An ‘Arm Around the Shoulder’: The United States, NATO and German Reunification, 1989—90

Abstract

United Germany ‘will stand with us as an ally’, confidently predicted Robert B. Zoellick, who served as Secretary of State James A. Baker 3rd's chief of staff and as the overseer of US negotiations on reunification. Testifying before the Senate in September 1990 on the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Zoellick asserted that the unification process proved that ‘the United States can lead and persevere…in the post-cold war world‘. Despite such optimism, however, the ambivalance in past US–German relations, the erosion of American leverage during the unification process and the narrowness of Washington's conception of ‘leadership’ in Europe all suggested a future more problematic than the happy scenario Zoellick sketched for the senators.