Word: ostpolitiking
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Emotional Barrier. Behind the pact lay 1,000 years of deep mutual hatred between Germans and Poles. With the Treaty of Warsaw, Brandt thus cleared the greatest emotional barrier in the East bloc to his Ostpolitik, whose aim is to create a more relaxed atmosphere between West Germany and its Communist neighbors...
...process he described as deéenté, entente, coopération. He recognized the Oder-Neisse line as Poland's western border and urged Bonn to do the same. He also urged international acceptance of East Germany. The basic outlines of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik were traced several years earlier by De Gaulle. In the Middle East, De Gaulle dropped his support of Israel following the 1967 war. Then, after reprimanding the Jews as an "elite, domineering people," he made overtures to the Arabs that were intended, his apologists maintain, to retain Western influence in an area...
Brandt's Concern. The Soviets' tough position may well be only a repetition of their familiar bargaining tactic of demanding the maximum before settling for somewhat less. Nonetheless the Russian stance posed a threat to Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, which rests on the assumption that the Soviets are willing to make at least limited accommodations in central Europe. Brandt has vowed that he will not submit the Treaty of Moscow to the Bundestag for ratification until there is substantial progress on Berlin, and he has urged Britain, France and the U.S. to press for a quick agreement...
Since Brandt's political prestige in West Germany rests heavily on the success of his Ostpolitik, his desire for quick results is understandable. The Western Allies, however, have refused to alter their negotiating tactics. They want an agreement with the Soviets on specific points, not a vague statement of principle that the Russians could later wriggle out of. The main points...
Some observers feared that the whole fabric of Ostpolitik could be rent by the fall of Brandt's tiny coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, whose 30 members give him a bare twelve-seat majority in the 496-seat Bundestag. A defeat of the Free Democrats in the state elections in Hesse and Bavaria in November could result in a coalition crisis that could end the Brandt government as presently constituted. Even so, Brandt's foreign policy seems to enjoy solid support among a large majority of West Germans, who grew weary of the cold-war posturing...