在欧米軍削減問題と西ドイツ外交

――一九六〇年代末から七〇年代初頭のオフセット交渉と負担分担問題に着目して――

抄録

The purpose of this paper is to explore West German foreign policy towards the U.S. troop reduction in Europe in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, focusing on the offset problems and the burden sharing conflicts within the Western alliance based on the new archival sources. In previous study regarding the offset issues in context of U.S.-German relations it is mainly paid attention to the process of negotiations and achievements of the trilateral (U.S.-U.K.-West Germany) agreements of April 1967. This paper examines the multi-dimensional aspects of offset and the burden sharing issues, even after the trilateral agreements, especially shedding light on its meanings for West German Eastern Policy (Ostpolitik) and its Western coordination (Westpolitik). Despite American critics of the troop commitment in Europe in the late 1960s and the early 1970s the U.S. governments maintained their military commitment there partly because of its concern on the so called “double containment”. On the other hand, West German governments protested strongly against the unilateral U.S. troop reductions. The offset agreements were thus a major factor in stabilizing the American presence in West Germany. Due to the heavy impact of Vietnam on America’s balance of payments, West Germany played in fact a role in helping to maintain the value of the dollar by agreeing the American proposal regarding the offset agreements. However, it became increasingly difficult to put pressure on West German governments because they abandoned dogmatic insistence on an undiminished U.S. troop presence in the early 1970s. Instead of the bilateral agreements between U.S and West Germany, the focus of the burden-sharing was gradually shifted into the multilateral framework of the NATO, the Eurogroup. West German Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt took an initiative in formulating the multilateral burden sharing within the NATO by introducing the “European Defense Improvement Program (EDIP)”. The West German government under the chancellor Willy Brandt realized that the U.S. presence in Europe is very important not only for West Germany’s security but also for its successful Ostpolitik. Thus, West Germany accepted some of the U.S. requests for the burden sharing within the Western alliance, including the offset agreements till 1975 and the “Euro-Package” by the Eurogroup, to avoid the dramatic and unilateral U.S. troop reductions in Europe.