Barack Obama, Willy Brandt and Foreign Policy (Did Brandt's "Ostpolitik" Become IRRELEVANT)

Zoo ^ | February 26, 2008 | Zoo

[fight_truth_decay]

Picture: German Chancellor Willy Brandt
at the Warsaw memorial for the Ghetto Uprising

“The American people don’t have to guess whether I understand the issues or whether I will need a foreign policy instruction manual to guide me through a crisis or rely on advisers to advise me on foreign affairs,” (Hillary Clinton)

“We need to rediscover the power of diplomacy. So I said very early on in this campaign that I will meet not just with our friends but with our enemies, not just the leaders I like, but leaders I don’t,” (Barack Obama)

Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy platform was harshly criticized by Senator Clinton yesterday. In answer to that, let me tell you about another man in another time in another country in a no less difficult situation and his audacity to talk to what you would call rogue states today:

World War II has left Germany a divided nation and the tensions among the former allies and Russia developed into a cold war which left the country with the iron curtain right through the middle of the nation. Two inimical ideological systems met in the very city, that used to be the nation’s capital and made Germany into the frontier of this cold war. Having the threat of the opposing regime right on your doorstep made Western Germany into a staunch ally in the American “War on Communism”. To Germans the Soviet Union was the ultimate evil empire, long before Ronald Reagan coined the phrase. Diplomatic relations with the second German State were out of the question.

In 1969 the ruling Christian Democrats lost their majority to a coalition of Social Democrats and Liberals under chancellor Willy Brandt. A year later only, Willy Brandt was visiting Warsaw and had started his Ostpolitik which led to a very decidedly improved situation at the frontier of the cold war and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. Political prisoners had a chance to be extradited from communist Germany to the Federal Republic, there was suddenly a restricted but still existant possibility to travel to and fro.

The political system of the Federal Republic of Germany was a democracy, but could German citizens be trusted with a really liberal society? Willy Brandt’s idea was “to chance democracy”, giving Germans civil liberties they have not experienced in a long time, if ever before.

It goes without saying that there were many who decried Willy Brandt as a traitor for dealing with communists and for his humble gesture of apology and respect to the victims of the German atrocities in the Warsaw ghetto (see picture above). The civil liberties given to the Germans left the right wingers foaming at the mouth. But Willy Brandt had the audacity to do something to relieve the strain on a torn nation. He gave hope to the citzens of the other Germany and the feeling that they still belonged. He changed the society and the foreign policies of Germany to a degree that ultimately earned us the respect and the status of a mature democracy that was unthinkable only 25 years before.

For bold policies like these, there is no instruction manual, Senator Clinton, there is only the good judgment necessary of what is right and needs to be done!

“In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” (Eric Hoffer)

[fight_truth_decay]

Willy Brandt with Richard Nixon.

Did Ostpolitik Work? West German chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl and former Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher believed that the crucial factor in forcing a revision of Soviet policy was the deployment of the Pershing and cruise missiles, and Kohl added that Gorbachev had told him that he agreed.
Willy Brandt, in his memoirs in 1989, claimed Gorbachev's endorsement of his thesis that Ostpolitik was the crucial influence on his new thinking. The chief strategist for the new Ostpolitik was Egon Bahr, Brandt's chief advisor on foreign affairs.

Garton Ash points out in a rather involved chapter called "Findings - In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent."Gordon A. Craig( is J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Stanford):
"Ostpolitik brought some important benefits to people in East Berlin and East Germany (for example, of the relaxation of travel standards). Through its strategy of weaving, it also did a great deal to bring the attractions of the West home to the peoples of Eastern Europe. It was even more successful in persuading the Soviet Union that Germany was no longer a threat, and that in fact Germany was its most promising and important economic partner. This doubtless influenced Gorbachev's behavior during the crisis of German unification (although surely no more than George Bush's unwavering support of unification and his insistence on the new Germany's right to belong to NATO). But in view of the things that Ostpolitik did not do (in Hugging The Bear), surely the salient issue is whether over the long haul the more differentiated policy of the United States, with its readiness to use sanctions as well as economic incentives, its public support of human rights and those fighting for them, and the higher priority it placed upon the element of force in diplomacy, did not after all contribute more to what happened in 1989-90."

Sources:

Basic Law
"Peace Chancellor, Willy Brandt
New Ostopolitik
Did Ostpolitik Work? - Gordon A. Craig

[ex-snook]

Q. How come Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan met with enemies?

A. They had gonads.