| Review of: | German foreign policy: navigating a new era by Scott Erb |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Roger Morgan |
| Reviewed in: | International Affairs |
| Date accepted online: | 27/07/2004 |
| Published in print: | Volume 80, Issue 2, Pages 367-414 |
Europe
As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 2004, Scott Erb's thoughtful book gives a stimulating assessment of German foreign policy and its underlying elements of continuity. The structure of the book is chronological, relating the foreign policy behaviour of today's united Germany to what went before-particularly, of course, to the aims and priorities of the Bonn Republic. The author also looks forward to the future, giving reasons for his prediction that German foreign policy will continue to be shaped by the civilian, multilateralist, post-national, 'post-sovereign' self-perception which has prevailed in Germany for the last half-century and more.
The historical narrative devotes about 35 pages to Bonn's foreign policy from the 1940s to the 1980s. It then goes (rightly) into more detail on the bitter conflicts concerning nuclear weapons in the period of the 'Second Cold War', before devoting 70 pages to the central themes of the 1980s and 1990s, German unification and West European integration, and finally another 70 to Germany's role in the major conflicts of the post-Cold War world, from the Balkan wars to Iraq and the 'war on terrorism'. Professor Erb's account is clear and on the whole balanced, though he does give the questionable impression that
The book's conclusion considers the possible relevance of this new 'German model' for other states: how far does Germany's multilateralist, civilian and 'post-sovereign' international behaviour offer answers to the challenges of globalization, complex interdependence and transnational terrorism? Erb has some interesting thoughts on this, including the tentative prognosis that Germany may find it easier to develop an effective partnership with Russia, which is eager for involvement in the multilateral institutional networks of the West, than with a United States which President Bush appears to be resolutely leading in the opposite direction.
Erb's book deserves attention both for its survey of German foreign policy since the 1940s and for its interpretation of this record and its possible implications.