Germany and the New World Order

Want to know how Germany is trying to create a new international profile in the world? Let’s take a look at how Germany is changing in its foreign policies, ideas and potential since the reunification while observing present trends in global governance.

This course will try to understand the position a reunified Germany has sought to define for itself in the New World Order that has arisen since the end of the Cold War. Today, a quarter-century after reunification, the contours of a new German foreign policy are becoming visible, which we might dub “middle power politics.”

New German self-images and ambitions, a changed geopolitical environment, new global tasks and platforms, stronger interdependences with the rest of the world, and a growing set of foreign policy instruments amid stagnating resources, all define the character and the reach of German foreign policy today. Since reunification new partnerships have been forged and new competitors have emerged. The course will deal with these overarching trends, as with the possibilities a country such as Germany has to carve out an international profile of its own – in concert with other Western powers, within the present structures of global governance, or beyond them.