Word: europeanization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...feet about reflating its economy in order to serve with the U.S. and Japan as a "locomotive" of the world economy. Schmidt stirred up other apprehensions about what Washington regarded as West Germany's self-centered approach to economic problems. A key example: Schmidt's vigorous campaign for the European Monetary System, which, except for the British pound, ties European Community currencies together within a narrow band of fluctuation. The scheme was originally devised as a protective measure for Europe against the gyrations of the dollar. But as the deutsche mark became an increasingly popular reserve currency in the treasuries...
Schmidt, whose personal commitment to NATO is unquestioned in Washington, managed to squelch Wehner and reassure his European allies. But the dovish words from S.P.D. leftists could not help raising the specter of a West Germany one day seeking a "special relationship" with the Soviet Union at the expense of the West, perhaps...
Schmidt also faces a division within his own party, provoked mainly by Wehner's small but militant left-wingers. They are unhappy about the F.D.P.'s disproportionate power. In addition to their dovish stand on European defense, the leftists also differ with Schmidt on nuclear energy and social welfare policies, which, they complain, have too often been compromised for the sake of limiting inflation, and for the sake of accommodating the F.D.P...
Schmidt is almost as popular in other Western European countries as at home. Nonetheless, there is a lingering fear behind lots of closed government doors that the Chancellor just might be, or become, too strong; that the goblins of West Germany's past could emerge to influence its Continental behavior. Other Europeans still have deep memories of the Germany of the past and, fairly or not, wonder if the new West Germany ever acts entirely in the present...
Always sensitive to historic European misgivings about the Germans, Helmut Schmidt is careful to play down Bonn's emerging political strength. But last week, as he ranged across a series of other global and strategic questions in an exclusive interview with TIME Bonn Bureau Chief William Mader, the Chancellor himself sound ed every bit like a great-power leader. Excerpts...