Willy Brandt and International Relations

Europe, the USA and Latin America, 1974-1992

Bernd Rother, Klaus Larres, Bernd Rother, Klaus Larres

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781350163522
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350040441
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

While there are many books that deal with Brandt's foreign policy as West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt and International Relations is the only book to deal with Brandt's politics as elder statesman between 1974 and 1992. The editors have assembled a group of authors from Germany, the USA, Latin America and Europe to assess Brandt's important role in global affairs during the waning decades of the Cold War.

The chapters follow Brandt beyond his resignation as Chancellor in 1974, after which he continued his position as chairman of Social Democratic party and became chairman of the Socialist International. His international politics were above all focused on Europe, Latin America and the United States. He was keen on finding new partners in the 'Third World' such as Latin America and the Caribbean, leading to conflicts with the U.S. administration which caused problems for West German foreign policy. The authors also examine global challenges that occurred after 1989, such as Brandt's handling of German unification, the Kuwait crisis of 1991 and the first Gulf War.

Willy Brandt and International Relations provides a new perspective on decades of Cold War relations and beyond through the work of an influential statesman and political thinker. It is an illuminating book for students and scholars of the Cold War and international relations.

Part One

Willy Brandt and the United States

1

Willy Brandt’s Relations with the United States, 1933–1974

Judith Michel

“Brandt was the most American politician I came to know in Germany.”¹ This assessment by David Binder, a former New York Times correspondent in the Federal Republic of Germany, is probably not the first that comes to mind when thinking of Willy Brandt’s relations with the United States after 1974. However, looking at Brandt as a young politician and governing mayor of Berlin and later as a foreign minister and federal chancellor, this characterization seems more appropriate: Brandt was fluent in English, and his political style was inspired by American models. Consequently, he managed to establish a broad American network and presented himself as a welcome guest to the United States.² But even earlier, during his exile in Scandinavia, Brandt had already stood up for values similar to those of the United States and hoped for an American military intervention to save Europe from Adolf Hitler. During his years in Berlin and as a member of the federal government, both these factors—the shared values and the dependence on the American security guarantee—dominated Brandt’s relations with the United States.

Brandt’s formative years during his Scandinavian exile and in Berlin

In 1933, Brandt left Nazi Germany as a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei—SAP), which positioned itself to the left of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands—SPD). As soon as he arrived in Sweden, he made contact with other European workers’ parties, and within a few years, the SAP revolutionary had become a supporter of a moderate democratic socialism.³ For Brandt, democratic socialism meant that everyone should have the opportunity to attain the highest possible degree of economic and social security. This might require the abolition of certain individual rights. However, he also stressed that individual freedom and a planned economy should not be mutually exclusive: planning had to serve the people and should not be an end in itself.⁴ This individualist-libertarian approach was also the basis of Brandt’s anti-colonialism.

In his struggle against Hitler’s Germany, Brandt relied on the United States. The way he saw it, the United States had no colonial past, unlike Great Britain and France (which in his opinion was one reason for the outbreak of war in September 1939).⁵ Moreover, he believed that only America had the military power to defeat Germany.⁶ In addition, Brandt approved of America’s liberal democratic tradition as it was expressed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.”⁷ However, at that time, Brandt’s attitude toward the United States was not unambiguously positive. Being a socialist, he criticized American capitalism, although he welcomed Roosevelt’s New Deal as a “socialist program.”⁸ Similarly, his position toward the Soviet Union was ambivalent at the time: although he admired its economic system, Brandt could not ignore its anti-liberal regime. It is noteworthy that Brandt’s perception of the United States was colored by his socialist classifications: on the one hand, there was Roosevelt as a “kind of Social Democrat”⁹; on the other hand, there were imperialist businessmen who might lead America toward fascism.¹⁰

At the end of the war, Brandt hoped that the United States would not fall back into isolationism as they had done in 1918 and would be willing to take on responsibility in Europe. He did not have a military engagement in mind but hoped for economic support from across the Atlantic.¹¹ Like many of his contemporaries, Brandt initially hoped that the four Allies would continue their cooperation after Germany’s unconditional surrender. However, soon after his return to Germany, the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in 1948–1949 ended the dream of the so-called One World idea. By now a rising star of the SPD, to which he had returned during the last years of the war, Brandt stated: “These days, one cannot be a democrat without being an anti-communist.”¹² According to him, the Anglo-American airlift, which had been established to provide the people of West Berlin with supplies during the Soviet blockade, turned “winners into friends and occupying into protecting powers.”¹³ He now explicitly stressed freedom as the central element of democratic socialism: “We hold nothing in higher esteem than freedom.” He elaborated on this by saying: “Freedom and life are one. Without the guarantee of an individual sphere of rights, without freedom of thought, without the moral norms of personal, communal, and humanitarian values, there is the danger of sliding back into barbarism. Only by saving the irreplaceable values of occidental culture can we hope to rise to higher levels of human coexistence.”¹⁴ For Brandt, democratic socialism was no “closed system of ideas about the reorganization of the social order” but rested “on a commitment to freedom and humanism, to the rule of law, and to social justice.”¹⁵ These remarks were clearly inspired by a liberal democratic concept that drew on “Western” sources.

In Berlin, in the years that followed, Brandt saw the liberal democratic West as threatened by the expansive, repressive Soviet Union. While many leading figures in the Social Democratic Party still hoped for a reunification of Germany in the near future and therefore rejected any attempts at strengthening the ties between the Western-occupied zones and the Western Allies, Brandt soon came to see reunification as a long-term goal. In the meantime, he hoped to integrate West Germany into the international community of states.¹⁶ He soon abandoned his goals to unite the European working class and to introduce a state-directed economy and welcomed the United States’ Marshall Plan aid for Western Europe. Only a few SPD members shared his willingness for economic, political, and even military integration into the West.

After the Berlin crisis of 1948–1949, Brandt had come to realize that only the United States could guarantee the security of West Berlin: “Anybody who has made his choice between freedom and bondage cannot believe in neutrality.”¹⁷ In his opinion, “a German wanderer between the worlds can … no longer exist.”¹⁸ Brandt consequently supported the Western arms build-up in order to strengthen NATO’s deterrence of the Soviet Union.¹⁹ Still, it was not always easy to determine Brandt’s position in the matter of rearmament of the Federal Republic, since he had to be careful not to jeopardize his rise within the SPD by adopting positions contrary to those of the party’s leading circles. Moreover, he may have thought it necessary to distance himself from the federal government led by Konrad Adenauer, although concerning rearmament, his position was often very similar to that of the Christian Democratic chancellor.

Still, the experience of the airlift had shown him that with regard to security, West Berlin and West Germany could only rely on the United States and Great Britain. He therefore did not bemoan the failure of plans for a European Defense Community, which both the Federal Republic and France but neither Great Britain nor the United States would have been members of. He was rather glad that the Federal Republic became a member of NATO instead, thus obtaining the American security guarantee as a member of the Alliance. Additionally, the Federal Republic now regained important sovereignty rights. Brandt’s readiness to be part of an Atlantic security system may also have stemmed from his fear that the Americans might reduce their military commitment if the Federal Republic was not willing to share the military burden.²⁰

Vietnam as a test case for Brandt’s relations with the United States

In the matter of rearmament, Brandt, relying on the American security guarantee, adopted a position opposed to the majority of his own party. Concerning the Vietnam War, his loyalty to the United States brought him into conflict with his party base and the younger generation. Brandt avoided direct military involvement by the Federal Republic in Vietnam, providing humanitarian assistance instead²¹ and helping the United States balance its budget by being accommodating in the offset negotiations.²² He never openly criticized American policy in Southeast Asia.²³ So what are the reasons Brandt, who usually spoke out for human rights, peace, and anti-colonialism, did not take a stand against the escalating conflict in Southeast Asia?

Brandt already had to take sides when he was governing mayor of Berlin. Apropos of a huge demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1966, he stated his willingness to talk with the nonviolent young rebels who, in his view, were simply concerned about world peace and whose critical stance he understood, although he did not share it. But he condemned the behavior of the “rowdies” who poisoned the Berlin air with anti-Americanism.²⁴ In his opinion, Germans should not behave like schoolteachers of world politics but rather help a friend in a time of need.²⁵ Although Brandt did not share the view that “Berlin is defended at the Mekong,”...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Willy Brandt and the United States
• Part 2 Willy Brandt: The European Dimension
• Part 3 Willy Brandt: The Latin American Dimension
• Annex: Doing Historical Research on Willy Brandt
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page