1989 Sarotte, Mary Elise; Sarotte, Mary Elise
2014., 20141005, 2014, 2015-01-01
eBook
1989explores the momentous events following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the effects they have had on our world ever since. Based on documents, interviews, and television broadcasts from ...Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, and a dozen other locations,1989describes how Germany unified, NATO expansion began, and Russia got left on the periphery of the new Europe.
This updated edition contains a new afterword with the most recent evidence on the 1990 origins of NATO's post-Cold War expansion.
Washington and Bonn pursued a shared strategy of perpetuating U.S. preeminence in European security after the end of the Cold War. As multilingual evidence shows, they did so primarily by shielding ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from potential competitors during an era of dramatic change in Europe. In particular, the United States and West Germany made skillful use in 1990 of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's political weakness and his willingness to prioritize his country's financial woes over security concerns. Washington and Bonn decided “to bribe the Soviets out,” as then Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates phrased it, and to move NATO eastward. The goal was to establish NATO as the main post–Cold War security institution before alternative structures could arise and potentially diminish U.S. influence. Admirers of a muscular U.S. foreign policy and of NATO will view this strategy as sound; critics will note that it alienated Russia and made NATO's later expansion possible. Either way, this finding challenges the scholarly view that the United States sought to integrate its former superpower enemy into postconflict structures after the end of the Cold War.
How the political events of 1989 shaped Europe after the Cold War 1989 explores the momentous events following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the effects they have had on our world ever since. Based ...on documents, interviews, and television broadcasts from Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, and a dozen other locations, 1989 describes how Germany unified, NATO expansion began, and Russia got left on the periphery of the new Europe.This updated edition contains a new afterword with the most recent evidence on the 1990 origins of NATO's post-Cold War expansion.
Sarotte discusses a series of talks between world leaders which took place in Feb 1990. She asserts that Moscow came away from these meetings feeling they had secured a pledge from the US that NATO ...would not expand eastward--a pledge later broken when former Warsaw Pact nations joined NATO.
Using new archival sources--including previously secret documents of the East German secret police and Communist Party--M. E. Sarotte goes behind the scenes of Cold War Germany during the era of ...detente, as East and West tried negotiation instead of confrontation to settle their differences. In Dealing with the Devil, she explores the motives of the German Democratic Republic and its Soviet backers in responding to both the detente initiatives, or Ostpolitik, of West Germany and the foreign policy of the United States under President Nixon. Sarotte focuses on both public and secret contacts between the two halves of the German nation during Brandt's chancellorship, exposing the cynical artifices constructed by negotiators on both sides. Her analysis also details much of the superpower maneuvering in the era of detente, since German concerns were ever present in the minds of leaders in Washington and Moscow, and reveals the startling degree to which concern over China shaped European politics during this time. More generally, Dealing with the Devil presents an illuminating case study of how the relationship between center and periphery functioned in the Cold War Soviet empire.
Washington and Bonn pursued a shared strategy of perpetuating U.S. preeminence in European security after the end of the Cold War. As multilingual evidence shows, they did so primarily by shielding ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from potential competitors during an era of dramatic change in Europe. In particular, the United States and West Germany made skillful use in 1990 of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's political weakness and his willingness to prioritize his country's financial woes over security concerns. Washington and Bonn decided "to bribe the Soviets out," as then Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates phrased it, and to move NATO eastward. The goal was to establish NATO as the main post-Cold War security institution before alternative structures could arise and potentially diminish U.S. influence. Admirers of a muscular U.S. foreign policy and of NATO will view this strategy as sound; critics will note that it alienated Russia and made NATO's later expansion possible. Either way, this finding challenges the scholarly view that the United States sought to integrate its former superpower enemy into postconflict structures after the end of the Cold War.
Deciding to be Mars Sarotte, Mary Elise
Policy review (Washington, D.C.),
04/2012
172
Journal Article, Magazine Article
Recenzirano
...once it became apparent that the United States intended to continue to devote its resources to European security, there was little incentive for the Europeans themselves to do so, thereby creating ...the kind of "free-rider" situation famously described by die scholars Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser.\n Second, while historical evidence supports Kagan's analysis of transatlantic relations - the subject of "Power and Weakness" - the picture looks different when the frame is enlarged to include U-S. relations with China. ...a self-reinforcing "free-riding" dynamic began to develop. Since Washington was clearly willing to take the lead and allocate resources to European security, there was less incentive (either military or economic) for Europeans to devote resources to it.
Between them, the chancellorships of the “two Helmuts” span nearly a quarter-century of German history. Helmut Schmidt led the country from 1974 to 1982; his successor, Helmut Kohl, served until ...1998. But the verdict on their respective tenures has been very different. Kohl was seen as a bumbling provincial when he came to office in 1982 but, by the end of his second term, he had won a place in the history books as the “Chancellor of Unity” (Einheitskanzler). By the time he lost the election for what would have been his fifth term, he was hailed as the “master-builder” (Baumeister) of Europe for his decisive role in furthering the European Community's political and economic integration through the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the Euro. Schmidt, by contrast, came to office with a reputation for high administrative competence and intellectual prowess, but left the chancellery under a cloud. Der Spiegel spoke for many commentators when it dismissed him as a “good chancellor with a bad record”; few features of his period in office stood out as “proof of success.” Schmidt, it was said, had been a mere crisis manager and “problem-solver” (Macher) who lacked broader vision, so that “little endured of historical significance.” This has also been the verdict of many historians.
The most powerful military alliance in history, NATO shaped the geopolitical contours of the Cold War and continues to structure the contemporary international system. The NATO agreement is reprinted ...here with speeches and essential historical documents concerning the alliance's founding and subsequent evolution. Accompanying essays by major scholars discuss debates about NATO's evolving governance, its role in nuclear politics, and its appropriate mission during and since the Cold War.
The Contest over NATO’s Future Sarotte, Mary Elise
Charter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
05/2018
Book Chapter
This edited volume centers on the way that NATO has affected, and been affected by, transatlantic politics and relationships during and since the Cold War. My essay contributes to this endeavor by ...examining the contest over NATO that erupted immediately after the unexpected opening of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Cold War political order in 1989–1990.¹ As a result of the stunningly swift disappearance of the barriers between the two parts of Berlin and of Germany, pressing questions about the future of the transatlantic relationship and of NATO’s role in it suddenly rose to the tops
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