The theme that dare not speak its name: Geopolitik, geopolitics and German foreign policy since unification

Behnke, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5575-6927 (2012) The theme that dare not speak its name: Geopolitik, geopolitics and German foreign policy since unification. In: Guzzini, S. (ed.) The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises. Cambridge Studies in International Relations (124). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 210-262. ISBN 978107027343

Abstract/Summary

The purpose of this chapter is to trace the emergence of a new security imaginary in the foreign policy discourse in Germany during the 1990s and to determine whether it constitutes a return of Geopolitik in German foreign policy making. Does the re- appearance of geopolitical terms and expressions in the official and the academic discourses in post-unification Germany indicate such a shift? The essay will argue that the claims about a return of Geopolitik cannot be sustained. To the extent that the rhetoric of German government officials changes during the 1990s, this does not produce a coherent geopolitical security imaginary that stands diametrically opposed to the definition of political and institutional spaces of the Bonner Republik.