NATO – Transatlantic Alliance: Canon of values ​​and ties to the West

In March 1947, US President Harry S. Truman declared the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Three months later, his Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, announced the plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe that bears his name. NATO was founded on April 4, 1949, and the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany was passed on May 23 of the same year. Its governing bodies, parliament and government, began working in September, and the Federal President and Chancellor were elected. On November 22nd, the three Western occupying powers and the Federal Republic concluded the so-called Petersberg Agreement. It provided for the Federal Republic of Germany to join the International Ruhr Authority.

On December 3, 1949, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer said in an interview with the US newspaper “The Cleveland Plain Dealer” that the Federal Republic “should make a contribution to the defense of Europe in a European army under the command of a higher-level European commander.” What is necessary is the expansion of the United States’ military involvement in Germany.

From this hodgepodge of data and facts, the pattern emerges in retrospect of a three-fold connection to the West of the Federal Republic, which was then just emerging: firstly to a canon of values, secondly to a capitalist Europe, thirdly to the United States of America.

The connection to the West was not yet a decision made by the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law.

Now one after the other:

The canon of values ​​that the initially provisional state structure prescribed for itself is summarized in the Basic Law: basic human and civil rights, democracy, separation of powers. This is what the so-called West is claiming for itself in current global conflicts. The geographical classification is misleading. Japan has also long been considered a Western country in this sense. After all, this designation is historically appropriate because Great Britain, the United States of America and France were the first states to commit to such standards of state behavior.

In Germany this failed twice: the Paulskirche constitution of 1849 never came into force. The German Empire was not a democracy, but an authoritarian state. The Weimar Republic with its constitution of 1919 became a kind of presidential dictatorship from 1930 onwards and was destroyed by fascism in 1933. The Basic Law was the third attempt to implement the democratic canon of values ​​in Germany; the GDR constitution of October 7, 1949, at that time not planned for the East but for all of Germany, incidentally the fourth.

This voluntary commitment, based on basic values ​​and democratic procedures, is the most important of the three Western ties. To the extent that it has been and will be implemented since then, one cannot imagine any sensible person who would not like to live in such a state – at least as long as the budget is right, i.e. the material conditions for legitimacy are sufficiently present.

European ties to the West were not yet a decision made by the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law, but rather resulted from the balance of power in 1949. After the wars of aggression and the genocide of the Nazi state, what was left of Germany was placed under preventive detention. The division of the country was a form of this and worked well from 1945 to 1990.

But the Western victorious powers and their neighbors also did not trust the state with its temporary capital Bonn. In order to become equal, the Federal Republic first had to take a back seat. It only achieved gradual ascendancy in international law by delegating sovereign rights to European institutions, initially in the economic area. The production and distribution of important materials from the former German arms factories – coal, coke and steel – were controlled by the International Ruhr Authority. It included Belgium, France, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the USA. By agreeing to join in November 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany integrated itself there. This was the first step on a path that led to the founding of the Montanunion in 1951 and the European Economic Community in 1957/58.

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The new state in the West had an Eastern political program: restoring a capitalist Germany as a whole by pushing the Soviet Union back from Central Europe. This was only possible as part of the second Cold War led by the USA. The alliance with her became the Federal Republic’s reason of state. Konrad Adenauer’s offer in December 1949 to provide his own troops for this purpose was a contribution to this. In 1950 a European Defense Community was planned. After their failure in the French National Assembly in 1954, the Federal Republic joined NATO in 1955.

From the perspective of 2024, let’s try to take stock of what was in the offing in 1949: The decision in favor of a parliamentary democracy with separation of powers and a constitutional guarantee of civil liberties based on the model of Western civil societies has produced a quite efficient political system. For the time being there is probably a pretty decent political life in the false capitalist one. The Federal Republic’s positioning in Western Europe did not prevent it from becoming the economic supremacy there, although not always to the delight of its neighbors.

The victory of the USA in 1947 in the first Cold War and the loyalty of the Federal Republic of Germany served German capital well. According to the election results, the people were also satisfied with it. It remains to be seen whether this third form of Western ties (the transatlantic one) will provide just as much pleasure in the United States’ latest showdown – ostensibly against Russia, primarily against China. There will probably be a lot of thought about this on both sides of the big water.