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BOOK REVIEWS 195 interesting and original contribution. First, he describes some of the incoherences of a structure in which Congress chooses weapons systems (often based on electoral rather than technical considerations), but the administration makes strategy. The result is a military force which is out of line with strategic goals. Fürst then asks whether the growth in U.S. military power was commensurate with the unprecedented defense buildup. For Fürst, the evidence leaves room for doubt. The ample funds pumped into defense industries did not yield equally significant growth in output. The cost explosion of military hardware was partially due to rapidly climbing technology costs, but loosely managed procurement played a central role in the defense budget's inflation. Fürst'sjudgment that strengthening ofU.S. armed forces under Reagan "turned out to be an empty phrase" seems a bit harsh; surely the American military is in better shape now than before the buildup, which the Carter administration started in the first place. But the American public has the right to ask if the military "strength" accumulated over the last eight years was worth the nearly $2 trillion price tag. This book is informative and at times even engaging; Christian Tuschhoffs account of the "Walk in the Woods" episode at the Geneva arms talks, for example , is particularly edifying. However, it does not escape the perils inherent in any collective work, namely incongruity and lack of balance. The essays seem not to have been written to complement one another, but composed individually and later assembled into one volume. A reader specifically interested in an assessment of American "strength" under Reagan would find that many chapters are only marginally related to the main topic. But none of the chapters are without lessons for the reader, and most are meticulously researched, if sometimes dry. If the general reaction abroad to the "Reagan Reconstruction" can be inferred from this book, then most foreigners believe they were not better led but misled by the Americans. Europeans have been known to denounce breaches in American leadership only to resent that leadership when later asserted. This time they may have a point. This time the lesson is that the capacity of U.S. leadership is on the wane in a more plural world. This is no longer the era of Pax Americana, nor is it the time to regret its passing. The Reagan administrations 's biggest weakness was not its failure to restore American military strength, but rather its refusal to admit the limitations of that strength. Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy. By Wolfram Hanrieder. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. 386 pp. Reviewed by Victoria Keefe, M.A. Candidate, SAIS. Wolfram Hanrieder presents a detailed review of German foreign politics from the late 1940s to mid-1980s. He traces the evolution of Germany's post war status through its diplomatic, political and economic relations with the Atlantic Alliance and the European Community. Despite the impressive array of facts and 196 SAIS REVIEW dense analyses, the author fails to propose or defend a particular thesis or to include a unifying theme. In place of a thesis, Hanrieder takes a multidimensional and integrative approach to his analyses. He contends that Germany's foreign policy must be interpreted according to three modes of international relations: "territorialstrategic ," "military-strategic," and the modern "economic-interdependent." Corresponding to these functional modes are three important time periods: late 1940s to late 1950s, late 1950s to late 1960s, and the 1970s and 1980s. The book covers four issue areas: arms control and security, partition of Germany and Europe, the political economy of West Germany, and its foreign policy and domestic politics. Each subject is analyzed and interpreted in the context ofthe aforementioned modes and time phases. The arrangement ofthese different parts, "likened to that of sliding panels," is intended to emphasize Hanrieder 's belief in the "interrelatedness of German Foreign Policy goals and their remarkable continuity over the decades." In the immediate postwar "formative years," Germany's foreign policy was a product ofthe occupying allied forces. Germany suffered from a lack ofsovereignty , the potential for permanent division, and complete moral and economic debilitation. These factors had the...

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