in foreign policy making by analysing their current role in the Iraq war (USA), Post-Apartheid (South Africa), trade relations with China (New Zealand) and other cases.
