The aim of this thesis is to advance a theory of friendship and estrangement between states as an explanation for the emergence and decline of interstate security cooperation, defined as costly investment in a shared international institution. It seeks to illuminate dynamics in (West)German-American relations between 1945 and 1995, specifically Germany's subsequent investment in three different security institutions for the purpose of 'European security' which gradually excluded the United States: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1945-55), the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1965-75) and the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (1985-95). Suggesting that the three dominant IR paradigms - realism, institutionalism and constructivism - cannot explain this dynamic, the thesis applies a phenomenological lens to explore the parameters of the national security interest and the motivation for security cooperation by interrogating what it means for the state to exist. Combining insights from Heidegger and Aristotle, the first part argues that states (i) attempt to control anxiety through the formulation of an authentic biographical narrative inscribed in space and time, and that they (ii) attempt to stabilize their narrative by embedding it in a project of 'world building' negotiated with friends through shared institutions. It further argues that (iii) enduring dissonance within this relationship signifies a process of estrangement and leads to a strategy of emancipation by investing in an alternative institution with another friend. The second part applies this theoretical frame to explain the abovementioned dynamic with (dis)agreements between German and American policymakers over visions of European order embedded in respective national biographies. The thesis argues that the consensus of using NATO for building a 'peaceful Europe' in the Western space on the principles of 'freedom' and 'unity' weakened when (a) US administrations came to question the desirability of the latter for the American narrative and were willing to use military means to build the 'free world', while (b) German governments came to pursue the vision of having Germany unfold in a Greater European Peace Order marked by 'unity' through peaceful means.

No description available.

This work examines the role of private elites in addition to public actors in West German-American relations in the post-World War II era and thus joins the ranks of the “new diplomatic history” field. It studies the Atlantik Brücke and the American Council on Germany (ACG) from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s – a history that has hitherto been neglected. The focus on private elites and their contributions to fledgling public-private networks within each country and across the Atlantic helps to shed light on the ways hostilities between West Germany and the US were addressed. Based on original archival research and applying tools of Social Network Analysis (SNA), this thesis starts from the assumption that international relations are conducted by elites. These elites are not only composed of democratically legitimized politicians and diplomats. Private actors representing business, industry, media, and academia are also involved, albeit hidden from public scrutiny. Private actors are enabled to do so because they are integral parts of dense state-private networks. The state-private network concept is innovatively transferred to the transnational level. The network term emphasises the fact that those connections are neither limited in quantitative terms nor are they confined to national boundaries. The analysis illuminates three sustainable achievements of the ACG and Atlantik-Brücke. Firstly, they contributed to forging a bipartisan foreign policy consensus at whose core has been a strong West-German-American relationship. Key in achieving this was the redirection of West German Social Democracy away from anti-militarism, neutralism, and socialism. Secondly, in fulfilling an elite coordination function, the organisations helped to secure the transatlantic partnership consensus by conveying it into business, trade and 2 industry circles in the US as well as in West Germany. Thirdly, by utilizing their manifold links to media and academia they assisted in manifesting this consensus in public discourse.