Peace and Survival: West Germany, the Peace Movement and European Security (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 237 from an "urban biased" praxis toward a peasant-oriented revolution. This process of developing the countryside at the expense of the city is, according to Englebert, the main objective of the CNR. The eventual outcome of this policy will probably decide the fate of the revolution. The last chapter analyzes the CNRs foreign policy. Here, the Libyan influence is reduced to its real proportions, and relations with France, as well as the December 1985 war with Mali, receive a special treatment. The book, filled with anecdotes and interviews of political actors, is lively and quite readable. It is as useful for the analysis of the revolution — for which the author does not hide his sympathy— as it is for the previous history of the country, since Upper Volta was never as much in the limelight as Burkina is today. In any case, the originality of the Burkina revolution and the dangers that threaten it, including the possibility of a slip into authoritarianism/totalitarianism , are sufficient reasons to keep an eye on the evolution of the country. Peace and Survival: West Germany, the Peace Movement and European Security. By David Gress. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1985. 266 pp. $15.95/cloth. Reviewed by Michael Zilles, M.A. candidate, SAIS. There is a broad consensus in the United States that the Federal Republic of Germany is not only one of America's closest allies but also a major pillar of NATO, which makes it a very important subject for the future of Western security. Since the debate about the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear forces opened in the late 1 970s German critics of nuclear deterrence and NATO defense strategy have received much attention in the United States. Although the high point of this public debate seems now to be past, fears remain that the broad transatlantic consensus about a credible response to the Soviet threat has been irreparably damaged. Most American critics of this development suppose that there is an emerging process in Finlandization in the Federal Republic, caused by a mixture of Angst, "neutralistic dreams" and the "vision of reunification." But what are the roots of the dramatic switch from the "junior partner" of the Adenauer era to a country full of "anti-Americanism" and "pacifism"? The author wrote this study under the auspices of the Hoover Institution during the critical years following the NATO double-track decision in 1979. Gress, using the classification of Pierre Hassner, places the critics of the current Western security doctrine in an "intense minority." According to Hassner, this minority included the left wing of the German Social Democratic party (SPD) and the Greens. It is also supported by most political intellectuals, church leaders, and other public figures. Therefore, the author's analysis focuses mainly on changes within the SPD, including its so-called "reshift" from Western integration and Atlantic security to the neutralism of the 1950s, and on the cultural 238 SAIS REVIEW and ideological roots of the pacifist unilateralism represented by the Greens and different parts of the peace movement. Gress takes a very critical tone regarding these developments from the beginning—great parts of this book are dedicated to the author's confessions of supporting a "conservative" Western defense and deterrence policy. In his preface Gress labels himself a traditionalist — placing his view in a great community with such well-respected men as Raymond Aron, Pierre Hassner, Samuel Huntington, and Hans-Peter Schwarz. Unfortunately, Gress does not always reach their level of sophistication, especially when he disagrees by adopting the reprehensible tradition of linking critical intellectuals like Bertolt Brecht and Heinrich Boll to totalitarianism or even terrorism. The strengths of the book are undoubtedly in its historical parts. David Gress is knowledgeable about the German political and philosophical history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The reader also gets a good overview of the unique national and intellectual situation of the divided nation. Specifically, the author points out the reasons for an increasing interest in history and the "renaissance" of the Heimatgefühl. He is correct — both trends signal important changes in the political culture of the Federal Republic. But the reader also gets the impression that Gress...