ABSTRACT
Speaking to the crowds in Berlin following the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt argued that ‘nothing would be the same again’. Events within Europe since then have demonstrated the accuracy of this statement. For Germany, Europe and the world as a whole, the end of the Cold War prompted an epochdefining reassessment of the international order. In September 1990, the two Germanys – the (western) Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and (eastern) German Democratic Republic (GDR) – together with the allied powers of the USA, USSR, France and the UK, signed the ‘2 + 4’ treaty. A significant chapter in the West German foreign policy agenda was brought to a conclusion. The treaty provided the formal international sanctioning of German unification and one month later, in October 1990, the Federal Republic absorbed the five states that had previously comprised the GDR.
