Countering Soviet Encirclement } 341
in a direction favorable to China’s security. Mao laid out his thinking about
Europe’s role in talks with Kissinger in 1973.^55 The Soviet Union would not be
able to attack China until Moscow first secured control over Europe and the
Middle East. Soviet forces confronting Western Europe exceeded those facing
China, and redeployment of Soviet forces eastward would require prior settle-
ment of Soviet concerns in Europe. The great danger was that Europe did not
realize the dire Soviet threat it faced and would, therefore, allow the Soviets
to achieve domination. Core US allies in Western Europe were wavering, Mao
felt, but in the final analysis they would not abandon their vital interests by
succumbing to Soviet blandishments. It was thus necessary to take a firm line
with West European leaders to shake them awake. Kissinger found Mao very
well informed about West European leaders and politics.
West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), was especially im-
portant in containing the Soviet Union because of its large population, strong
economy, relatively large army, and central front-line location. Germany was
also especially susceptible to Soviet blandishments because of its status as a
divided country. With Moscow in firm control of East Germany, the German
Democratic Republic (GDR), Moscow could loosen or tighten inter-German
ties. Expansion of inter-German relations was a major FRG goal, because of
both short-term issues of family reunification and long-term issues of even-
tual German reunification. From the FRG perspective, détente with the Soviet
Union was linked to improved inter-German relations and the destiny of the
German nation.^56
West Germany was deeply divided in the 1970s over relations with the
Soviet Union, the GDR, and China. Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader
Willy Brandt (chancellor from 1969 to 1974) had broken with long-standing
doctrine and recognized the legitimacy of the GDR, expanding relations with
it in a new direction known as Ostpolitik (“East politics”). The corollary of
Brandt’s push for expanded inter-German relations was a push for détente
with the Soviet Union. The Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and that
Party’s Bavarian branch, the Christian Social Union (CSU) headed by Franz
Joseph Strauss, were strongly opposed to this new course, and felt that the
Soviet Union had to be dealt with from a position of strength, one element of
which should be close relations between the FRG and the PRC. Brandt and the
SDP felt that a “Far East Policy” could not substitute for Ostpolitik, and that
to try would antagonize the Soviet Union, injuring inter-German ties, and
dangerously overestimate FRG capabilities. On the other hand, in the 1950s
Moscow had suggested it would consent to German unification in exchange
for FRG exit from NATO, and it seemed to many Germans in the 1970s that
SDP Ostpolitik was moving the FRG in that direction. A West German exit
from NATO would have very greatly weakened that organization.
Beijing very much agreed with the CDU’s tough anti-Soviet perspec-
tive, and strove throughout the 1970s to move Germany in that direction.