The Question of Germany’s Normalizing Ambitions

Abstract

As the prospect of German foreign policy normality continues to be the subject of intense international speculation, it is hard to think of a nation more obsessed with debating their country’s normalcy than the Germans.¹ Ever since the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the unification of the two German states only one year later in October 1990, the realist theme of normalcy has formed a constant undercurrent to almost every significant foreign policy debate in the new Germany. The persistent continuity argument that this has invoked in response has, in turn, been increasingly challenged by the combined effects of fundamental international changes underway and the profound intensification of internal and external demands on the German state over recent years. To what extent, it is asked, can one expect the ideational foundations of Germany’s apparently deeply engrained multilateral foreign policy approach to be sustained in light of the growing complexity of the dynamics of regional and international change? In other words, to what extent might Germany’s multilateral foreign policy approach be subject to a redefinition of the “parameters of the possible” in light of growing international changes? Such is the nature of the inquiry into perceived tendencies of growing normalcy in Germany’s foreign policy stance.