Word: ostpolitiking
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Ever since West German Chancellor Willy Brandt launched his celebrated Ostpolitik eight months ago, he has met vitriolic resistance from the East Germans. No agreement for better relations between the two halves of Germany could be reached, they stubbornly declared, until Bonn grants full diplomatic recognition to East Germany. But last week, in a sudden turnabout, East German Party Boss Walter Ulbricht dropped his old preconditions. In a speech published in Neues Deutschland, the official newspaper of the East German Communist Party, Ulbricht in effect accepted two of the points proposed by Brandt at last month's summit meeting...
...hand to his old antagonist, though such a move would be very much out of character. Only two days before, about 43% of West Germany's eligible voters had gone to the polls in three state elections. Though only state offices were at stake, the nationwide debate over Ostpolitik had turned the election into a plebiscite on Brandt's policies of seeking closer relations with the Communist bloc, especially East Germany and Russia, hence promoting greater economic ties...
Visit to Moscow. The outcome was a standoff between the Christian Democrats, who oppose the Ostpolitik, and Brandt's Social Democrats. A big loss was suffered by the rightist National Democrats. But an even more severe setback was experienced by the Free Democrat Party, a loosely knit combination of conservatives and far-left liberals whose 30 Bundestag delegates give Brandt's coalition a thin twelve-seat majority in the 496-seat West German parliament. In two of the three states, the Free Democrats failed to gain the 5% of the vote required to be seated. The plight...
...NATO-assigned troops next year. The Western European countries, which also expect U.S. cutbacks, are unlikely to fill the anticipated gap. Britain might be willing to make a slightly larger contribution. So might West Germany, but Bonn could not raise more troops without jeopardizing Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, aimed at easing his country's long-strained relations with its eastern neighbors. The decline of NATO's defense zeal could well impede its progress as a force for détente. In fact, the main virtue of NATO's invitation was that it shifted the pressure...
...page riposte, Stoph ripped apart the underlying assumption of Brandt's Ostpolitik−that small steps in minor matters could ultimately lead to a rapprochement. Deriding Brandt's "arrogant demands," Stoph declared that East Germans would settle for nothing less than immediate diplomatic recognition. Stoph also rejected Brandt's thesis that two German states could exist within a single German nation...