ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the 1980s West Europeans have witnessed an era of active bilateral and multilateral links in security matters. The starting point was the relaunching of the Franco-German Treaty of 1963, which began in 1982 at the end of Helmut Schmidt's chancellorship and at the beginning of Franciois Mitterrand's presidency. This chapter attempts to delineate the divergent and convergent motives in West Europe and Atlantic Alliance by contrasting the basic principles in security policies in the 1960s and the 1980s, and to take a brief glance at the situation as the current decade comes to a close. An observation of some new convergencies concerning the basic foreign policy views of both countries at the end of the 1980s prompts the question of how such changes will influence further steps towards integration in the future. The new German view of the Soviet Union influenced the German-American relationship especially in times of superpower tensions.
