This book examines the extent to which German foreign policy has changed since unification, and analyzes the fundamental reasons behind this change. The book has three main aims. The essays develop theories of foreign policy to predict and explain Germany's foreign policy behavior. They test competing predictions about German foreign policy behavior since unification in several issue areas. They also assess the much-debated question as to whether post-unification Germany's foreign policy is marked by continuity or change.

This work examines the extent to which German foreign policy and European policy has changed since German unification. Despite significant changes on specific issues, most notably on the deployment of military force outside of the NATO area, there is greater continuity than change in post-unification German policy.

Since World War II, Germany has confronted its own history to earn acceptance in the family of nations. Lily Gardner Feldman draws on the literature of religion, philosophy, social psychology, law and political science, and history to understand Germany's foreign policy with its moral and pragmatic motivations and to develop the concept of international reconciliation. Germany's Foreign Policy of Reconciliation traces Germany's path from enmity to amity by focusing on the behavior of individual leaders, governments, and non-governmental actors. The book demonstrates that, at least in the cases of France, Israel, Poland, and Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, Germany has gone far beyond banishing war with its former enemies; it has institutionalized active friendship. The German experience is now a model of its own, offering lessons for other cases of international reconciliation. Gardner Feldman concludes with an initial application of German reconciliation insights to the other principal post-World War II pariah, as Japan expands its relations with China and South Korea.

Covering German foreign policy since the end of World War II, this book explores Germany's recovery from wartime defeat and destruction. Through a chronological series of case studies, it offers a document-based account of 60 years of German policymaking.

Germany is a major international player and not a small, neutral country: its foreign policy must be commensurate with its size, position and importance. Germans agree that, in time, their country's foreign policy will become more precise, as much in response to Germany's changed circumstances as to the welter of external demands and expectations. They remain, however, deeply sceptical about their partners' reactions to greater German self-confidence, knowing that they will not welcome this new stance in practice, however much they may support it in theory.