Book contents
- Frontmatter
- POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990
- SECURITY: German-American Security Relations, 1968-1990
- 1 A Limit to Solidarity-Germany, the United States, and the Vietnam War
- 2 NATO Strategy and the German-American Relationship
- 3 Differences on Arms Control in German-American Relations
- 4 The NATO Double-Track Decision, the INF Treaty, and the SNF Controversy - German-American Relations between Consensus and Conflict
- 5 The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe
- 6 The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany
- 7 German-American Intelligence Relations: An Ambivalent Partnership
- 8 No Unity Without Security: The Security Features of German Unification
- ECONOMICS: Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968-1990
- CULTURE: Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict
- SOCIETY: German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968-1990
- 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences
- OUTLOOK: America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War
- Index
5 - The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2013
- Frontmatter
- POLITICS: Détente and Multipolarity: The Cold War and German-American Relations, 1968-1990
- SECURITY: German-American Security Relations, 1968-1990
- 1 A Limit to Solidarity-Germany, the United States, and the Vietnam War
- 2 NATO Strategy and the German-American Relationship
- 3 Differences on Arms Control in German-American Relations
- 4 The NATO Double-Track Decision, the INF Treaty, and the SNF Controversy - German-American Relations between Consensus and Conflict
- 5 The Shifting Military Balance in Central Europe
- 6 The Transfer of American Military Technology to Germany
- 7 German-American Intelligence Relations: An Ambivalent Partnership
- 8 No Unity Without Security: The Security Features of German Unification
- ECONOMICS: Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict: Economic Relations Between the United States and Germany, 1968-1990
- CULTURE: Culture as an Arena of Transatlantic Conflict
- SOCIETY: German-American Societal Relations in Three Dimensions, 1968-1990
- 1 “1968”: A Transatlantic Event and Its Consequences
- OUTLOOK: America, Germany, and the Atlantic Community After the Cold War
- Index
Summary
The period 1968-90 began with several political and military events that were significant for the balance of forces in Central Europe and for American-German relations. In November 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States. Under his administration, American policy returned to a more European focus. The following year in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Social Democrats began a thirteen-year tenure. Most important, the entire nuclear strategic environment changed when the Soviet Union attained nuclear parity with the United States somewhere between 1968 and the early 1970s. From this time on the touchstone of the American-German security relationship was the vitality of the U.S. security guarantee to Germany's defense, including the seamless connection of the U.S. strategic nuclear force to the other forces defending Germany - something for which the Germans wanted continuous reassurance. For the better part of the next two decades, Central Europe witnessed increased nuclear and conventional militarization on both sides of the inter-German border. The lines previously drawn between “strategic” and “theater” forces grew increasingly blurred, complicating any assessment of the balance of forces.
The relations between the United States and Germany had two distinct phases in this period that were separated by the arrival of conservative governments in both countries in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan was elected president in November 1980, and in Germany Helmut Kohl assumed the chancellorship in October 1982. Whereas the former period was characterized by America’s entanglement in Vietnam at the expense of Europe, a drift by the United States away from a Eurocentric strategic focus, and often chilly relations between the two countries, the latter period generally saw more compatible visions and more coordinated policy.
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- Information
- The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990A Handbook, pp. 155 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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