ABSTRACT
In seeking answers, our first concern is the peaceful enlargement of West Germany (FRG) to the east through reunification at the end of the Cold War and the changes and consequences for Europe and the world deriving from this event. The main focus, however, is on Germany’s new role in Europe as a unified country and great power, as reflected in its foreign policy-especially its Ostpolitik-of the 1990s. Indeed, it is unified Germany’s Ostpolitik that shows the extent to which the new Germany in a new post-Cold War Europe differs from the past, and whether it has renounced its imperial ambitions following the trauma of division during the Cold War. Against the background of history I examine the re-established special relationship of Bonn/Berlin and Moscow, and assess in parallel the peculiar geopolitical situation of the Baltic states, caught between a turbulent Russia in the east and a unified Germany in the west. The Baltic case in particular reveals the complexities of a post-Cold War European security architecture in the making. The intention thus is not to simply describe and explain the bilateral relations between Germany and Russia, or Germany and the Baltics. Rather these two case studies are intended to reveal Germany’s post-Cold War dilemma: its ambivalence about coming to terms with its past while redefining its role in Europe as a sovereign nation-state.
