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  • The Economic Diplomacy of Ostpolitik: Origins of NATO’s Energy Dilemma by Werner D. Lippert
  • Thomas W. Maulucci Jr.
The Economic Diplomacy of Ostpolitik: Origins of NATO’s Energy Dilemma. By Werner D. Lippert. New York: Berghahn, 2011. Pp. xviii + 238. Cloth $85.00. ISBN 978-1845457501.

In this study, Werner D. Lippert analyzes the economic dimensions of the New Eastern Policy (Neue Ostpolitik) pursued by the West German social-liberal coalition under Willy Brandt between 1969 and 1974. He argues that “Osthandel (Eastern Trade) and Ostpolitik went hand in hand” (xv). Brandt’s government believed that the West German market and technology were attractive for the Soviet Union and that economic ties with the USSR would pave the way for new political initiatives. Lippert’s study is especially valuable because it updates the older standard works on this topic, which were written without the benefit of archival sources (e.g., Michael [End Page 476] Kreile, Osthandel und Ostpolitik [Baden-Baden, 1978]; Angela Stent, From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West German-Soviet Relations, 1955–1980 [Cambridge, 1981]). Trade and technology also tend to be a secondary focus in the newer, archivally based literature on the Neue Ostpolitik. Another strength is the book’s emphasis on the triangular dimensions of this relationship, thanks to its parallel analysis of both the United States and the Soviet Union. Indeed, one of Lippert’s main arguments is that, by the early 1980s, increased economic relations between NATO and Warsaw Pact states had unintended consequences for the cohesion of both alliances.

The roots of Brandt’s economic Ostpolitik lay in the mid-1960s. The West German government heeded the call of both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations to pursue a coordinated economic policy towards the Eastern bloc so that the USSR could not play off one NATO state against the others. But by 1964, several NATO states had broken alliance solidarity; in addition, the West German government’s decision in 1963 under Ludwig Erhard to yield to US pressure and not export steel oil pipes to the Soviet Union prompted the latter to establish a moratorium on trade with the Federal Republic. The Johnson Administration’s unwillingness to set a clear line on East-West trade, as well as signs that it wanted to pursue détente with the USSR—even if this meant neglecting the priorities of NATO allies (e.g., nuclear sharing)—fueled a growing sense in West Germany that too close an adherence to American policies was disadvantageous. Brandt himself had evolved into a leading skeptic. But he also believed that détente gave the Federal Republic room for economic and cultural policy innovations toward Eastern Europe, assuming that the political and military situation would remain unchanged. He could not fully pursue this vision as foreign minister of the “Grand Coalition,” but in February 1970, his own government concluded a natural gas deal with the USSR. This represented the first major accomplishment of Ostpolitik.

Lippert finds that the Brandt government’s Osthandel was shaped by the expectation that it would create more pliable Soviet behavior in other areas. Moreover, he argues, Brandt was motivated more by the perception than the reality of economic opportunity. In the early 1970s, West German business interests also tended to see the USSR as a land of vast untapped economic potential, and public opinion polls in the Federal Republic increasingly reflected a vision of the USSR as a “normal” state and trading partner. By mid-decade, economic cooperation expanded to include several more gas deals, as well as deliveries of technologies that the USSR could not produce itself. Although Soviet leaders saw trade with Western countries like the Federal Republic as essential for economic development, they initially controlled it tightly, prohibiting international joint ventures, direct investment of foreign capital, and other measures that might have “contaminated” their society.

The Nixon Administration had a much different view of détente, however. Richard [End Page 477] Nixon—who, Lippert suggests, was much more influential than previously assumed in shaping US détente policy—believed that nonmilitary competition with the Soviet Union had to continue. There was no reason to make economic concessions unless the...

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