Ostpolitik

Die geringe Aufmerksamkeit der deutschen Elite und Öffentlichkeit für die Ukraine ist vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Opferzahlen der Ukrainer im Zweiten Weltkrieg geschichtsvergessen. Trotz einer Reihe begrüßenswerter deutscher Initiativen bezüglich der Ukraine, bestimmen nach wie vor Naivität und Stereotypen das Verhältnis vieler Deutscher zum zweitgrößten Flächenstaat Europas. Das deutsche Engagement in russischen geoökonomischen Projekten wird in Kiew mit Furcht und Verbitterung wahrgenommen. Eine Reorientierung der Ostpolitik und stärkere Präsenz der Ukraine im öffentlichen Leben Deutschlands ist überfällig. Eine intensivere deutsche Beschäftigung mit ukrainischen außen- und innenpolitischen Belangen würde eine schrittweise Heranführung der Ukraine an die EU zum Ziel haben.

The article provides an account of the much-disputed episode of the dialogue between the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) on the eve of the Ostpolitik. Basing on multi-archival research, the author provides evidences that the collaboration originated from an Italian initiative, and was linked to a broader reassessment of PCI’s international outlook. SPD’s reasons of interest (related to the development of the Ostpolitik) are also considered, as well as East German’s critical standpoint. While its importance for the establishment of the Ostpolitik should not be overrated, the episode is revealing of PCI’s views on Cold War, détente and the role of West European Left during crucial years of change for the European order. New elements that distanced the Italians from Soviet perspectives and from allegiance to a cracked international communist movement were intertwined with substantial flaws in the understanding of the international situation and the setting up of the Party’s strategy, which were to influence PCI’s fortunes also in the following decades. It was also due to these strategic stalemates that the collaboration with SPD, after assuming a considerable relevance for two years, eventually lost momentum in a changed international context.

"Strano destino, quello della diplomazia. Raramente essa cattura l’attenzione dell’opinione pubblica, scoraggiata da formalismi e rituali che paiono materia da iniziati, e dall’apparente assenza di risultati tangibili nel breve periodo. Prova ne sia il misto di diffidenza e indifferenza che solitamente i contemporanei riservano a estenuanti negoziati multilaterali in campo europeo e mondiale, pure suscettibili di produrre cambiamenti sostanziali per l’esperienza di vita quotidiana.
Tra le rare eccezioni, un caso a se stante è rappresentato dalla Ostpolitik condotta dai governi social-liberali della Repubblica Federale Tedesca (RFT) tra il 1969, anno della nomina di Willy Brandt alla Cancelleria, e le sue dimissioni, occorse in circostanze drammatiche nel 1974."

Il saggio vuole proporre alcune corrispondenze ideali tra la fase di elaborazione della "nuova politica orientale" tedesca (o Ostpolitik) e il corso riformista cecoslovacco comunemente indicato come Primavera di Praga. Parimenti saranno evidenziate le lezioni che la dirigenza socialdemocratica tedesca seppe trarre dalla brutale soppressione del movimento cecoslovacco, e che influenzarono in modo non trascurabile il futuro corso della Ostpolitik, intrapreso sin dall'ascesa di Willy Brandt alla Cancelleria nell'ottobre del 1969.

"The subject of this chapter is the analysis of the different, and substantially diverging, strategies that the Nixon Administration of the United States and the Brandt Government of the Federal Republic of Germany deployed in their first approach to a proposal for a conference on security in Europe during the early 1970s, especially concerning the problem of multilateral negotiations on military forces reductions in Europe. The sources available today at the German and American archives confirm that this topic was among the most debated inside the two respective governments, as in the course of the bilateral debates and in the wide range of multilateral (transatlantic) fora. If détente “easily [came] to represent a challenge to the stability of American-European relations”, the problem of a redefinition of a new “security” for Europe involving a broader, continuous dialogue between the countries of the two blocs proved to be the most potentially divisive between the United States and its (until then) most loyal ally in Europe, the FRG.
Moreover, the issue of a conference on European security represents a useful fil rouge in the analysis of the relations between the two countries during 1969–1972 for these main reasons:

1) initially, the proposal of a conference came neither from the two countries examined, nor from other partners of the Alliance: it was actually a long-standing Soviet aspiration, raised with greater emphasis by the “Budapest Appeal” of the Warsaw Pact at the beginning of 1969. Thanks to the sources available today, this “external” genesis allows us to understand the impact that the proposal had on the two administrations since its new launch;
2) however, during the age of the détente, the issue of European security did not represent a completely unexplored field, neither for the new American administration nor for the Social-Liberal coalition in Bonn. The “Budapest Appeal” arrived a few months after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact, but also after the transatlantic tensions of the 1960s, signified by the exit of France from the NATO integrated command, the failure of the Multilateral Force project and the fear of a “condominium” between the United States and the Soviet Union over Europe, especially after the two Superpowers signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. Thus, the debate following the Budapest Appeal did not erase but, on the contrary, quickened and emphasized the projects, the aspirations and the fears of the two governments;
3) projects and aspirations that, in their turn, were born out of a realistic evaluation of the material conditions in which the two countries found themselves at the beginning of the ’70s: the real or supposed decline of the United States as well as the consolidation of western German economic power represented important elements in the approach to the issue of European security, especially when the problem of a fairer share of the burden for the common defence was another source of tensions in transatlantic relations. The reduction of these expenses was a major thrust towards Détente;
4) finally, the interest of the debate over a conference on European security mainly comes from the broad space-time coordinates involved by the issue, including a wide spectrum of further subjects concerning the relations between the United States and western Europe, and of these within communist bloc. The spatial dimension, attempting to cover the whole continent in a sole assembly, represented a substantial innovation with regard to the situation generated by the Cold War, full of new and stimulating opportunities (political, cultural and economic), but also of risks and doubts on the survival of the western Alliance and concerning a possible common direction towards Détente."

The Ostpolitik pursued by the German government of Chancellor Willy Brandt during the early 1970s aimed at normalizing the relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and its Eastern neighbours, and at building a new European security system. Nevertheless, the German government felt compelled to gradually reappraise its aspirations in order to obtain the support and the cooperation of the Western Alliance and especially of the United States. This article examines the case of the negotiations for the reduction of the military presence in central Europe, which initially represented a fundamental component of Brandt's projects: Washington's refusal to endorse early negotiations with the Soviet Union on this subject determined a first major reassessment of Ostpolitik in Bonn.