West Germany and Israel: foreign relations, domestic politics, and the Cold War, 1965–1974

Philip Robins contends that Turkish foreign policy has faced four challengesin four distinct periods of its history: (1) consolidating the emergentTurkish Republic through external recognition (1930s), (2) remainingneutral during the Second World War (1940s), (3) confronting thechallenge of Soviet expansionism (the cold war era), and (4) respondingto the end of bipolarity (post-cold war era). Robins examines these foreignpolicy issues in the last period.The main thesis of this work is threefold: First, Turkey is a status quopower in the way that its foreign policy elites have fastened their thinkingand practice to the framework of “the sanctity of borders, of states, ofmultilateral institutions and of norms of conduct, even when it becameclear that systemic changes had rendered some of these continuities nolonger tenable” (p. 6). Second, Turkey continues to be firmly orientedwestwards in terms of its foreign relations, which are characterized by itsstrong commitment to NATO as well as its desire to join the EuropeanUnion (EU). Finally, Turkish foreign policy has been characterized moreby “caution than daring,” quoting Malik Mufti. Despite the increase in itspower relative to its neighbors, Turkey has avoided an interventionist foreignpolicy by emphasizing the formation of multilateral frameworks forconflict resolution.Robins defends these arguments by analyzing the international systemicand domestic politics context in which Turkish foreign policy is ...

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West Germany, 1954–1970

Atomic Assurance ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501729188.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 48-78

Author(s):

Alexander Lanoszka

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cold War ◽

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Domestic Politics ◽

The United States ◽

West Germany ◽

Direct Role ◽

The Cold War

Several leading international scholars argue that West Germany enjoyed limited autonomy in the Cold War and was thus susceptible to American coercion, especially on issues relating to nuclear weapons. This chapter challenges such arguments. It shows that the alliance with the United States was less useful for curbing West German nuclear ambitions than commonly presumed. It also demonstrates that in-theater conventional forces mattered for bolstering American extended nuclear guarantees to West Germany. American coercion of West Germany was important, but it played a much less direct role than what many scholars claim. Other factors—especially domestic politics—drove West Germany’s final choices pertaining to whether it should get nuclear weapons.

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The Domestic Sources of Détente: State–Society Relations and Foreign Policy Change during the Cold War

Foreign Policy Analysis ◽

10.1093/fpa/orab003 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Angelos Chryssogelos ◽

Benjamin Martill

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Cold War ◽

Policy Change ◽

Foreign Relations ◽

Strategic Change ◽

West Germany ◽

External Relations ◽

Willy Brandt ◽

Foreign Policy Change ◽

The Cold War

Abstract Research on foreign policy change claims leaders seek to restructure their country's foreign relations when internal and external opportunity structures are permissive. However, a number of prominent efforts at achieving change have occurred during times of considerable domestic upheaval and rigid international constraints. To understand why, this article examines three well-known cases of Cold War foreign policy change, focusing on the external relations of Charles de Gaulle in France, John G. Diefenbaker in Canada, and Willy Brandt in West Germany. These cases suggest that domestic upheaval and foreign policy change were inextricably interwoven and that efforts to effect strategic change on a grand scale were motivated by a desire to respond to the demands of marginalized domestic constituencies without incurring the costs of domestic reform. Our analysis suggests key moments of international change are best understood as domestic incorporation strategies rather than instances of significant and principled foreign policy change.

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Cold War Exiles and the CIA

10.1093/oso/9780198840404.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Benjamin Tromly

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Cold War ◽

Soviet Union ◽

The United States ◽

West Germany ◽

United States Government ◽

Home Base ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

The Cold War ◽

Secret War

During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA undertook support of Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War II or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA’s Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA’s patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors.

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