Germany's Ostpolitik

Fülszöveg

The West Germán govemment led by Chancellor Willy Brandt has pursued, with remarkable speed and tenacity, a new Ostpo/itik-an eastern policy designed to normalize relations with the Soviet Union and the other states in the Warsaw Pact. This book analyses the issues at stake in Chancellor Brandt's attempts to contribute to a solution of 'the Germán problem'- still the main source of East-West tension and potential conflict in Europe-by his recent series of agreements with the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany. Dr Whetten's book includes a full discussion of the various interests of all the East European states involved in these issues, as well as the interests of the Soviet Union and the Germán Federal Republic itself. He shows how the future development of West Germany's relations with her eastern neighbours depends on (and how it in turn affects) the prospects both for a broader détente between the military pacts of East and West, and for the settlement of particular issues... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The West Germán govemment led by Chancellor Willy Brandt has pursued, with remarkable speed and tenacity, a new Ostpo/itik-an eastern policy designed to normalize relations with the Soviet Union and the other states in the Warsaw Pact. This book analyses the issues at stake in Chancellor Brandt's attempts to contribute to a solution of 'the Germán problem'- still the main source of East-West tension and potential conflict in Europe-by his recent series of agreements with the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany. Dr Whetten's book includes a full discussion of the various interests of all the East European states involved in these issues, as well as the interests of the Soviet Union and the Germán Federal Republic itself. He shows how the future development of West Germany's relations with her eastern neighbours depends on (and how it in turn affects) the prospects both for a broader détente between the military pacts of East and West, and for the settlement of particular issues still in dispute. The Berlin problem remains the most intractable of these issues, and the book concludes with an assessment of its bearing on the prospects of Brandt's Ostpo/itik as a whole. LAWRENCE L. WHETTEN, an American expert in East European affairs, is resident professor for the University of Southern California's graduate political science program in Germany. Vissza