Between Sovereignty and Integration: German Foreign Policy and National Identity After 1989

In this first full-length U.S. study of German foreign policy since unification, Jonathan Bach explores how differing understandings of national identity influence and shape German foreign policy. Placing current debates in social and historical context, he identifies major narratives within the German foreign policy community from which emerge divergent interpretations of national identity. Through a discursive analysis of the parliamentary debates surrounding the deployment of German troops to the former Yugoslavia, Bach highlights how the idea of a "normal" foreign policy is dependent on understandings of the nation and subject to constraints imposed by the ambiguous role of the state.