History - Were the opening up of negotiations between the USA and Soviet Union during the 1960s a direct result of Chancellors Willy Brandts Ost Politik with - Essay Example

lomatic relations between the Soviet and Allied controlled states, aimed at both territories recognising each other not as two separate nations, but instead two states (Viault 1990). One of the hurdles Ostpolitik needed to overcome was the Hallstein Doctrine which was a Federal Republic of Germany created foreign policy that gave absolute right for West Germany to speak for all of Germany. Further, the policy stated that West Germany would refuse to maintain relations with any nation that recognized Soviet controlled East Germany.

In order to weaken this policy, East Germany attempted to develop relations with recently colonized nations in the southern hemisphere. The Hallstein Doctrine was first applied to Yugoslavia which recognised the GDR in 1957 but relations were reinstated in 1968 after Ostpolitik. With Ostpolitik and the opening up of negotiations between the western nations of Europe and the Eastern bloc nations, the Hallstein Doctrine was eventually abandoned. This policy had also resulted in a stagnation of relationships between Germany and the East European nations.

In order to reduce tensions, Brandt and his foreign affairs minister Walter Scheel attempted to initiate talks with the communist states. No high level meeting between the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic had ever taken place since 1948. Since Brandt did not acknowledge the existence of GDR as a state, talks failed to find an agreement. Soon after, the FGR formulated policy goals with the US after which they established a treaty with the Soviet Union to stabilize relations.

One of the measures to do this was to abandon the use of force in any dispute and resolve issues by diplomatic negotiations. The other element of Brandt’s Ostpolitik was the recognition of the Oder-Neisse Line as the actual border between Poland and Germany. This border meant Poland took some of German territory thereby displacing millions of Germans from this area (Pittman 1992). The effect