ABSTRACT
In the course of the 1980s, Western Europe and the United States experienced a relationship marked by considerable mutual assertiveness and friction. The 1980s also witnessed the waxing and waning of powerful peace movements in Western Europe and the United States. There was a widespread belief among a considerable number of Western observers in official circles, academia, and the media that developments in the 1980s amounted to a revival of the German Question in a new international context. The West German achievement of a greater balance between Westpolitik and Ostpolitikincreased the room for maneuver in West German foreign policy, partially transformed the Western-oriented Federal Republic's (FRG's) interests, and thus encouraged a greater German diplomatic independence and assertiveness. There was a profoundly moralist, idealist, escapist, pessimist and absolutist flavor in the foreign policy culture of many of the Greens during the last decade of the Cold War.
