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PARTISAN REVIEW
structures which allow for its own development without assuming a
hegemonic role. But it is getting more and more difficult for Germany
to succeed in the former and avoid the latter, or avoid being perceived
as striving for regional hegemony, even if does not intend to do so.
Germany does not appear very powerful, in spite of its well-trained
armed forces with 3,700 soldiers.
It
does not have nuclear weapons and,
during the unification process, agreed not to develop or possess such
weapons. According to Kenneth Waltz, "Because nuclear weapons
widen the range of economic capabilities within which great powers and
would-be great powers can effectively compete, the door to the great–
power club will swing open if the European Community, Germany,
China, or Japan knock on it. Whether or not they do so is partly a
matter of decision - the decision ofJapan and Germany to equip them–
selves as great powers." The premise that nuclear weapons widen the
range of economic capabilities is somewhat surprising, but the question is
whether Germany will, as a consequence of its increased influence in
Europe, dissolve the legal and political ties which impede its rise as a nu–
clear power.
In comparison with the rather exaggerated fears in the United States
ofJapan as an economic competitor and ofJapanese technological supe–
riority, the rise of Germany-in-Europe (or Germany-and-Europe) into
the big leagues elicited few American reservations. Germany's self-percep–
tion as a team-player in international politics has become part of its po–
litical culture. The unification process and its consequences have not
weakened this internalized multilateral obligation.
Mitchell Ash:
In the post-Cold War era, massive numbers of people
have been migrating. Germans themselves are the product of mass migra–
tion, of the so-called
Volkerwanderung
during the declining years of the
Roman Empire, and of the subsequent blending of the Germanic tribes
with Slavs in Central and Eastern Europe. One of the most powerful
bonds in the relationship of Germany and the United States has been the
emigration of over seven million Germans.
But in one episode, the relationship of Germany and America was
shaped not by migrants in the broader sense, but by refugees - the so–
called "intellectual migration" from Nazi Germany after 1933. More
than two thousand scholars and scientists and about as many artists,
writers, and musicians
wer~
forced to leave Germany by the Nazi civil
service law, by the Nuremberg Laws, and by political persecution. They
were only a tiny fraction of the more than five hundred thousand Jewish
emigres from German-speaking Europe in this period, but these emigres
